Nearly impossible to find a job in Maine? (Portland, Strong: hair salon, lease)

[slyfox2]

Originally Posted by maineguy8888

Just so you know, summer is a bit warmer when you get inland from the coast.

And quite a bit colder in the winter. MDI is 4 degrees right now. Bangor is freezing at 2 degrees. MDI is twice as warm as Bangor.

[bbb3601]

I can understand wanting to have a job before moving. I am a RN and have been waiting years to make our move to Maine. Due to the consolidation of nursing facilities this may be coming true! A nationwide company finally bought a few centers in Ohio and I made a job move. They also own 6 centers in Maine so now I can simply transfer!! Few more bills to pay off and we will list the house. I will make a little less in Maine, but my wife will be the same (STNA) we have made almost 12 trips on various seasons. Can't wait!!

[Submariner]

Originally Posted by nep321

Really? I'm renting a small 1 bd apartment right now in Norwalk, CT for $1,550 per month, no utilities included. I make $75,000 and get by just fine, but even so, my budget is very fragile. I have a hard time believing that even in Maine, a single person can get by on just $50,000 a year. I mean, that's poverty wages!

I see many families around me, where both adults work part-time seasonal jobs. Maybe 1 or 2 p/t summer jobs each, maybe a p/t job over the winter. There is a family who harvest fir tips on my land in late fall and that is their winter income. Another is a older gentleman who traps on my land for his winter income. These are families whose combined income is less than $30k, the younger families are raising children.

[Submariner]

Originally Posted by nep321

I still have a hard time believe it lol. Well, here in CT I need serious money just to live a middle class lifestyle. In my county, a household income of $80K is considered middle class.

Make that here and you will be in the top 1% of households.

[Spanky25]

Originally Posted by Coaster

It is extremely unlikely that you will find a job in Maine that equals or exceeds your current one. When my wife and I moved back to Maine, we immediately took a 33 percent cut in income. That was in 1979, and it hasn't changed since. Pay scales up here are considerably lower than outside Maine. Both of our daughters live and work outside Maine, and neither of them could earn close to their current incomes if they moved back. Our older girl lives in Manhattan in NYC and earns more in a year than I did in my last four years combined working in Maine, when I was at the peak of my career here.

If you come to Maine expecting the same income and lifestyle you currently enjoy, you will be disappointed. I'm sorry. You might look at Boston or its northern suburbs, or perhaps Portsmouth, NH.

Coaster-
You are exactly correct! I'd love to move to Maine, however here in New York L.I. my wife as an RN, would take a 50% pay cut. As expensive as NY L.I. is, it does not cost me 50% of her salary for mtg, taxes, insurance, COLA, ect.... I can transfer, however I would take a 20% pay cut. The numbers just do not ad up for us.

We love Maine! We've been visiting EVERY year since we've met 14 years ago. So, a vaca home down the road will have to do. Possibly retire too.

[Six jours]

I know several people that moved all the way up North, like close to Campobello, they both got jobs, both in the medical field, specially nursing in dire need up there, heck they moved last summer. Salary are less, housing is less, life in general is kinda you know, Maine like. Gotta love it or you wont be happy.

[Submariner]

Originally Posted by Spanky25

Coaster-
You are exactly correct! I'd love to move to Maine, however here in New York L.I. my wife as an RN, would take a 50% pay cut. As expensive as NY L.I. is, it does not cost me 50% of her salary for mtg, taxes, insurance, COLA, ect.... I can transfer, however I would take a 20% pay cut. The numbers just do not ad up for us.

We love Maine! We've been visiting EVERY year since we've met 14 years ago. So, a vaca home down the road will have to do. Possibly retire too.

Then come up when you retire.

Many of us do.

[EastwardBound]

I would think a pay cut of 50% would be preferable to having to live in New York or on Long Island. We are most certainly looking forward to escaping Los Angeles, even if it does mean a 50% pay cut!

