Moving to Florida

You'll need to do some research. Naples, too me, is a retirement community. If it were me (& I've actually went on interviews there)I'd move to Amelia Island & work in JAX. But I haven't gotten that to work out quite yet.

Two employment questions first:

Are you already licensed to practice in your disipline in Florida?

How dependent are you on your future job to make this move?

If you need a new job in order to make the move, then I would say get hired first and then let your place of employment determine where you will live. If you are sufficiently well off that you do not need to work, we can better address your priorities of good schools and nice beaches.

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Vic's travels: http://my.flightmemory.com/vogilvie

<<If you need a new job in order to make the move, then I would say get hired first>> Seconding this in a big way. Unemployment in Florida is among the highest in the nation: 11.5% in July. We just hired an accountant in my office; we required a 4 year degree and 5 years of experience. We had people applying with master's degrees and 10-20 years experience who'd been laid off from companies were they had been employed for 10+ years. I don't want to discourage you, but rather encourage you to get a job first if you need to work.

I don't need to have a job in order to move. I could wait for a while to get myself settled then hunt for a job. My main priority right now is to get good schools for the kids in a safe and friendly community. Thanks all for the reply.

Coming from Massachusetts you really need to do a LOT of work in determining where you want your kids to go to school - as those in FL tend not to be the best. I would start your search there - unless you are in position to do private schools - then look at other factors. (We know people who moved here from FL and both kids had to drop back a grade based on - granted demanding - school entrance exams and standards. For instance, even though they were in middle school they still hadn't had any foreign language classes at all - and were way behind in both math and science.)

This isn;t to say that there aren't some good schools in FL - but my understanding is that due to the local systems you can have very good and bad schools in the same area (unlike here where you live in better neighborhoods in order to get the best schools).

<<due to the local systems you can have very good and bad schools in the same area>> In Florida, school district boundaries are congruent with county boundaries, unlike some states in which a particular county might have several school districts. So, it's quite true that a school district in Florida can have both very good schools and very bad schools. You really have to do the research. Here's a starting point: http://schoolgrades.fldoe.org/

I lived in Florida (twice) as a child, we owned a condo in Naples within the last ten years (sold it just in time) and we have lived in Massachusetts for the last 30 years.

Posters above have given you good reasons not to go to Florida, but the real issue is what your reasons are for _going_ to Florida. Why do you want to live and raise your children there?

Naples was and may well still be a lovely small city, and Collier County had good schools and a wonderful public library system, far better than any community of a similar size in Massachusetts. Far better. In the collapsed real estate market, you are quite likely to be able to buy a house within easy walking distance or certainly biking distance of the beach for far less money than you would spend for much less house in eastern Massachusetts. There are lots of details about where you should look and not look, but I'll save them for another post.

Florida has an excellent state university system, as do most southern and midwestern states, and unless your children have special needs or interests, you will not need to look at private colleges. This will be good for your pocketbook, a plus because whatever you do, you will almost certainly earn less money than you would in southern New England.

If you are going to Florida to avoid New England winters, you should know that Florida summers are just as grueling as Massachusetts winters and last longer. You will spend as much on air conditioning, perhaps more, than you do on heat. Taxes and other utilities are likely to be a wash, though they are collected differently so that some of them will seem more expensive and some of them less.

Florida is full of critters and creepy crawlies, from chameleons to cockroaches, with alligators, monitor lizards, and armadillos all a problem in various places. Everyone I ever knew in Florida had a standard exterminator contract where the exterminator came monthly, unless you needed him more often. This freaks out the Whole-Foods-and-organic-markets folks, but it is a reality you will have to live with. There is a great deal of agricultural spraying because fruits and vegetables are a much bigger business than tourists. Mold will grow on your walls and in your armpits if you are not careful. This is not an exaggeration.

If you want to leave the northeast to get away from the stunted and hidebound thinking whose answer to anything is "we never did it that way around here", Florida could be a good place to go. Most of the people on the west coast of Florida are from the midwest, sort of Cleveland to Minneapolis. Restaurants in Naples had walleye on the menu, even when they were within blocks of the Gulf. Easterners tend to go to the east coast of Florida.

The drive from Florida to New England is awful, but there are excellent connections from Ft Myers (RSW) airport to New England, but this means everyone can visit you during the winter, when you will presumably be busy working and your kids in school. If you come from the kind of family where everyone has to do everything together, moving that far away will be good or awful, depending on what you want.

Amelia Island, suggested above, is lovely, but it is cool/cold in the winter and just as hot as anywhere else in the summer. Jacksonville is (relatively) booming but so is Framingham. Think hard, ask lots of questions, mostly of yourself.

I would do a lot of research before moving to Florida. You might want to start here:

http://www.city-data.com/forum/florida/

Don't knw the details in Massachusetts - but here school districts vary tremendously by neighborhood. The suburban county I grew up in has at least 30 differnt districts with huge variations in offerings and education offered. In fact, if you look at real estate ads there are 3 or 4 school districts that are listed in the ads - since it automatically makes the house much more desirable - and also raises the price. Also - school taxes differ tremendously from district to district - although not always matching the education offered.