Knowing less than nothing about real estate in TX, why would living 5 hours from the closest major city be more expensive than living a half hour away? In the northeast/mid-atlantic regions, it’s generally the opposite, so I’m curious why Midland costs more than something much closer to a downtown area where presumably there is much more at your disposal.
^Oil boom.
There’s not enough of anything out here. Name something, and there’s not enough of them. Houses. Barbers. Daycare providers. Doctors. Lawyers. Accountants. Diesel mechanics. Plumbers. Electricians. Restaurants. Restaurant workers. Hotels. Gas stations. Car washes. Retail stores. You name it–there’s a shortage of it out in the oil patch.
And even if we do get a new restaurant, there’s not enough people to run it. Marble Slab was supposed to put in a store here, but backed out because real estate prices and wages were too high. Chilis normally only has half the restaurant staffed, because there’s not enough cooks/waiters to run the whole thing. The new Saltgrass normally has a 1.5 to 2 hour wait.
Still, it’s better here than it is in North Dakota. If you go to Wal-Mart in Williston, ND, you’ll likely see a pallet of stuff out on the aisle. If you want something, you’re welcome to dig though the pallet and get whatever you want. But there’s not enough people to stock the shelves. Everybody’s gone to work for the oil companies for $16/hour, instead of working at Wal-Mart for $9/hr.
When I went to Alva, OK, there were people who would drive 600 miles from St. Louis to go to work. They would work six days, take an OSHA-mandated one-day break, then work another six days. Then they would drive 600 miles back to St. Louis and stay at their house for four days, then come back and do it all over again. And when they were in OK, they slept in their car, because there weren’t any houses or apartments or hotels. In fact, the closest hotel we could find was in Enid, about 75 miles away. We drove 75 miles each way to do a three-day audit there.
That sounds miserable. I respect what they’re doing, but why wouldn’t they just move the family to the job?
Where you going to move to? There aren’t any houses. And if you do buy an overpriced house, you’ll sell it at a big loss when the boom turns to bust. Plus you have to uproot your kids, take them out of school, sell your house, and move to Alva, OK (which is worse than living in Midland, TX).
Better than just the breadwinner suffer than the whole family.
Here’s another story. I was on a plane when I struck up a conversation with another dude. He lived in Lake Charles, LA, about 650 miles away. He worked as a drilling rig supervisor. That is, he was 100% responsible for everything that happened on the drilling rig, day or night. He worked 24/7 when he was on duty. (Yeah, he could try and catch some sleep in the on-site trailer, but if somebody woke him up because there was a problem, he had to get up.)
His normal salary was $2,000 per week, and his normal schedule was 2 weeks on, 2 weeks off. The company paid for him to fly to/from Lake Charles to Midland. But if they called him back early, he made $650 per day. So he normally worked 3 weeks for $8,500, and went home for one week. That’s a $330,000 per year salary. Not bad for a guy who probalby never went to college.
How do you know he wasn’t an engineer from MIT or a phd in some science?
Wasn’t that the job of Bruce Willis’ character in the movie “Armageddon”?
Because engineers from MIT don’t work as toolpushers on drilling rigs. You’ll just have to trust me on this one.
Extremely similar. The concept is the same, but one is a godawful job in a desolated place that only desperate or crazy people work at. The other is drilling nukes into an asteroid.
That’s why i don’t think it’s nice to live in Manhattan because you never have enough spare money to do anything you like to do in the city. Yes there are free things you can enjoy (the park, and… well i think that’s it!) but on a long run, you can’t help but feel left out if all you can do is eat cheap take away because you can’t afford to live in a place with a kitchen and your life depends on the subway system…
(Tokyo is just as expensive)
I think you are drastically misunderstanding the social class you are intereacting with. Plebs we are not, this is a crowd that fancys themselves on the amount of ski they can purchase.
I think most people fix their budget first, and then decide where to live. So for instance, let’s say your monthly budget is $2000 for rent, and this includes leftover money for other expenditures. Then, you either live in a small Manhattan apartment or a larger place somewhere else. It’s not like you say “I want a 1000 square foot place no matter what”, and then choose either a $3000 place in Manhattan or $1000 place elsewhere.
Just to follow on Greenies tale, when my boss was in midland for some meetings, met a guy on the plane who said he commuted by plane to manage a Burger King. It’s a crazy world out there, almost as far from Top 2 or hacksaw BSD financing there is.
There are tons of free/low cost of events (ranging from yoga class in the park to concerts/shows/off off broadway theater) happening year round and particular in the summer. Just need to do research.
Word. To those who grew up in Staten Island and think they’re in rural New York State, I don’t think we’ll ever understand each other. For most of the blue-collar, working class around here (of which I was one, while growing up), going to NYU is about as foreign as going to the University of the Moon. That’s how far away and how different NYU would be from UT-Permian Basin.
This reminds me of the first time I flew cross-country as a young lad. I was absolutely amazed at how much “nothing” I was flying over.
Did you assume that the entire globe was one huge city? Kinda like Coruscant?
I grew up the exact opposite. I don’t think I’d ever higher than three stories up in a building until I was in my 20’s.
I got a scholarship to a school in Abilene, Texas (population 100,000). I declined to go there. Instead, I went to a town that had about 20,000 people in it. I mean, Abilene was a big city. You could get lost in a place like that!!!
^ I didn’t grow up in a city, but there’s not tons of open space between NYC and Philly. I’d driven to Florida several times and Indiana several times, but being on the highway doesn’t give quite the same perspective.
I think “nothing” also refers to the lack of natural things. As you fly across the US, there are vast areas with no trees, mountains, lakes, or other defining features. It’s just grasslands for hundreds of miles.
I remember in grade school, the dumbfk liberal teachers were proclaiming that the Earth will soon be unable to be shared with our exponentially growing population. They need to take a flight across God’s country…
I know there must be some free events and galleries to go to in NY, i think it’s still very expensive there though, more so than Tokyo in many ways, though a lot of people still think Japan is too expensive.
Why don’t those businesses increase their wages to compete?
In northern Alberta McDonald’s employees start at $14/hr for the same reason.