Moving to Key West Florida and the Cost of Living

I am so sad for the disappointment many people who live in key west have for their homes. It doesn’t sound like a place I would like to visit or live in. What a shame.

I lived in Islamorada from 1982 – 1996. It was a great experience when I was younger. Lots of Key West memories. The tourist are what made me leave. I don’t dislike tourists I know that it is the industry however, I could not even get to the grocery store on the weekends. Still have lots of family in the upper keys and visit often. Still one of my favorite places ever. Two of my three children are Conchs.

I spent every weekend in Islamorada almost. It was the keys then. Now you are Lowes burger king, McDonalds. Shops stores. I loved it back when it was boats,fishing,camping, deers. Wilderness yet safe for me and my two girls.
Wouldn’t move there now, hell, cant afford to go 5here and stay anymore. I had my time and fun. Holiday Isle whoo hoo.

I moved to Key West from Canada in 1989. Shrimp boats swarmed the rocks at the historic byte. No cruise ships came to Port back then. I was a bartender in a local joint flooded with the local working stiffs. Friendly people who came together for one another in a time of crisis. Tight night community. My cute little duplex on Staples Ave. was an affordable $350 a month. The Bubba system was alive and worked well, everybody knew everybody. Life was GOOD. I raised my daughter, born in 1993, she grew up in the best of times. Schools were excellent. The year of 2004 changed everything in Key West. GREED graced the island I loved so much. Bigmoney came to town. Conchs were offered huge sums of money for their tiny homes in Old Town. A lot of the Conchs decided to take the money and run North, never having to worry about work or taxes ever again. Things changed. Once a single family home, now a vacation rental. The cost of living is unbelievable. The tight knit community has faded. Gone are the days when locals were treated with preferential benefits. Most of friends from back in the day were forced to leave, some drank their livers away. Great times back then. I can’t even go back for visit. I want to remember the Old Key West.

Just got engaged in KW in late Sept. , getting married in KW on the 1 year anniversary of our first date. Her and I completely fell in love with the Island and the people (drunks included), and have begun to seriously start considering moving down. We have no children, and aren’t going to be making any, ever. Both of us are young professionals, who have held almost every job in the service industry, bar tending, bouncing, customer service, and business mgmt. I currently work in cleanroom making micro chips 12 hours a day, and have come to realize it’s not conducive to keeping your sanity. We currently live in upstate NY and the cost of living is the about same, if not higher as whats being described here. We’re not waiting till we’re to old to truly enjoy everything that island life has to offer. Hunter S . Thompson makes my case better than I can.

Security
by Hunter S. Thompson (1955).

Security … what does this word mean in relation to life as we know it today? For the most part, it means safety and freedom from worry. It is said to be the end that all men strive for; but is security a utopian goal or is it another word for rut?

Let us visualize the secure man; and by this term, I mean a man who has settled for financial and personal security for his goal in life. In general, he is a man who has pushed ambition and initiative aside and settled down, so to speak, in a boring, but safe and comfortable rut for the rest of his life. His future is but an extension of his present, and he accepts it as such with a complacent shrug of his shoulders. His ideas and ideals are those of society in general and he is accepted as a respectable, but average and prosaic man. But is he a man? has he any self-respect or pride in himself? How could he, when he has risked nothing and gained nothing? What does he think when he sees his youthful dreams of adventure, accomplishment, travel and romance buried under the cloak of conformity? How does he feel when he realizes that he has barely tasted the meal of life; when he sees the prison he has made for himself in pursuit of the almighty dollar? If he thinks this is all well and good, fine, but think of the tragedy of a man who has sacrificed his freedom on the altar of security, and wishes he could turn back the hands of time. A man is to be pitied who lacked the courage to accept the challenge of freedom and depart from the cushion of security and see life as it is instead of living it second-hand. Life has by-passed this man and he has watched from a secure place, afraid to seek anything better What has he done except to sit and wait for the tomorrow which never comes?

Turn back the pages of history and see the men who have shaped the destiny of the world. Security was never theirs, but they lived rather than existed. Where would the world be if all men had sought security and not taken risks or gambled with their lives on the chance that, if they won, life would be different and richer? It is from the bystanders (who are in the vast majority) that we receive the propaganda that life is not worth living, that life is drudgery, that the ambitions of youth must he laid aside for a life which is but a painful wait for death. These are the ones who squeeze what excitement they can from life out of the imaginations and experiences of others through books and movies. These are the insignificant and forgotten men who preach conformity because it is all they know. These are the men who dream at night of what could have been, but who wake at dawn to take their places at the now-familiar rut and to merely exist through another day. For them, the romance of life is long dead and they are forced to go through the years on a treadmill, cursing their existence, yet afraid to die because of the unknown which faces them after death. They lacked the only true courage: the kind which enables men to face the unknown regardless of the consequences.

As an afterthought, it seems hardly proper to write of life without once mentioning happiness; so we shall let the reader answer this question for himself: who is the happier man, he who has braved the storm of life and lived or he who has stayed securely on shore and merely existed?