Fort Schuyler almost graduate here (Sept 20), looking to relocate to the Houston area (I’m a navy vet, wife is pregnant), I would like to know how is the job market looking down there, it seems like a good place to raise a family compared to the Northeast. I’m not looking to get rich here, what I want is to be able to provide for my growing family.
So are you looking to work shoreside?
Preferably on ships, since I was on Submarines before merchant ships seem like 5 star hotels for me, but as a new graduate I understand I can’t be picky.
I think the point was that unless you’re looking to work shoreside then why does this matter at all?
Hahahaha
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I’ve worked with dozens of guys from the small towns that surround Houston that liked it for various reasons. But it’s a safe bet to say most were tied to the area by a family history of living there. The ones who complained about it all shared the same lines. Too much traffic, too hot, public transportation that wasn’t used by the middle class & above, bad public schools, high crime in certain communities & frequent flooding in a lot of areas. US mega-city wise, Houston probably isn’t the worst place but I think it stopped being a destination for carpet baggers to settle down out of the blue to start a family a few generations ago. Move to New Hampshire or some other tax friendly state that has 4 seasons with public school systems that don’t have metal detectors at the entrances.
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I was stationed in Houston from 2004 to 2011. It’s business friendly but I wouldn’t recommend it as a nice place to raise a family.
We found a area (The Woodlands) that seems quite family oriented, we went down for a week to visit and get a feel for the area, and we liked what we saw. My wife is from California and I’m from NYC, so the prices we saw were great. I was thinking TX since it has no income tax, also close to the oil fields and a short plane ride to other job centers.
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The property taxes are pretty high in the Houston area but the schools are very, very good. Lots of money going to the education system in Texas. Katy has one of the best public school systems in the country. Katy is also one of the most diverse, well educated (population wise) areas you can move to. You just gotta put up with the nasty hot weather.
The Woodlands is one of the nicer areas but well north of downtown. Close to Bush Intercontinental if you commute by air. Choose carefully. A commute across the city is brutal. If you work out of Galveston, Friendswood, Clear Lake or League City are decent areas and a much shorter commute.
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I’ve heard the samething about Katy being a nice suburb. 20 years ago I heard only good about Sugerland too. But with urban sprawl from Houston, I now hear negative stories from a friend who lives there.
I didn’t know that about the schools in Katy. When we recently relocated we used the Greatschools. org site to help us narrow down neighborhoods then visited the office for forms during the day when the kids where there to get a vibe of the place.
Everyone is different & tries to find what they consider the best environment to raise their families. While Galveston & Rockport TX were on our final 5 places when I moved back to the US in '06, Houston had too many big city problems for us.
Well I would never move to Houston (I live in Colorado and, well, Colorado) but Houston has alot to offer a young family. Plus, it’s so cheap. And education is a priority in Texas. There are always big city problems around big cities, but in Houston you get alot of bang for your buck. As for job markets, everyone here is right - as a mariner you really don’t need to move where the job markets are good as long as you get employment with a shipping/drilling company. If you are a new grad of a Maritime Academy there’s really no hope of getting anything with the consulting firms there in the Houston area. The only reason to move there would be the school systems and cheep real estate. Keep in mind property taxes are pretty friggin high though.
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New Englanders love New England but can’t get away from it fast enough. Same with Californians.
There are a few nice expensive neighborhoods in the Houston area, but most of it is a southern version of the Bronx or Compton. There are many much nicer places in Texas. For example, the Austin or San Antonio areas.
Seattle and Miami areas are pretty nice, and they are also in tax free states.
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A couple of days ago in the Miami International Airport my pizza box had the odd facts that Miami gets 250 days of sunshine a year & has never had a recorded 3 or single digit temperature which sounds impressive. But I can’t blame the O.P. for zeroing in on the Houston area once he stated he was from NY & the misses from California. That’s about in the middle & IAH & Hobby are some of the cheapest airports around.
Good luck to them no matter where they decide to settle down. I’m sure their future community will be better off because of it.
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Yankees love coming down to Florida and complaining about Florida and how much better NY or Ohio are.
There are mariners working long hitches who live in Mexico, South America, Thailand, Philippines, etc. There are no local taxes and a relatively high US income affords a very comfortable life style in many foreign locations.
A Mariner who lives in Colombia with his American wife and three American kids told me that he rents a nice 5 bedroom house for $600 a month. The three kids go to a quality private International school with instruction in English for $1000 a month, which is his biggest expense. The kids have become good at math and science, and are fully bilingual. The kids friends and classmates are the children of international executives and the Colombian 1%. His wife is a freelancer writer who telecommutes to the US. They have a good social life.
Even working a 30/30 schedule, it would be practical to live in Mexico. There are lots of cheap flights from Mexico City, Cabo, and Cancun.
For someone that cannot stand the idea of living outside of the US, there is the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico is inexpensive and the best legal offshore tax haven for an American.
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Just asking. Have you experienced this with new transplants to Florida who have moved out of NY & Ohio in the last couple of years or is your observation based on the attitudes of snow birds from decades past? I’m working with a guy who escaped out of California last year to Texas & I don’t think there’s anything that anybody from Texas can do to him that would make him miss California. He talks about his pleasant amazement with Texas all the time. The relief of people who manage to get out of California & New York reminds me of the joy of Eastern Europeans & Russians who escaped the Soviet Union. All the recent transplants that I run across seem to be happy in their new environments.
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The biggest problem with Florida is that there are too many New Yorkers!
Portland and Seattle have too many Californians!
Everyone prefers the good familiar things from back home. Once they’ve been away for awhile, they don’t remember the bad things.
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I visited my cousin in Spring TX last year. The sprawl and traffic was terrible and their property taxes are high. It was just vast new neighborhoods filled with McMansions and no soul.
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