The rent takes so much 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 want to think it will improve, but when? All around you, old and young alike are biding farewell to California.
" Finest thing I could have done," stated retiree Michael J. Van Essen, who was paying $1,160 for a one-bedroom apartment or condo in Silver Lake until a year and a half earlier. He purchased a house with a creek behind it for $165,000 in Mason City, Iowa, and now pays $500 a month less on his home loan than he did on his lease in Los Angeles.
When I reached out to people who got tired and sick 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.
Strong recent information is tough to come by, but 2016 census figures revealed an uptick in the variety of people who left Los Angeles and Orange counties for more economical California locations, or they left the state completely.
" If housing costs continue to increase, we should expect to see more individuals leaving high-cost areas," said Jed Kolko, a financial expert with UC Berkeley's Terner Center for Housing Innovation.
Las Vegas is among the most popular locations for those who leave California. It's close, it's a job center, and the expense of living is much more affordable, with plenty of new homes going for between $200,000 and $300,000.
I went to Sin City to see whether, when you include up all the minuses and pluses, there is life after California.
Cyndy Hernandez, a 30-year-old USC grad who grew up in Fontana, states the answer is yes, absolutely.
" It's simpler to live here and have a comfy lifestyle," stated 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 advancement with free Wi-Fi, a swimming pool and cabana-shaded deck, gym, media space and complimentary beverages. It's like living at a resort.
Like other transplants I spoke to in Nevada, Herndandez didn't want to leave California. Unless you pick a profession that will pay you a small fortune to manage costs driven greater by a persistent shortage of new real estate, 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 seems different-- people leaving not for better jobs or pay, but since real estate in other places is so much cheaper they can live the middle-class life that eludes them in California.
After college, Hernandez worked as a congressional staffer in Washington, D.C., and then went to Chicago for a couple of years. However the West drew her back. Not California, however Nevada, where she worked on Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign in Las Vegas and after that signed up with the personnel of a state legislator in the state capital.
" I started looking at the bigger photo in Carson City, where I had the ability to pay the rent, have a vehicle 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 house, 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, loved the L.A. culture and got her teaching credential at UC Riverside. She had her pick 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 need to leave California," said Angulo, an English instructor who understands fundamental mathematics. She understood that on a beginning teacher's salary, "I couldn't pay for to remain there."
In Summerlin, a Las Vegas residential area, Angulo and a roomie each pays $600 for a huge three-bedroom home. Angulo remains in graduate school at the University of Nevada Las Vegas while teaching by day, and said she's going to start saving up to buy a house in the area.
Jonas Peterson enjoyed the California lifestyle and trips to the beach while living in Valencia with his partner, a nurse, and their 2 young kids. But in 2013, he responded to a call to head the Las Vegas Global Economic Alliance, and the household relocated to Henderson, Nev.
"We doubled the size of check here our home and decreased our home mortgage payment," said Peterson, whose wife is focusing on the kids now instead of her career.
Part of Peterson's task is to draw companies to Nevada, a state that operates on video gaming cash instead of tax dollars.
"There's no business earnings tax, no individual earnings tax ... and the regulative environment is much simpler to deal 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 people from other states and worldwide. Its possessions include advanced tech and show business, significant ports, terrific weather condition 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 generate more real estate for working individuals did not have urgency and scale. Gradually, gradually, and rather any which way, we are straining, 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 because household good friends let her remain in a small yard home for just $400 a month.
Her commute, by car and train, took between 90 minutes and 2 hours each method. She wished to move to the Platinum Triangle area, near her job, but scratched the concept when she saw that studio apartment or condos were going for as much as $1,700.
Rawding endured the commute, as well as a long-distance relationship with a boyfriend who was raised in Torrance and went to UCLA, however resided in Las Vegas. There, he could afford a great apartment or condo on his teacher's salary, and he just recently signed documents to buy a house in a brand-new advancement.
"I didn't wish to leave California. I love the weather condition, I enjoy the outdoors, I like my friends and family," said Rawding, a Chapman University graduate.
But in California she saw a future in which she 'd be trapped, forever, by high leas, outrageous commutes, or some combination of the two.
"I saw articles about millennials leaving California because they were never ever going to have the ability to have homes they might afford," she stated.
In June, whatever altered for Rawding.
She got a marketing interactions job with the Global Economic Alliance in Vegas and rented a charming $900-a-month home that's so near work, she goes home at lunch to let her dog Bodie out. And it's near her partner's location.
Nevada's gain, our loss.
California, the location where anything was possible, has become the place where absolutely nothing is inexpensive.