Oops.... my bad. Instead of Prop 9, I should have said Prop 13.

I believe I actually voted for Proposition 13 when I lived in the Bay Area. So blame XBT for your troubles.

StuDudley's comment about the same neighbors for 24 years exposes yet another privation to life in the Bay Area. It's hard to move, or get a better house.

You can't just sell a house and buy another one in some other county. You will be eaten alive by property tax increases.

Stu's neighbors are paying taxes on the assessed value of the house 24 years ago. If they sold the house and bought another, they pay taxes on the sale price. That's right, the house is reassesed to market value when it is sold.

XBT - I meant that very few friends & neighbors (actually, don't know of any) are selling here & moving out-of-state to "cash in" on the millions in equity and "live like kings" elsewhere.

Stu Dudley

The Portland and Seattle areas had sizable population booms from Californians, Bay Area mostly, moving out of state for a better life.

They were more likely to be young people... who just couldn't afford the startup costs of settling in the Bay Area apart from mom and dad.

I'd imagine that because of their youth and their limited wealth they brought down the average credit scores in Porland and Seattle. :~)

I've read the thread of posts by xbt. I have to give you credit for being very passionate about your city. I think that you really believe in what you are writing. Good for you.

But I still don't see any good explanation to why Dallas is dead last in the credit scoring, and so low in the Nest Egg Index, other than than they are fiscally irresponsible there compared to other regions.

If you try to explain it by citing the growth, then areas like Orlando, Phoenix, and Atlanta, which are all growing faster than Dallas (as of '04), should be last in the credit scoring. But no, they are all scoring better than Dallas. And why are Minneapolis, DC, and Denver atop the credit scoring list? They are all growing at a rate that is faster than 50% of other US cities. Using your logic, the slowest growing cities should be atop these personal finance lists...

And if you try to explain it by saying that the immigrants and people moving in are struggling so, then why aren't we seeing the same effect in the Dallas annual incomes? As you keep stating, people in Dallas have good incomes. Do they? Or shouldn't the average be brought down by the same effect that you claim brings the credit score average down? You can't have it both ways. The only explanation for high income and dead-last credit score would be that the people feel the need to live above their means.

This has been fun, but I have bigger fish to fry. Christmas Eve is tomorrow and I'll be prioritizing family above Fodors. Thanks for the entertainment, xbt. Merry Christmas to you and to all Fodorites.

OK Abe, I'll explain your errors and fallacies...

The most important one is the small difference in the credit scores between cities. If the difference between the Dallas and Atlanta score is 17 out of 1000, that is a very small difference. Is Atlanta really 1.7% less irresponsible than Dallas? Or is the difference just natural random error? The difference between slow-growth Boston and Dallas is 50 out of 1000, just a 5% difference. So Dallas is only 5% more irresponsible than Boston.

"If you try to explain it by citing the growth, then areas like Orlando, Phoenix, and Atlanta, which are all growing faster than Dallas (as of '04), should be last in the credit scoring. But no, they are all scoring better than Dallas."

Their credit scores are also near the bottom... and close enough to Dallas' as to be not significant. Plus, it's not growth so much as immigration... their immigrants have different demographics than Dallas immigrants... and Dallas has been the leader in America for legal and illegal immigration for a long time.

"And why are Minneapolis, DC, and Denver atop the credit scoring list? They are all growing at a rate that is faster than 50% of other US cities."

Once again, due to relatively slow immigration compared to Dallas and Houston... different demographics of the immigrant population, etc...

"Using your logic, the slowest growing cities should be atop these personal finance lists..."

And they are. Boston and Philadelphia have very slow growth due to immigration, especially from Latin America... likewise Philadelphia.

"And if you try to explain it by saying that the immigrants and people moving in are struggling so, then why aren't we seeing the same effect in the Dallas annual incomes?"

Dallas city is relatively impoverished. Suburban Collin and Denton counties are wealthy.

"As you keep stating, people in Dallas have good incomes. Do they?"

No. Dallas city is poor, holds the young and impoverished.

"Or shouldn't the average be brought down by the same effect that you claim brings the credit score average down?"

It probably is, but we don't have data to prove or disprove that.

You can't have it both ways. The only explanation for high income and dead-last credit score would be that the people feel the need to live above their means."