We are prepared to just pick up and move to Maine in May, rent a room or an apartment for 6 months or so and secure work during that time. Afterwards, it will be time to search for a house, which from what I've seen during my research thus far, will be of far superior quality at a fraction of the cost of LA. We can't afford, not are we interested in spending $600 or $700 for a small house with no lot in an OK neighborhood.

Good luck on your decision!

[Three Wolves In Snow]

As someone, "from away", I have to say that it can be hard to wrap your brain around a lower wage, in the beginning. I remember one (one of several), of my first jobs here and taking it just because it was a job, but quite irritated because they wanted to pay me what I made over a decade ago. I had way more experience, could run circles around that job, and the pay was what I made when I started out in the industry?? I have to admit, I got an attitude about it. I kept that to myself, and I did the job just as I would have no matter what they paid, but I was a little angry that they didn't think I was worth anything.

Then I realized, hey, that same pay goes a whole lot farther in Maine than where I was over a decade ago, WITH decade ago prices. I still have not let go of some things that I am not willing to live without, (I've done the struggling, I'm not interested in doing that anymore), and while I certainly do not live high on the hog, even with my "hoity toity, from away" tastes, I still manage to live comfortably.

If you do move here, you will find that you make changes, anyway. It will start out small: instead of buying store bought cat litter, you buy unmedicated chicken feed instead because it's cheaper and HEY! I finally live in an area where there's tons of farms and people who have chickens, and it's not an obscure place I have to find to get that chicken feed. Or, you realize that as much as you hate Wally World, if you combine a trip there with a trip to Sam's Club, you can save boatloads of money...because hey! There's actually one you can get to! (Living in the middle of a metropolis does NOT always mean that you will have such stores nearby. The time you spend sitting in traffic, finding parking, fighting the thousands upon thousands of people, and then, when you do finally get home, spending another fricken half an hour to hour looking for parking so you can just go to your dang home, all takes way more time than driving to the big box stores here...even if you live in a remote area in Maine.)

You save money on gas because you aren't sitting in congested traffic for an hour to go 15 miles. Granted, people here drive s-l-o-w...omg some of them drive so slow, but at least it's moving. You save money on the wear and tear of your car for the exact same reason. You are not doing that stop and go, stop and go, stop and go that totally wears your car out nice and fast...and, the coatings that you can put on the underside of your car to prevent/help with rust in the winter still doesn't cost as much as the wear and tear on your car in the city.

You start to realize that buying local may cost more upfront, but the stuff lasts a whole hell of a lot longer, so you aren't re-buying that same stuff a short while later.

You start to realize that you don't need all of the latest tech gadgets because there's so. much. to. do. in this state if you like the outdoors.

You start to eat healthier because dang near everyone you know either has some type of small farm with produce/fruits/veggies that they either GIVE TO YOU just because, or sell to you, or they know someone who has a small farm that will GIVE TO YOU just because, or sell to you, and it's not laden with pesticides and mass manufactured and man does it taste a whole lot different - and better.

Even if you don't have the space for a small farm, you more than likely will have the space for a teensy, tiny garden. You only need ONE tomato plant, (I've discovered...the hard way), because that dang thing will fill you up with so many stinkin' tomatoes, you won't know what to do with them all...which leads you back to understanding why people GIVE TO YOU just because, their produce and fruits/veggies. And almost any place you live, if you're not in an apartment complex, you're going to have enough room to grow maybe three to seven different types of food plants. And then, you make tons of friends because you give stuff away...and then they give stuff to you, and between all of those people who are giving and sharing just because, you end up drastically reducing your grocery bill.

No. You do not need a ton of money to live a comfy life in Maine. I UNDERSTAND it's hard to grasp that, at first, but not even three years in, I can assure you, you don't even need HALF of that to live a darn good life up here. And I'm not retired, I'm not even close.

[foglover]

'...It will start out small: instead of buying store bought cat litter, you buy unmedicated chicken feed instead because it's cheaper...'

Uh, I googled 'unmedicated chicken feed for cat litter', but doncha know that I got swallowed up in You Tube videos of funny, cute, heartwarming, heart-breaking, tearjerker stories of animals.