Folly Beach, Charleston, SC
Hello everyone!
First off, thank you to anyone who takes the time to read through this. My expectations for these blog posts are that a few close friends and family read, but ultimately the main purpose is to document these life updates so I can look back on these in the future and have a record of this sort of thing (my version of "scrapbooking" that doesn't require violating the family ping-pong table). Please know how grateful and flattered I am that anyone spends their time reading through something like this. Let me know if you are, so going forward I can keep that in mind and tailor my writing to my known audience.
Quick summary of my current life situation so far as of 8/7/2023:
I am about a month in with my new job working fully remotely (content editor for hospice consulting agency).
I removed (sold/donated/trashed) over half of my belongings, and moved the remaining boxes to the closet at my dad's place. No more bed, furniture, etc.
While visiting friends/family who have wanted me to visit them and/or want me to dog/house sit for them, I have guest rooms to stay in through end of January 2024, and am traveling around with the belongings that fit in my car.
At that point, I will be able to use the money that I have saved on rent to visit/test various cities for a few months.
I'll be up with family in Western New York for the beginning of April 2024 for the solar eclipse, so I figure I'll plan to settle in a new city (sign an apartment lease, buy a bed, furniture, etc.) April/May 2024.
That's the general plan as of right now, we'll see what happens!
Charleston
Where should I live?
For those of you who have been close to me for the past few years, you know that I love Charleston, SC, and would love to live there. As of right now, living in Charleston would most likely mean that I have to make one of three choices:
Decrease the amount of my take-home salary that I put in savings by $200-$300 a month (I am not willing to do this).
Find a roommate in Charleston (I am not interested in finding a random roommate - if anyone has connections to someone reliable, let me know!)
Live in an area of Charleston that isn't worth living - if I'm going to live in Charleston, I want to actually be able to conveniently go to the beach for an after-work run, etc. (I have friends who live in North Charleston / Summerville who never actually go to the beach, which would defeat the whole point).
Therefore, since I have the time to research a few areas, why not explore around while I have the opportunity to? Would love to still end up in Charleston, but maybe I can find a place that has all the positives of Charleston without having to make one of those compromises.
Next step, make a spreadsheet!
To start, I added Asheville and Charleston to the spreadsheet just for comparison. After that, I added major beach cities on the east coast, Orlando (because of Universal), and various cities with NHL teams to get more data (even though I know I probably wouldn't actually seriously consider these). This spreadsheet shows the initial things I think about when picking a city. Any of these that are in red eliminate that city from contention for me:
Climate - My time in NY taught me to hate cold weather. I used this website to see the average lows and highs for the each city. Anything that routinely is less than 30 degrees or more than 100 degrees is not ideal. I'm happy with up to one exciting snowfall a year that shuts down the city for a few days.
Distance to DC (AKA distance to family) - Washington, D.C. is the central hub for being able to see family. My brother and sister-in-law are there, and the importance of being a day drive away became evident to me as I gathered the data for this initial group of cities. Add in the fact that some family also live in Maryland area and nearby New Jersey, and that is an added bonus. (Driving > flying due to minimal leg room on planes).
Population Size - I enjoy the opportunities that come with living in a more populated area. The only times I've visited somewhere and felt like the city was too densely populated were DC, Philadelphia, NYC, and Charlotte. Note that for Charleston and Virginia Beach, I did the population for the general "area" due to the cities around it. There's no perfect way to measure it but the colors of each city express my thoughts better than the pure numbers. This was mainly to eliminate a lot of the surrounding Virginia Beach cities from all being their own spot on the spreadsheet (Norfolk, Chesapeake, etc.)
Cost of Living - I took these numbers in comparison to Asheville. Asheville is one of the more expensive cities to live in North Carolina, so I figure anything that is 10%+ more expensive wouldn't work out.
Rent Budget - To calculate this, I looked around at apartments.com to find apartments that would fit my standards and compared that estimate to my calculated budget for rent per month. The numbers you see are how it compares above or below.
As you can see, this helped me eliminate everything on that spreadsheet St. Louis and below based on distance to Washington, DC. Soon after, I removed Jacksonville due to the population density. Most importantly, this helped me realize what criteria I care about most to add other cities to the list that I might have missed. I'm going to keep Asheville and Charleston on the list for comparison, but add to the list any cities that have a warm enough climate, are a day drive from DC, and have a population of more than 100,000. Here's the updated spreadsheet after those cities were added:
Note: I did not include Lexington, KY because it is in Kentucky, and I didn't even look at anything in West Virginia.
From this initial data, a few things stood out to me:
Updated my acceptable population size - I was surprised at how small Atlanta actually was according to the data. Every time I've been there it has seemed like a very crowded and dense city. I thought it was going to be immediately eliminated due to size, similar to Charlotte.
There are so many cities in North Carolina that I wasn't even considering before this. Didn't realize that Cary and Durham were as big as they were, and I've never even heard of High Point, NC.
Charlotte is too crowded/dense of a city for me, so I didn't even finish gathering all the data for there. Same with Alexandria, VA, after seeing the cost of living (makes sense, it is essentially just part of Washington, DC). Then looking at the rent budget, I feel fine removing Cary from the list (just a suburb of Raleigh anyways). Which brings us to the finalized spreadsheet for today:
Keeping Asheville on the list for reference. All these other cities are like the contestants on the Bachelor who have made it past the extensive casting process, and will be eliminated one by one until only one remains. The few that are given a metaphorical rose every week will get a visit from me in 2024 to determine compatibility, and the season finale in April 2024 will feature the last few eliminations.
Let me know what you think! Is there a city on here that you want to vouch for? Did I miss any cities? What things should I consider going forward? I'm happy to receive as much information as possible. My understanding of these reality tv shows is that new contestants can show up after episode 1, so I'm flexible.
If you are reading this, it means I value your opinion, so feel free to reach out with your thoughts.
Thanks for reading, God bless!
Jeremy Glidden