In order to prove that, you need to compare wealthy Collin County's income to its credit score... which you don't have. Impoverished young people and impoverished immigrants cannot afford to live in Collin County... they live in older parts of Dallas city. And their sheer numbers bring down the average.

Abe, you may be a good financial planner, but you don't know how to interpret statistics.

To recap all this...

I have said that the credit score differences between cities are small or minute... about 5% between Dallas and Minneapolis. Between sunbelt cities, the difference is much smaller, about 1% to 1.7%.

Abe claims the differences are huge... big enough to characterize most of Dallas' 6 million people as deadbeats. (Chepar, I guess that means you too).

Also, Abe claims the rich are the irresponsible. I claim that the poor, the immigrants, the young, and the recently moved in are more likely to be dragging down the average.

Abe claims that all of metro Dallas-Ft Worth is wealthy. I say that portions are wealthy, portions are poor. But we don't have data seperating the credit scores of rich and poor districts.

Finally, I've seen an interesting pattern in the numbers. New sunbelt cities with a lot of immigrants and new arrivals tend to have lower scores, and cities with very little immigration and new arrivals tend to have higher scores. This means that the small differences in credit scores are tied to differences in migration, not personal behavior.

Finally, I say that Abe has made some common blunders in interpreting numbers, is unaware of statistical ideas such as significance levels, weighing by subgroups, corrections for bias, etc.

Nice work, HonestAbe. You beat xbt at his or her own game.

Now we could use you over on the "to retire or not" thread, comparing Dallas and Pheonix.

mah - don't spend too much time arguing with xbt. He/she will always get the last word, even if it doesn't have a good point.

No Hazelmn, it didn't happen... Abe has failed to account for these facts...

The difference in scores is small...

The lower credit scores are more likely among the poor, not the rich...

The small difference in credit scores is tied to migration, not personal behavior...

And some other things...

xbt - I wouldn’t expect you to understand credit scores. The population is not evenly distributed from 0 to 1000, as you suggest. They range from 330 to 830, making the difference between the 600's and the 700's material. Furthermore, about 40% of people are clustered in a range from 660 to 760. If you look at the actual distribution of the population, only 15% of America has a lower credit score than the average credit score of a Dallas citizen. From a lenders eyes, the difference between 650 and 705 is very, very significant. The 650 person (Dallas) might not even be worth the risk, or if they are, most certainly at a higher interest rate. I’d gladly lend to the 705 person on favorable terms in a heartbeat.

xbt, you have no business determining on behalf of the universe what figures should be deemed significant and what numbers are not.. A statistician or economist would gladly agree that a 5% difference was significant, and in this case, it is actually much more than that. The difference between the per capita growth rate of Dallas and Minneapolis in 2004 was around 5%. Is that insignificant? If it is, it would blow all of your arguments that Dallas is desirable because everyone seems to be flocking there.

Finally xbt, don’t put words in my mouth. YOU claim that the Dallas metro, is wealthy. You’ve said it several times. But I have to grant one thing to you - you make a good point that the Dallas area has some rich responsible people, and a bunch of lower-income people who bring down the average. I would just add that so does Minneapolis, and Boston, and DC, and Seattle, and.... you get my point. My point is that your point is irrelevant.

Children-

There's really no need to reignite the debate over statistics. They can be interpreted and manipulated any which way you want, and none of this p*ssing match is going to help the OP decide between SF or Dallas. I know you all want to win, but it's really quite pointless because nobody's going to win in a contest over stats. It'll just continue on ad nauseum until someone gets banned or posts get deleted. And again, it's not helping the OP at all, which is what this forum is supposed to be about.

Abe, let me correct some errors you've made in describing statistics. Other than your error of blaming a statistic on just one cause, or of assuming that life is simple..

First of all, a Dallas citizen does not have an average credit score. He has whatever credit score is appropriate... an average is a number derived mathematically across millions of people that may or may not be meaningful, and obscures most of the interesting details.

The average score for DFW doesn't tell us whether low scores belong to the rich or the poor.The common assumption is that the poor are less responsible than the rich and have lower scores. You're trying to prove otherwise.

True, the numbers of people are not evenly distributed along the range, but the degree of irresponsibility from one point to the next is evenly distributed, especially between 650 and 700. So, a 10 point gap in a credit score is a relatively minute difference in comparison to the total range.

