newly qualified nurse moving to florida

[florida4sun]

It all depends on what standard of living you want. No point moving to another counrty if you are not looking to better your quality of life.
The 100k allowed for a mortgage so you would be down to around $70 - $80. I do stand by that, thats if you want to live a good area (high property tax) your kids to go through college and have good health insurance and couple of nice cars.
To put a child through college cost a fortune.

<blockquote id="quote" class="ffs">quote:Originally posted by vickers
Thanks again i appreciate all and any advice and information that can be passed on.
I too was a little taken aback by the sum of $100k needed for an average life in Florida. Unless things have changed dramatically from when we owned a home 3 years ago the combined bills and cost of living at that time were never going to add up to that much. Even allowing for us living there permanantly rather than renting every so often to strangers i found this sum alarming, it's certainly more than we expected or currently live on in the UK.It's good to know that not everyone agrees with this figure.
With regard to specialist nursing which has been suggested i currently work on a general ward that deals with patients that have had a heart attack or stroke so not rearly along the lines you were meaning. Unfortunately once your trained as a nurse the number or jobs or "ideal jobs" are very few and far between, you basically within reason take the best thats available with the hope a more suitable job will come available later!. The area i'm most interested in is Midwifery and an 18 month training course is available from next March 2010, obviously though this would delay further any potential move to the U.S. But on the plus side it would give me further qualificaions and a specialist subject to go over with. I notice too from job websites in Florida that new position's of certified nurse midwife's are now available so this would tie in nicely. I don't know if these positions would be more sought after which is another potential down side, although this job would give me combined with the benefit package given the plus $100k salary that has been mentioned, which incidentally far exceeds the salary paid in the UK by quite a distance!
A lot to consider still i think.
[/quote]

[roger]

I have to agree, personally I wouldn't want to live on less than $100k. That's not to say it can't be done, as many (probably most) people here earn less than that, but part of being here is to be able to enjoy a reasonable life style too.

If you want to eat out a couple of times a week, run a couple of reasonable cars, have health insurnace, visit the parks on occasion, travel around the USA, visit the UK etc then you will need quite a lot of spare money.

[sarahnmitch]

If you want to check out schools and how they rate (both from results and parental views) have a look at great schools dot org (no spaces). They give information on all the public schools in the US and will give you a better idea on where you want to live. Be aware though that the better school districts will undoubtable also have higher house prices.

Also, it has been my experience that when leaving school at 18, American children only have the equivalent of a GSCE (not A level). Had I have worked harder and got better grades on my A levels, they would have been transferrable to college (university) credit.

[7165red]

Vickers, you might want to check out www.city-data.com, you'll find lots of info about FL there. The discussion forums are really good and you will meet many locals.