Summers and Winters Scattered like Splinters...

[RetailWorkhorse]

...and four or five years slipped away. Jimmy Buffett, Son of a Son of a Sailor.

I move every 5-7 months. Give or take a holiday weekend. Being able to move like this means I live in the RV. This y'all know.

This y'all don't know:
Mom and Dad have picked a new place to Winterize themselves (Corpus Christi was such a huge disappointment for them) so they picked a place in New Mexico to Winter and a place further north (still in-state) to Summer themselves. I'm going to travel with them for another year or so. But they posed a question to me and I haven't found an answer as of yet.

Where am I going to be?

I want to move back East but TN, NC, GA, and likely AL, are out of the question seeing as the economy is still in the shitter (I THINK. I haven't had any of my News Networks for about two months and it's driving me BATTY).

So.....anyone got any idea how Louisiana is holding up? Specifically the Shreveport area. I'd like to live on the Coast again but Coastal living is dreadfully hard on the wallet. I can be transferred to just about anywhere so long as the store I'm transferring to has an opening.

I only ask y'all because the only people I can talk to here is Mom and Dad. EQ's out right now and I can't seem to catch her very often when I want to talk about Moving again.

One more thing: I'm NOT moving north of the Mason-Dixan line. NO. SNOW. EVER.

Thoughts?

[AdminAssistant]

Personally, I would avoid the Gulf Coast right now; the oil spill is wrecking havoc with everybody. From what I hear, the economy in AR is managing okay, it just depends on where you are. The Ozarks are really pretty - but muggy in the summer, occasionally snowy/icy in the winter.

[RetailWorkhorse]

I'd gotten word from FL (a fellow hotdog vendor) that tourism is slacking off thanks to the oil spill (and boy is it pissing her off!).

Haven't heard from my contacts in AL (Huntsville/Decatur areas) and I don't have any contacts in LA, which is the only reason I asked here.

Turns out the ONE RV Park I'd consider staying in there in Shreveport is phasing out their "long-term" sites so I wouldn't have anywhere to live in Shreveport anyhow.

I'd rather avoid Mississippi and Arkansas for the time being (don't ask, my brain won't even let me consider living there. Stupid brain).

I wanna go home to TN but TN doesn't want me anymore. Chattanooga doesn't have what it had when I was 11.... *sigh*

[r2cagle]

Shreveport was holding up pretty well, economy wise until the oil spill. Obviously, some of the oil companies that headquarter in Shreveport, the GM plant and my company plus a few others have been cutting back and streamlining.

BUT, I still see job listings available, and in another year or two there will be a power plant opening at Hope, Arkansas which will have an economic boost as well as job opportunities to that area. The casinos are crying because instead of earning a profit of 15 million for the month, they've only netted 12 million. That's sounds like a sob story, but the taxes the casinos pay go toward teacher/firefighter/police income and bonuses. So there will start being decreases there.

In a nutshell, Shreveport and the surrounding parishes have just now started to feel the economic crunch. I don't think it's going to be as hard and heavy as it was nationally, but a lot of other businesses are starting to see an increase in business. It just depends. Retail is up, but some industry is down. My husband is an aviation technician and they've been busting a$$ to keep up with their contracts. But eventually, that might taper off some.

There is still lots of Hollywood filming going on around here, so that will be a good part of what keeps Shreveport from falling too far... but it's going to start getting tough, especially if people on the coast move up here.

That all said, I'm not an economic expert. Compared nationally, costs are definitely lower here.

[Solumina]

I don't know much about elsewhere but coastal Va around the NC border and up through Hampton has recovered quite well and it was never too bad thanks to all of the military stuff in the area (loads of bases but also a lot of building of stuff for the military) that kind of kept things from getting too bad and that kind of gave us a fair head start in recovering. We do get snow from time to time but hardly ever more than a dusting.