Us at the NorthShore I get asked about what it’s like to live in “paradise”. There’s the standard answer that locals give to tourists, “Oh it’s great to live here in Hawaii; the weather’s always great, people are friendly, we’ve got a winning football team, and we have a wide variety of food and activities.”

But, while those things are generally true, there’s more to the story. And, for a family that might be thinking of moving here, those other parts are also important.

We’ve lived in several places also, so, we don’t have the “this town is the best and only the best” kind of mentality. ;-) The first thing you need to make sure you are aware of is the cost of living. It’s much higher here than most other mainland cities. Part of the reason for that is there is a lack of “sustainability” from Hawaii, as the state has to ship in so much of the products we use daily. The cost of OJ is over $6/carton normally, gas has been over $3.30/gallon for months now, and trying to find apartment rentals (or homes) that are reasonably priced will drive you nutty…

Combine with that the fact that most companies don’t feel they need to pay more for salaries (since you can enjoy all the other benefits of Hawaii) and you end up where, here in Hawaii, most couples both have to work. But, unemployment is very low here — more jobs than people to fill them, including medical, health, etc., for example.

We are just starting to look at pre-schools now. There are some excellent private schools — Punahou for example, which runs about $15k/year for high school they say. (“Another mortgage” as a friend of mine told me.) I’ve heard some not pleasant stories about some of the public schools, but I can’t say anything from personal experience.

There is a lot of resources on the Honolulu Advertiser site; classifieds (home/rentals, jobs, etc), plus www.hawaiimoms.com is theirs, and so is this handy publication:
http://ssl.honoluluadvertiser.com/livinginparadise/2007/ .

On Salary.com you can compare salaries versus cost of living. I ran as sample with “Waco, Texas” versus Hawaii: The cost of living is +103.7% while the salary increase was +26.7% increased.
Find some additional statistics here. And here is Yahoo’s take on Honolulu as a neighborhood (they estimate the cost of living index at 220 (average is 100)).

However, realize that there are some movements in Hawaii to change some of those problems; bring about real sustainability, provide affordable housing, and improve the infrastructure of the city. I’ll try to highlight those in upcoming articles and groups.

Anyway, hope that gives you some insights.

Be Sociable, Share!
Link to this post!