And you showed how your general process of deduction is flawed in the blunt force trauma thread. Who wins?
Have you even read that shit article and how they scored it??? Jersey second on the list??? I’m guessing thats because of all the wise guy’s there... Always entertains me when people think they are smarter just because they are from X area or someone is ignorant or uneducated when they are from X area or region....
Well, Aaron, brought up most of what I was going to ask so I won't bother regurgitating all that. I'll just share what I've learned in my research and journey to middle Tn.....the big difference between us tho, is that I had just retired. Visually, we fell in love with the Nashville area over Knox, we began vacationing in Tn about 4-5 yrs ago, on each visit we'd branch out and travel different areas to look at homes we found online and check the area out. Our #1 fav pick was the infamous Franklin, Tn. However, it has pricier housing compared to surrounding areas mostly because of it's well known popularity but also it's where a lot of wealthier folks reside, lotsa country stars, etc.... It does have a slightly uppity feel to it if you hit the popular spots/malls/eateries but it's an awesome place with great roads, horse/cattle pastures, homes, oh hell mansions too with plenty of rolling hills to take in whether out for a Sunday drive or even better, RIDE! I agree that Tn education system by far and large are horrendous like many mid south States it seems BUT we do have a sweet spots. If not mistaken Williamson County (that's where Franklin is btw - roughly 30min south of N'ville) has the best school district in the State, their public schools are all rated 10's, from K-12....if you put any cred to those school rating systems associated with the realtor sites. Because my home in NJ took longer to sell than expected, we couldn't find anything in Williamson County, in time for my kiddo's to start school on time down here. So we kinda settled for a neighboring Rutherford County cuz of lower housing costs but the home prices here are nearly half of what they were in NJ so we still picked up a nice lil home for $255k, sits on just 1ac, 3br, 2bth, 2 car garage. Our school district is mostly 8's and 9's, K thru 12, however, we do have what they call the Central Magnet school which is rated a solid 10. School is free but they have to test for it, grades 6-12. That one is a sore subject for me cuz I REALLY wanted my kids to go there but my lil one struggled with the move right up until Xmas, which is about the time period they test for the Magnet school. My better half was concerned about the lil one having to make friends all over again so we left it alone for now. They're BOTH doing great, honor roll students and the older one even made the 'principals list'. And after being here for over a yr now, we love it here and stopped searching for homes in Franklin. Again, IMHO, it's not quite as visually beautiful as Williamson County and Franklin in particular but it's not far off either. One thing we have noticed in our time here, every single time we go to Franklin area (shopping or eat) we notice a .40-.50/gal difference in fuel costs, compared to what we pay in Murfreesboro. Anyhow, if you have children the counties I'd consider first cause they have very good to excellent school districts are 1) Williamson 2) Rutherford and 3) Wilson. I might be missing one but those 3 counties are off the top of my head that had good schooling and were less that an hour away from N'ville. Because I'm retired and had no interest in getting back into LE I haven't looked into salaries/bennies for any of the local LE agencies here so I'm no help there, sorry. The one awesome thing about this State, it's very conservative, lotsa God/gun loving good folks live here, which I love. However, (and no doubt this will crack up some of the native southerners) LOTS of northerners and an even bigger concern is a TON of Cali's folks are moving and/or investing $$$ in housing here.....early to say if that's a good or bad thing. They could be just as conservative as I am, fingers crossed, who wanted to leave their shitholes as I did but just as concerned as the native conservatives here are. Oddly enough, all but one neighbor of mine are northern transplants, two from Indiana, one from Chicago and Pitts, Pa. Cost of living is NOT as cheap as I had hoped, clothing and food are all the same, heck in NJ we didn't pay sales tax on clothing. Utilities are cheaper I think, hard to compare cuz I had gas and electric bills, here it's only electric, the highest I paid last winter was nearly $300 (1900sqft home) which is still less than I was paying combined in NJ (2400sqft home). My average, less the coldest 2-3 months, is between $140-175. My property tax difference will make you laugh, I went from $10k/yr to $1200/yr. This move was a no brainer for us.....not sure if anything I just wrote helped but if you need anything specific you want to ask or want me to look into, don't hesitate to PM me, glad to help out. If I had to guess, I'd say maybe look into Franklin or maybe Brentwood PD, being the more costly/uppity towns just outside of the big City they might have decent paying agencies. Oh and just in case you have a working spouse, there is a lot of business growth going on in middle Tn. Also as you may already know, Google is coming to N'ville soon too. GL with your decision! Oh yes, if you say so.
Yeah, I’ll pack up the kids and get them into a nice school in Newark right away.. I’m sure if your point of reference is a school system in Memphis, it’s shit. It’s a bit of a stretch to say the whole states education system blows. We have a strong influence from the Y-12/ORNL crowd and UT locally. I went to private school growing up, I’d put our school system up against that any day. One county further out from Knoxville? No way..
Thank you for all of that! That assessment is the home run I’ve been looking for and I sincerely appreciate the time you put into that reply!! After all of that, it really comes down to being a motor officer down there. I have some soul searching to do still.... Thank you all for your input!
I lived in Memphis for two and a half years. Collierville actually. The best part was moving out of Memphis as it is quite terrible. I spent a little bit of time in Nashville and every small town around Knoxville and Chatt that had a bicycle race. From what I could tell, the rest of TN isn't too shabby. Only thing that really sucks is where it sits in the time zone unless you end up far enough east to be in EST. As a cyclist, I hated the early sunsets. I didn't think it was very cheap to live compared to Kansas City, Little Rock, or Oklahoma City - the only three cities that I've lived in and can accurately compare it to. Property tax was significantly higher than my prior and post residences, but as you mentioned there is no income tax. I'd imagine the savings are decent compared to the North East. I can tell you that I once compared Oklahoma City to New Jersey, and the cost of living was about 30% higher. Depending on where you end up in TN, I don't think your calculations are that far off. I'd also think that housing would be the biggest item to research as it would be the one that would have the biggest impact on your cost of living. And I didn't follow the entire elevation argument, but I found that the further east you went the more climbing you had. Racoon Mountain in Chattanooga is a real bitch.
I live in Maryville. Knoxville born and raised. Wouldn't want to be anywhere else. I could get you in contact with a few people detectives and such, if you want to stay in that line of work.