No, everyone in DFW is not a professional, or is wealthy. A knowledge based high tech area like DFW will attract two clusters of people... high wage earning professionals from the US Northeast and Middle West and India and China... and low wage workers to do the scut work, from Mexico and Central America. Somebody has to clean up after the engineers. High tech areas like Dallas and Houston are closer to Mexico and have more ties to Mexico, with a higher Latin American population from depressed areas in Central Mexico, so over a 15-20 year period will have a population that will depress average credit scores. Denver and Phoenix and Atlanta have slightly higher scores because their immigration is more skewed toward migrants from California and the US Northeast... the rich cashing out of their high priced houses and moving to low cost areas.Of course they also attract te low wage earners, just fewer of them.

There are many things that influence the distribution of credit scores, not just the alleged irresponsibility of the rich. In fact, the distribution of growth more or less looks like the distribution of credit scores. Not exactly, because other factors are modifying the scores as well. But high growth areas, over the last 20-30 years, TEND to have lower credit scores than low growth rates over the last 20-30 years.

Here's a list of metro area growth rates between 1990 and 2000.

Phoenix 45.3%
Atlanta 38.4%
DFw 29.4%
Houston 25.2%
minneapolis 16.9%
San Francisco 11.9%
Chicago 11.2%
Los Angeles 9.7%
Baltimore 7.2%
Boston 6.2%
Detroit 4.8%
Philadelphia 4.6%

Looks a lot like the distribution of credit scores. No, not exactly... because growth is not the same thing as migration, and the makeup of the migrants is a factor.

You win, xbt, you win! Based on your compelling insight and you're supernatural command of statistics, you have convinced me that Dallas is a better place than San Francisco! I can't believe that I was wrong all of these years.

How juvenile of me to base my opinions on visits and actual experience, rather than going to the census information! I could have looked at a bunch of numbers, and saved myself those incredible trips to SF and those boring trips to Dallas. Oh wait, it must be the other way around, because the data tells us that Dallas is the best.... right?

Anyway, I now realize that, regardless of what opinions I've formed by visiting there, Dallas is a great, world-class city!!! I'll have my for sale sign in the yard by morning!

Not very honest of you Abe... I don't know or care whether you like Dallas better than San Francisco... or the other way arounf.

When you try to cloak your bigotry in pseudo-statistical terms... I do care.

Claiming that citizens of Dallas, as a class, are irresponsible users of credit... yes, I resent that. Both as it applies to myself, and to my friends and neighbors.

It is my pleasure to expose your claims for what they are. Nonsense.

In all the bickering over useless details, the poster never got a valuable answer.

Notsure - after spending some considerable time in SFO and DFW, my vote is for you to find a way to stay there and make it work. Yes, housing is more expensive, but life there is richer and you'll regret moving to Dallas, imho.

These are just my opinions, based on my perception of the two cities. Please, xbt, don't try to "refute" my advice, as my perceptions that I have formed aren't subject to your irrelevent manipulation. My vote is for SFO, your vote is clearly for Dallas, so I guess we cancel each other out.

Agreed about the futility of going back and forth over the migration tends re: Dallas.

I think it's safe to say that xbt has a certain affinity for Dallas and Dallas living, while others (myself included), have suggested that the OP might like her present situation better.

Hazelmn, Mah... there is no accounting for taste...

But taste is not the issue...

In order to escape the high cost of housing and other high costs and economic shortages and privations... the original poster must move out of the Bay Area.

Perhaps Dallas is the answer... perhaps Houston, or Atlanta, or Phoenix... or Denver...

In order to enjoy the benefits of a First World economy (while it lasts), the OP should leave... if economics and standard of living is anywhere near a criterion for doing so.

There you have it, Notsure. In reviewing the thread, I'd say you have about 50% saying stay put in SF, 30% saying go to Dallas, and about 20% saying spend some time in the place before making a decision.

Be sure to account for the fact that the thread was dominated by a few Dallas zealots, and 3-4 people like me who don't care for the place. But in the end, our votes should be considered with everyone else's to come to your conclusions. xbt's litany of Dallas propaganda, for example, is just 1 person's opinion in the end.

Are you kidding?

In my opinion, standard of living and quality of life are not the same. We chose the latter when we moved to SF from Houston.