Let's start with the basics. I don't want to get too specific about personal finances, but I want you to understand a few things about real estate here. In Illinois, we had 14,000 sq feet of land with our home sitting on it. It was a 3700 square foot home with an additional 1900 square feet of unfinished basement. Our yearly taxes were $11,500/year. That's almost $1000 a month just in taxes! In Hawaii, we paid $100,000 more for our home. It's only 1150 square feet with no basement. It's on about 9500 square feet of land if I remember correctly. Our taxes are $1200 a year. Our mortgage payment is the same as it was for our old home. That's a lot more money for a lot less house, so that definitely makes it more expensive.
However, because our home is so much smaller, we save on things that we didn't really realize: we need less furniture, less home decor, and less cleaning supplies! Additionally, here, your yard becomes an extension of your home because it's always so beautiful outside.
Solar energy is a true force to be reckoned with here. We have solar electricity. The panels are available for either purchase or lease. The homeowner before us chose to lease so we opted to take over their contract. That means that while our combined energy bills used to be about $350-400 a month in Chicago, it is now $165. If we did not have solar energy, our bills could be upwards of $500 a month for this small house because we like to run the air conditioning.
Other utilities like water are similar in cost. Some people on this island have catchment tanks and then their water is free after setup of the system, but we live in a community that has public water and sewage, so we pay for it. Our garbage is less expensive per month than in Illinois. And for the record, we pay the same amount for internet, cable, and phone as we did for just DirecTV in Illinois. So that saves us $80 a month!
One of the expenses that went down when we moved here was our car insurance. Significantly. It's the same company and we pay about $700 less a year than we were. Part of this is because Hawaii does not charge extra to have someone under 23 on the policy. However, even without that counted in, we would save about $150 a year.
Which brings us to gasoline. Gasoline is so expensive here. The lowest I've seen it at the gas stations is $2.999 and as high as $3.599. However, we've paid between $2.199 and $2.499 the entire time we've lived here. Why? Because Costco is AWESOME. In addition to this, both Mike and I drive so much less. I live 5 miles away from work. Even when I worked at a facility in Illinois, my closest commute was 11 miles each way, and that was for a very short period of time. I gas my car up every 3 to 3.5 weeks, and Mike about 2.5-3 weeks. We drive his whenever we go out because a Jeep is a lot more fun than a Nissan Rogue (not that I don't love my car!) Stores here are similar in distance as compared to Illinois for us, or maybe slightly farther away.
I mentioned Costco above. Costco here tries to buy local things when they can. This can include meat (beef mostly) and produce. The prices here vary from 10% less than what we paid in Illinois to 20% more. Filet mignon and ground beef are the same price per pound as it was when I left Illinois. I must also make a point to mention that the taste of the meat from Costco is so much better than in Illinois.
A few foods that we frequently ate in Illinois can be cost prohibitive here. One is corn. The lowest I saw it was $.59 an ear, but it was frequently more than that. Another is watermelon. $8 to $10 per watermelon is what you can expect to pay. They're no larger and no sweeter.
Milk. Everyone talks about milk and bread. And everyone is correct. These two things are much, much more expensive, but if you watch sales you can still get a decent price. We've gotten free milk before from a coupon. However, most times it's about $5 a gallon. Plain white bread is the same cost as the whole grain extra special bread-- about $6 a loaf. With their being only two of us, I thought this would become a waste, but we still go through a gallon of milk before the expiration date and we freeze the bread so it lasts us weeks. Why we never did that in Illinois, I don't know. So, overall, we spend a lot less on bread than we did before, but that's just because we are smarter and less wasteful.
Back to produce for a moment. It is expensive here and I really had a hard time comprehending this when I know much of it is local. But we've learned, we don't need to buy fruit very often-- it falls off of people's trees faster than they can eat it, so they bring it to work to hand out, hand it out in bags when you get together for a social visit, or knock on your door to give it to you for free. I do buy bananas every now and again; they're $.37 a piece (not a pound!) at Walmart. However, this past Friday, someone brought in a large stalk with at least 30 apple-bananas (Latundan), which most people here love. It's fairly frequent at my job that there are bowls of fruit available to take. In addition, on my work's property there are fruits you can pick and eat as much as you'd like (or make juice from). There are guava, limes, and star fruit just to name a few. So, although it is expensive to buy produce in the store, you end up spending less overall because so much of it is free. This is how I reconcile paying extra for the corn or watermelon every once in a while!
We save a ton in money for recreation here. State-run beaches are free for us as residents. Other beaches are free for everyone. You can go to the community pool for free (which we do for exercise only). There are so many places to hike or explore. Walking through art galleries here is a fun treat as well, and that's free. It's incredible to see the art from the talented people of this island. The movies even cost about $1 less for two people. We've gone to only one movie, but that's about our norm anyway. In Illinois, you could do things for free, like walk around in downtown Chicago, but you definitely paid for parking. You could see a play, but we have our own theatre here, too! It may not be Broadway level, but that doesn't make it any less entertaining! (That does cost money though, although less than Chicago even for a similar style.) And every night, without fail, you have a free show as the sun says its good night, along with a 15 to 30 minute encore of a beautiful coral/purple sky after the sun has disappeared behind the horizon.
One of the things we've always done is eat out at restaurants. I honestly don't find that we pay much more for our dinners out than we did in Illinois. Part of that is the tax here; it's confusing and I don't really understand it, but it's less than half of Illinois tax.
The final part of our budget that really sticks out to me is the difference in healthcare. We had BCBS/IL and here BCBS is called HMSA. My understanding is that my company has, by far, the best insurance on the island. But, any prescriptions are less than half of what we paid in Illinois, and doctor's visits are 50% to 60% lower in price here. So, my copay in Chicago was $20 to visit the doctor and here it is $12. A specialist was $40 and here it's $20. I pay no more of a premium than we did in Illinois. That being said, the availability of some extended healthcare on this island is so much lower than Illinois; if you just have a cold or sinus infection, then you're fine. But if you get cancer or other life-threatening diseases, you will find yourself flying to Oahu for your healthcare needs. (The insurance pay for some to all of your and your companion's airplane ticket.)
So, as you can see, there are some unexpected financial breaks here. It's definitely still more expensive-- because you can't make up the difference in real estate. If we bought our Illinois home here, we'd pay at least 4 times what we paid for it in Illinois; our mortgage would definitely not be the same! But that's the beauty of this island for us; we are happier with so much less. I used to fill our home with stuff and we sold over 90% of it to move here. I don't miss a single thing that we sold. Not one.
I realize this blog is different than my others, but I have heard so frequently that it's "so expensive," to live here, that I felt I should address it. For us, moving to Hawaii has allowed us to re-prioritize our life, and we are so much better off for it, both financially and personally.
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