Possibility of us living & working in America................., Florida sounds nice, specailly Miami............ Options

[richgt4]

Morning all

I'd like to ask you a few serious questions if I may

My girlfriend is thinking very seroiusly about working in America, specifically Miami, Florida. Now I don't know what's made her choose the Miami area in particular (maybe it's because I wanted to go on holiday there next year) but she seems dead keen on it & she's been looking at pictures on the net of Miami & it really does look very, very nice Sun, beaches, more sun, some more beaches

(I suppose we really shoould come over for a holiday first to see what it's like )

So I'm wondering if anyone on here in the Florida/Miami area can tell me which are nice areas & which are no go areas. I know Florida as a state is pretty huge. I'm assuming that Miami itself is a pretty expensive place to live, so maybe looking at the surrounding areas of Miami would be advantageous to us? Thats where your local knowledge comes in

What is the average pay in like & whats a good $ per hour to be earning? For instance, I'm currently earning just under 28K per year working for the government over here in the UK which is an ok ish wage I suppose.

What's that the equivilant of in the US & is that wage good?

There are soo many questions I have buzzing around in my head that I simply can't write them all down here in this thread. So any feedback from you guys would be totally fan fooking tastic

You only live once & if we don't do this we'll be kicking ourselves very hard in the future. If you don't give it a go, you'll never know eh?

Thanks in advance for taking the time out to read & respond to my post

Thanks,

Rich

[creamed_corn]

Well first off I'd say don't change your life around for a woman who isn't even your wife. What if it doesn't worh out?

Flordia is kind of a miserable place to live. It gets so god-awful hot and it's intolerable to live there without Air Conditioning. That's why the population of Florida didn't really start to boom until the 70's... when A/C became ready and afforable.

But if you like the heat then go for it. If you like sunny beach cities snoop around the lower east coast, maybe even Texas. Stay away from Mississippi and Alabama, and remember in Florida you're right in the middle of hurricane terriroty, so be prepared to buy really expensive flood and disaster insurance on anything significant you own.

I'll even push Chicago a little.... anything downtown or north of downtown is really nice, and since it's on Lake Michigan, you can be fooled into thinking it's a coastal city It's also the only city that has a respectable and efficient public transportation system, so you wouldn't have to put uneccessary wear and tear on your celica to get to and from work... and then you can insure it for pleasure driving and save even more money!