Recently found this article that sums up my feelings exactly.

As much as I can talk about how CA is so bad, I understand that when you have roots there, it’s hard to move.

We had family, which also meant we had jobs, and friends, and owned a house in CA. Solid roots there.

But when all of that changed, for various reasons, we had a chance to look around and consider our options.

Moving to Prescott seemed like a very easy choice.

After we left, there was a street robbery around the corner from a friend’s house, where someone pulled out a gun and demanded money from a couple walking down the sidewalk. That was a neighborhood where all of the houses were valued over a million dollars.

That was literally the exact same sidewalk that I had ridden my bike down when I was 12.

I’m not 12 any more. The world I grew up in has changed.

If I could go back to California in the 1970s, I’d do it in a heartbeat, but it’s not the 1970s any more.

Click through to read the whole article.

Why in the world does anyone still want to live in California?

Great weather and good paying jobs are the two biggest positives that residents often point out, but the high cost of living and the absolutely ridiculous housing prices often eat up all of the extra money that Californians think that they are making.

In fact, it was recently reported that it now takes approximately $350,000 a year to live a middle class lifestyle in the city of San Francisco. If you have a ton of money, it can partially insulate you from the problems that are increasingly ravaging the state, but unless you never go out in public nothing is going to insulate you completely. Cities all over the state are degenerating into drug-infested, crime-ridden hellholes that are literally being overrun by millions of rats. California has some of the worst traffic in the entire world, unchecked illegal immigration is causing a whole host of social problems, and gang activity has become a massive problem. On top of everything else, California is being constantly hit by wildfires, mudslides, earthquakes and other natural disasters. In fact, scientists tell us that it is just a matter of time before “the Big One” hits, and that is probably one of the best reasons to leave California while you still can and never look back.

Read the entire article at: https://www.zerohedge.com/personal-finance/