Think Twice Please
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10/5/2020
I've lived here since 1996 [when I was 9] and have to say it used to be a five-star state. Great views, fairly average cost of living.110.0 in Denver 12 years ago on this website. CO Springs was only 107. Today, you will spend 6-15x income on a home, never get up to the mountains, be surrounded by others who eat up the backcountry, leaving nothing but shredded powder for weeks. The housing prices and rents are so high now that we barely sit below California in terms of cost of living. My former coworker bought her home in Boulder for $110k in 2001. Adjusted for inflation that is only $190k. Today, it would sell for >$700k. The same things that make the idea of Colorado great (what it was in 2000) are what drives up the prices and makes finding the true West impossible in this state. We now have as many people coming in as leaving, at least right before the pandemic. If you want to be here plan on: a) having more than one job unless you are in teh < 15% who make more than 70k [that is the 60th percentile for a two income family here], b) spending $1400-$2100 on rent or housing [cheaper means broken everything in an apartment from 1936 that gets renovated this year and sells for $2100], c) spending more on groceries than listed here (food prices skyrocketed with the pandemic and new surge of people who don't think before they act), d) not putting your kid into great schools [DPS was almost defunded 2x in the 2010s and Adams county was nearly defunded 2 years ago with El Paso barely funding schools at all], e) likely living in a gentrified area unless you are a millionaire (Pueblo, Fountain; South Co Springs) where [true story] you may end up in witness protection because the median income is < the minimum wage, f) never actually having time to spend 4 hours reaching the mountains, g) paying growing taxes, h) barely making it by on a middle-class income, i) getting laughed at when asking for cost of living increases beacuse "it wasn't a problem when I was a young moron with daddies money." The list goes on and on. You are better off thinking it through and realizing that your tech job is more likely to move to Madison where UoW, Chicago University, Illinois at Urbana, KU, and Wash U in St Louis are a 1-2 day drive than in a state where the best ranked school has the highest suicide rate and everyone else is much worse than what they pay for. You will get called back to the office. Ask government employees about the extensive research done with regards to the
Andrew | Colorado Springs, CO