The rent steals a lot of your paycheck, you may have to return in with your parents, and half your life is invested staring at the rear end of the automobile in front of you.
You 'd like to believe it will get better, but when? All around you, old and young alike are saying bye-bye to California.
" Best thing I might have done," said retired person Michael J. Van Essen, who was paying $1,160 for a one-bedroom apartment in Silver Lake till a year and a half earlier. Then he bought a home with a creek behind it for $165,000 in Mason City, Iowa, and now pays $500 a month less on his mortgage than he did on his rent in Los Angeles.
When I reached out to individuals who got sick and exhausted of the high expense of living in California, Van Essen was one of the many readers who responded in October. I spoke with someone in Idaho and others who transferred to Arizona and Nevada.
Solid recent information is hard to come by, however 2016 census figures revealed an uptick in the number of individuals who fled Los Angeles and Orange counties for cheaper California places, or they left the state entirely.
" If real estate costs continue to rise, we need to expect to see more individuals leaving high-cost locations," said Jed Kolko, an economic expert with UC Berkeley's Terner Center for Real Estate Innovation.
Las Vegas is among the most popular destinations for those who leave California. It's close, it's a job center, and the expense of living is much cheaper, with lots of new houses opting for in between $200,000 and $300,000.
I went to Sin City to see whether, when you add up all the pluses and minuses, there is life after California.
Cyndy Hernandez, a 30-year-old USC graduate who grew up in Fontana, says the response is yes, absolutely.
" It's simpler to live here and have a comfy lifestyle," said Hernandez, a neighborhood organizer with NARAL Pro-Choice Nevada.
I visited Hernandez in the two-bedroom, mountain-view "apartment-home" she shares with a roomie. Each pays $650 a month in a gated development with totally free Wi-Fi, a pool and cabana-shaded deck, fitness center, media room and complimentary drinks. It resembles living at a resort.
Like other transplants I spoke to in Nevada, Herndandez didn't desire to leave California. Unless you choose a career that will pay you a little fortune to handle costs driven higher by a persistent scarcity of new housing, California is not a dream, it's a mirage.
Relocating to get a better job or move up the office chain is absolutely nothing new. What's going on here appears different-- people leaving not for much better tasks or pay, however because housing somewhere else is so much more affordable they can live the middle-class life that avoids them in California.
After college, Hernandez worked as a congressional staffer in Washington, D.C., and then went to Chicago for a few years. The West drew her back. Not California, but Nevada, where she dealt with Hillary Clinton's governmental campaign in Las Vegas and then joined the personnel of a state lawmaker in the state capital.
" I began looking at the bigger photo in Carson City, where I had the ability to pay the lease, have a car and a comfortable life and put some cash into a 401( k)," Hernandez stated. "Would I have the ability to do that in California? Most likely not."
She moved to Las Vegas in June, enjoyed exploring the city beyond the Strip and made new pals, and her monetary tension dissolved in the desert sun. Now she's conserving up for a home, which she doesn't think she would ever have been able to perform in California.
Hernandez linked me with Arlene Angulo, 23, who matured in Riverside, worked as a cast member at Disneyland, enjoyed the L.A. culture and got her mentor credential at UC Riverside. She had her choice of two teaching jobs-- one in the Los Angeles area and one in Las Vegas.
" L.A. would have been my first choice, and I didn't wish to have to leave California," said Angulo, an English instructor who comprehends standard mathematics. She knew that on a starting teacher's salary, "I couldn't pay for to stay there."
In Summerlin, a Las Vegas suburban area, Angulo and a roomie each pays $600 for a huge three-bedroom apartment or condo. Angulo remains in graduate school at the University of Nevada Las Vegas while teaching by day, and said she's going to start saving approximately buy a house in the area.
Jonas Peterson enjoyed the California way of life and trips here to the beach while living in Valencia with his spouse, a nurse, and their two young kids. In 2013, he answered a call to head the Las Vegas Global Economic Alliance, and the family moved to Henderson, Nev.
"We doubled the size of our house and lowered our mortgage payment," said Peterson, whose wife is spouse on the kids now instead of her career.
Part of Peterson's job is to lure companies to Nevada, a state that operates on gaming money rather than tax dollars.
"There's no corporate income tax, no personal income tax ... and the regulatory environment is a lot easier to work with," stated Peterson.
Some companies have made the move from California, and others have set up satellites in Nevada. California, a world economic power, will survive the raids, and it will continue to draw individuals from other states and around the world. Its assets consist of innovative tech and home entertainment markets, significant ports, great weather and lots of top-notch universities.
However the Golden State is stained and ever-more divided by a crisis without any end in sight, and this year's legal efforts to spawn more housing for working people lacked urgency and scale. Slowly, progressively, and somewhat indifferently, we are burdening, breaking and even exporting our middle class.
Breanna Rawding, 26, felt the squeeze. She grew up in Simi Valley and until recently worked in Anaheim as a marketing coordinator, but lived in Burbank due to the fact that household pals let her remain in a small yard home for simply $400 a month.
Her commute, by cars and truck and train, took in between 90 minutes and 2 hours each way. She wanted to move to the Platinum Triangle area, near her task, but scratched the idea when she saw that studio houses were going for as much as $1,700.
Rawding sustained the commute, in addition to a long-distance relationship with a sweetheart who was raised in Torrance and went to UCLA, but lived in Las Vegas. There, he might pay for a good apartment or condo on his instructor's income, and he recently signed papers to buy a house in a new development.
"I didn't want to leave California. I love the weather, I enjoy the outdoors, I enjoy my friends and family," stated Rawding, a Chapman University graduate.
In California she saw a future in which she 'd be trapped, indefinitely, by high rents, ridiculous commutes, or some combination of the two.
"I saw posts about millennials leaving California due to the fact that they were never ever going to have the ability to have homes they might pay for," she said.
In June, everything changed for Rawding.
She got a marketing communications job with the Global Economic Alliance in Vegas and rented a charming $900-a-month home that's so near work, she goes house at lunch to let her pet dog Bodie out. And it's near her sweetheart's place.
Nevada's gain, our loss.
California, the place where anything was possible, has become the location where absolutely nothing is budget friendly.