Oregon!!
Okay, so me and hubby have wanted to move out of po-dunk college town in KY for quite a while, and decided about a year ago on oregon.
Well, we were talking to this older couple that owns our laundry mat and they were encouraging us to just Go. They said they've done it several times, (this most recent time was in the midst of the recession) and have always been able to find housing and jobs, and that moving that way, you get to check out the area before you settle down, and if you didn't like it, move on to the next town. Apparently their whole family (brothers, sisters, sons, daughters, etc) all use this method of moving on and they have all been successful.
We were trying to secure jobs and things BEFORE we get out there, but considering we've been here a year since that decision, you see how well THAT is going. And KY is a frickin money pit. The jobs here keep you just wealthy enough to get by, and just poor enough that you can never leave....Plus there are NO jobs that use my psych degree within a 2 hour radius of our town.
WE are going to Oregon in Feb. We're gonna send some resumes to people over there in the meantime, but whether or not we have a job lined up by february, we're goin. WOOT for crazy reckless adventures ;D !!!!!
Aww Fufu,
I salute your courage to pick up and go!! In less than two years I'll be doing the same thing once I finish undergrad. I feel like there aren't many guarentees anywhere right now...so I'm going to stay a student for a while and hopefully that'll buy me five more years of guarenteed shit payin grad school and if I am lucky I'll miss the huge funk of a job market we have now. Good luck---Oregon looks beautiful and one day when I own a car I'm going to check it out for living too.
hi, fufu,
i say go for it. i've picked up and moved on a whim for most of my life and each move has worked out. some more than others, but i don't regret any of them. so far i've lived in PA, NJ, VT, TX, MN, CA and now FL. it's so exciting to get to a new town, experience new things, meet new people. never been to Oregan but it looks absolutely beautiful. best of luck on the exciting new adventure :)
We're looking at Eugene.... No kids in our next 10 years, lol What did you think if Eugene and Portland?
Eugene is a HUGE college town, centered around OSU - home of legend Phil Knight and Nike. It is second to Portland in veg*n friendliness in the state. Most of the businesses/commerce is based on the student population. In the summer, they have big concerts in the stadium and the Oregon Country Fair that keep the shops alive during that otherwise 'dry time' between spring and fall semesters.
I did enjoy living in Albany. It's a nice mellow place to raise a family. But the jobs in the Linn-Benton counties have really dried up after HP laid a huge chunk of people off. Eugene is a fun place to live. But if I had to move to Oregon again, I would pick Portland. There are more jobs there, the Saturday market is great, and it's a very vegan friendly city.