Moving to Charlotte, advice?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Hello everyone!

My fiancee and I are planning on moving to Charlotte, NC in exactly 30 days from today. It seems like a good time for us because I just finished school, our lease is ending and we have a considerable amount of money saved for the move and to survive off of (15k). We don’t yet have jobs in the area (well, she has a guaranteed part time job, but it is only enough to offset the bleeding of our savings and prolong our 5 month time table) but from the searching I have done, I don’t foresee us having much difficulty finding something within 3 months or so. She has 5 years experience in the medical field and an additional year as a manager of a physical therapy office. I have a BA in psychology/sociology and an MS in Public Administration. Not to mention, I’m the inventory manager for a large dealership and have a lot of experience in customer service, sales, research and project management. We were planning on moving without jobs lined up because we are up here in New Hampshire and get the impression that our address is working against us when contacting potential employers. Unfortunately, the cost of living up here keeps getting higher and higher and the crime and drug scenes keep getting worse. I don’t leave my apartment without my .45 at any time and we bar our doors. Uhg. So I’m asking, does anyone have any advice for or against what we are doing? Are we completely bat shit insane for moving without work lined up yet? Are temp agencies down there really helpful? We visited a few months ago and really loved the area. We checked out Ballentyne and Uptown and Fort Mills and a few other places and looked at apartments and such. It was so clean!!! Plus what you could get down there for the money we are spending up here made me want to cry. There were so many restaurants and things to do. There isn’t that here. You get 3 months of Massachusetts mucking up the roads, the leaves falling off the trees and 8 months of winter. And everyone is pissy. We don’t fit in well and just found everyone to be so pleasant down south. One woman stopped and talked to us while walking her dog and we ended up chatting for 20 minutes. That was awesome.

Thank you so much in advance; I look forward to your replies!

2

Moderator Action

Welcome to the Straight Dope Message Board, VirgilCaine1865. Questions seeking advice and opinions belong in the In My Humble Opinion (IMHO) forum. I will move the thread there for you.

Moving thread from General Questions to In My Humble Opinion.

3

Ah! Sorry! Thank you!

4

Move. Charlotte has double the quality of life at half the cost as any northern mid-tier city. Plenty of opportunity abound.

If your younger, I would look into an apartment in Southend. Less than 15 minutes from both hospitals, downtown and many dealerships nearby. A brand new 2 bedroom 1000 sqft. place on the light rail line can be found for around $1200 month.

5

Thanks Barnhardt!

You’re right, the disparity between the quality of living seemed pretty significant. Everyone seemed pretty happy during our trip. Not to mention, there is no real public transportation up where we are so jumping on the train to uptown was a treat. Traffic, despite what a lot have said, was a whole hell of a lot less than what I’m used to.

We found a couple very nice apartments in the Ballentyne area on our recon trip to the area in the 800-900 range. We don’t need anything extravagant, just a place to live for a year until we are settled into the area. If we love it as much as we think we will, we will get something totally awesome. If we hate it, well, we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.

Anyone else have insight? :slight_smile: We are quite curious!