The best affordable place to live in the US

I live 20 miles from #2 fort wayne.

It's a pretty nice town but like every other town got it's bad spots.

Great baseball stadium "single a", and I mean great, better that any big league stadium I've ever been too.
Huge hockey following, "komets"
Lots of parks.
Lots of jobs.
Good hospitals.
Mixed bag on schools but that's normal. Get your kid in one of the church schools and you're golden.

originally posted by: MorpheusUSA
a reply to: JAGStorm

Greenville, South Carolina...Gross..
I have been to Huntsville I did not much care for it, but has a load of federal contractors, and federal agencies so maybe the article is based on job opportunities outside of retail and food.

If you what a semi large city feel but still want to live in the country and its less expensive then a lot of cities Knoxville or Chattanooga, Tennessee are good choices.

Chattanooga is really nice. They've done an amazing job bringing in the arts / culture. I could probably live there. I used to up there from Atlanta all the time to go to the Aquarium. I also worked there for a few months about 25 years ago. The city was gentrifying rapidly. Kind of has an urban / country hipster feel. I think they are competing for retirees similar to Asheville, NC right now.

originally posted by: Bluntone22
I live 20 miles from #2 fort wayne.

It's a pretty nice town but like every other town got it's bad spots.

Great baseball stadium "single a", and I mean great, better that any big league stadium I've ever been too.
Huge hockey following, "komets"
Lots of parks.
Lots of jobs.
Good hospitals.
Mixed bag on schools but that's normal. Get your kid in one of the church schools and you're golden.

So living in the midwest I've seen a lot of families/coworkers/friends move, come back etc.

Here's the weird thing. A lot of people from the Chicagoland area get sick of the taxes and move to Indiana or Wisconsin and some to Missouri. The ones that moved to Indiana almost always seem to come back to Illinois. I don't see that with the other states. It's as if they are just testing the waters of leaving Illinois and Indiana wasn't what they expected. Not sure if that is with Fort Wayne, or more Indianapolis area.

a reply to: dothedew

Grand Rapids Michigan? That's going to be a hard "No"..... There are a million places to live in Michigan that are cheaper than that...... Sure, might not be as beautiful, but damn. Go anywhere in the thumb along the shoreline, Traverse City, Howell, Waterford, Hamburg, Commerce, Hartland, Fenton, Davison, Hell I can make a list a mile long. Might as well have said Ann Arbor is an affordable place to live

Not a lot of industry in some of those places but certainly not too far to drive to get to a good job. Myself I live kind of between Lansing, Jackson and kalamazoo.... I have worked in all those cities, plus battle Creek but live out in what appears to be the boondocks.

As a Union sheet metal worker I tend to work in the cities. But I do not want to live there. My wife and I bought an old foreclosed farm house with 5 acres for $29,000 cash. Put over 20k into it and needs more but. I make around 60k on 40 hours, maybe a little less. Could make a lot more but do not chase the overtime shutdown jobs at the car plants anymore..

But I do agree that Michigan is a pretty good place to live. Although we did have 1 or 2 tornadoes I can remember lol...

originally posted by: JAGStorm

originally posted by: Bluntone22
I live 20 miles from #2 fort wayne.

It's a pretty nice town but like every other town got it's bad spots.

Great baseball stadium "single a", and I mean great, better that any big league stadium I've ever been too.
Huge hockey following, "komets"
Lots of parks.
Lots of jobs.
Good hospitals.
Mixed bag on schools but that's normal. Get your kid in one of the church schools and you're golden.

So living in the midwest I've seen a lot of families/coworkers/friends move, come back etc.

Here's the weird thing. A lot of people from the Chicagoland area get sick of the taxes and move to Indiana or Wisconsin and some to Missouri. The ones that moved to Indiana almost always seem to come back to Illinois. I don't see that with the other states. It's as if they are just testing the waters of leaving Illinois and Indiana wasn't what they expected. Not sure if that is with Fort Wayne, or more Indianapolis area.

Indianapolis sucks. Seriously. I have never seen a city so devoid of arts and culture in my life. Wife and I went there for a weekend trip last summer. We went to Indy racetrack and to the Children's Museum (which was phenomenal). However, there was something off about the city and then it dawned on me what the problem was... there was no organic art. No murals. Just empty walls everywhere.

