Washington State Homeschooling?

Could someone please give me their honest opinion about moving to Washington State?

• I realize that the question that I asked is a very broad question. However, I have a dilemma. I currently live in Central New York. I'm considering moving with my husband and 2 young children to Washington State. I lived there in the past when I was approximately 18 years old for 1 year. However, at that particular time in my life I didn't have my driver's license and I was very homesick. So, I moved back to New York State. To make a long story short, from what I can remember Washington State is beautiful. Plus, there seemed to be a lot more job opportunities there than there is here. So, my questions are how high is the cost of living in Washington State? I don't want to live in Seattle but somewhere outside of Seattle such as Kirkland, or Bellevue, or Bothell for example. I heard that rent would probably cost me at least $1,000 per month. Is this true? Also, do you think that Washington State would be a nice place to raise a family? Finally, how is the weather? I don't remember Washington State having bad weather but all I ever hear about is how rainy and cloudy it is there.

• Answer:

  The rent you mentioned is pretty average, there are higher and lower. But, much lower and usually there is something wrong with the place. Job opportunities aren't good right now, just like everywhere else. Last time I heard unemployment was at 9.3%. One reason it isn't higher is people have taken cuts in hours or wages in order to keep their jobs. The state is looking at a huge deficit the next biennium so either taxes will be going up or services cut or both. Our sales tax is over 9% in most areas. Gas is above the national average. Cost of living is pretty high in most areas. Sure it's a nice place to raise kids...if you find a nice area. But that can be said about most any state. Weather goes from fall rain to winter rain/snow to spring rain to summer sun/rain. We're wondering if we're going to have much of a summer this year. Have had the coolest, wettest spring on record and temps are still below average. It's not that WA has the most rain of any place in the country, well Seattle doesn't, it's that the rain we get is spread out over more cloudy, drizzly days. Figure roughly nine months of overcast with off again on again rain. During that nine months some nasty storms can blow through leaving power outages of a day to over a week. At this time I wouldn't be trying to move anywhere unless I had a job all lined up, cause you might be looking at a year or more before you find something. Oh and we do have the occasional quake though not as bad as CA, though the prediction is that we could have one as bad or worse. We can, and occasionally do, have tornadoes just nothing like tornado alley. We have several dormant volcanoes that will cause a lot of damage when they eventually blow, just no telling if that will be next week or next century. We have snow, occasionally bad enough to shut everything down for a few days, just not every year. The storms that pack a wind are more of a problem.