I'm not talking about lack of grafitti but just no art. It is like night and day between Chicago and Indy. You can just randomly walk down a street in Chicago and you will see gorgeous murals, sculptures, etc. You just didn't see any of that in Indy. It was like some kind of gritty sim city imho.

I won't be going back...

originally posted by: JAGStorm

originally posted by: Bluntone22
I live 20 miles from #2 fort wayne.

It's a pretty nice town but like every other town got it's bad spots.

Great baseball stadium "single a", and I mean great, better that any big league stadium I've ever been too.
Huge hockey following, "komets"
Lots of parks.
Lots of jobs.
Good hospitals.
Mixed bag on schools but that's normal. Get your kid in one of the church schools and you're golden.

So living in the midwest I've seen a lot of families/coworkers/friends move, come back etc.

Here's the weird thing. A lot of people from the Chicagoland area get sick of the taxes and move to Indiana or Wisconsin and some to Missouri. The ones that moved to Indiana almost always seem to come back to Illinois. I don't see that with the other states. It's as if they are just testing the waters of leaving Illinois and Indiana wasn't what they expected. Not sure if that is with Fort Wayne, or more Indianapolis area.

Indianapolis sucks. Seriously. I have never seen a city so devoid of arts and culture in my life. Wife and I went there for a weekend trip last summer. We went to Indy racetrack and to the Children's Museum (which was phenomenal). However, there was something off about the city and then it dawned on me what the problem was... there was no organic art. No murals. Just empty walls everywhere.

I'm not talking about lack of grafitti but just no art. It is like night and day between Chicago and Indy. You can just randomly walk down a street in Chicago and you will see gorgeous murals, sculptures, etc. You just didn't see any of that in Indy. It was like some kind of gritty sim city imho.

I won't be going back...

a reply to: Edumakated

I have never seen a city so devoid of arts and culture in my life.

My family is big into the art scene, so I know exactly what you mean. It's one of the reasons I love Milwaukee, I think it's artsy in a raw way.

originally posted by: JAGStorm
a reply to: Edumakated

I have never seen a city so devoid of arts and culture in my life.

My family is big into the art scene, so I know exactly what you mean. It's one of the reasons I love Milwaukee, I think it's artsy in a raw way.

Yup! Milwaukee is very artsy. A ton of organic arts/culture around the city. Being in Chicago right between Indy and Milwaukee, they could not be more different. Milwaukee is a favorite get away for us. Only time I am going back to Indy at this point is if I need to stop for gas going somewhere else....

It's no mystery. They use metrics. Nobody "pays" to be on the list

U.S. News & World Report just released this year's list of the best places to live in America after evaluating the country’s 125 most populous metropolitan areas. Several factors were considered, including affordability, job prospects and quality of life. Data such as crime rates, availability of health care and median household income was used in conjunction with results from polls. For example, they asked 2,500 people from all over the country where they'd prefer to live to create a desirability index. Net migration — how many people are moving to or away from each metro area — was also a significant factor when coming up with the final cites.

Believe it or not. It's all Happy Talk to sell magazines anyway.

Most articles like that are written as sales pitches. to qualify you have to enter a contest with a fee, the winner of the contest usually gets free advertising, but they pay for it in fees and so on. Hospitals do the same thing, they constantly have organizations evaluating them. Same with restaurants, someone gets free meals for evaluating them for articles like that.

I have known some people who won recognition prizes like that, it was cheap advertising, but still wound up costing them more than it was worth.

It is reasonable living around here, but the winter is long. We have between five and ten inches of heavy wet snow in store for the next two days.

They shouldn't use a subjective word like "best" to describe their list. They should stick to "the most affordable places to live" or find some other, objective metric.

I like all the selections in the OP, they're great...go live there!!...Please!

I'm surprised they didn't throw Colorado in there too. They've F#'d this state up pretty well also.

Now, there's some other states (which shall remain nameless) which are absolutely terrible, horrible, awful, places to live! Never even go there! Trust me!


ETA - Those 'other' states are so horrible and terrible I won't even mention their names! Cost of living is a billion dollars a month, taxes are 100%, the people suck and there's no scenery or anything to do at all. They just completely stink!! Total prison states with not a single redeeming factor to them at all! Believe me!