Living in a Wild, Wonderful State
January 4th, 2008 | 
Author: Sometimes I’m asked what it is like to live in such a rural area. The best response I can think of, which is technically not a response, is it is different.
Growing up, I lived in the “country,” meaning outside of a town or city, no sidewalks, long driveway, woods. We had to drive to and from the bus stop every day (mainly because our Christian school didn’t have a contract with our local public school district). I still remember the first time one of my best friends came to spend the night – from her responses and comments, you would have thought we took her to Siberia!
Realize that in no way were we in a remote area. Philadelphia was 35 miles away, King of Prussia (the largest mall on the east coast) was less than a half hour drive. We had our choices of grocery stores, libraries, restaurants. If one store didn’t have an item, go to the next. Many in the area earn six-figure incomes. Miss the gas station? There’s 3 or 4 more in the next couple of miles.
Now, I really think my friend would go into shock at where I live. This is definitely remote. The closest town (grocery store, library, hospital, doctors etc.) is 25 miles away. The closest gas station is 10 miles away. I’m sure there are more remote places, but I don’t know that I could handle more remoteness! So, what is it like?
In some ways our cost of living is cheaper than the average place in the U.S. Property taxes here are low; electric is fairly cheap. Land is slightly over $1,000/acre. But other items, like gasoline, tend to run higher, supposedly because of the ‘transport’ costs.
Economically, our state is in poverty. A significant percentage of the people receive federal and/or state aid of some sort – Social Security, food stamps, WIC, CHIPS, etc. Most of the aid is deserving although some do take advantage of the system. Either way, given the “economic” condition of our state, one would think that our prices would be equal to or less than those in metropolitan areas. Well, on our holiday trip back to the “country,” I made a few interesting discoveries.
- An 18 lb. bag of generic cat food is a minimum of $1.75 per bag more here. Name brands in PA were cheaper than generic here.
- A 20 lb. container of Tidy Cat cat litter was $6.93 in PA; here the same container was $9.85.
- Dog food is also more expensive here.
- 2-liter bottles of Diet Coke average $1.25 in our area; the average price in PA was less than $1 with some sales as low as 75 cents/bottle.
- Cabbage was 39 cents per head; here it is considerably more.
- Frozen pizza (can’t remember the brand) was $3.99 regular price in PA; our price is $5.99 with occasional sales of $3.99.
- Snyder’s of Hanover Pretzel Pieces were on sale for $1.67/bag; our best sale price has been 2 for $4.
While this isn’t specifically price related, our coupon inserts in the Sunday paper often have less coupons than other areas of the country. Instead of the coupon, we get an advertisement for the product (not sure how that entices me to buy the product – give me the coupon!!!). While I initially thought I was simply missing a coupon that I knew existed, a fellow blogger who lives in a different area of the state confirmed my suspicion that indeed we were being cheated out of coupons.
My conclusion is that someone is making a hefty profit somewhere! Personally, I can understand price differences, but $3 differences? Isn’t that a little excessive?
More later about living in the real “country”…..
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I use to live in CT and they would get the same coupons as my relatives here in WV but the value would be different, in CT you would get a 25 cent off but the wv add would be 75 cents, but in CT they trippled–However when my relatives brought me their coupons, I would use those 75 cent ones, they would double or triple–man those were the days!!!
The thing is living in the Pre-internet days I imagined we had lower prices in WV, but now I see that is not the case –we have same or higher–no coupons and we get taxed!
I plan to write up a letter to my local newspaper
by the way I live in the Parkersburg area–last night just for fun my husband and I drove over to Marietta, just to see if they had more, they actually had less in their paper.
Many people think that I am just “missing” coupons. They say get another paper, you will find them, but that is not the case. I had 7 different papers from various relatives who gave me their coupons.
They are the same–shallow crappy coupons. Later I may blog about this and show pics of my crappy ads—cause that is what they are–they are not coupons, they are books of ads.
ugghhhh
That surprises me, Kara. I would of thought things would cost less in WV than in PA, although I guess a tax break really helps. I’m curious as to whether or not health insurance is cheaper there…
Dianne
My husband works for the Federal Govt so I am really not able say what health insurance costs may be in WV but automobile insurance is one of the highest in the country–When I moved to CT from WV–my insurance was the same company but dropped more than half for exact same coverage–4 years later I moved to MD it dropped again quite a bit–all with same company same coverage–Then I moved back to WV and it tripled. When I went to set it up with the same company I had always been with they humbly said to me “you know it is going to go way up here”–I said yes I knew it would–
We have since switched companies a few times, but WV is known for having very high rates–we are the “I am going to sue you” state!
Really we all pay for that–
I was just watching the 11:00 news and they said our avg gas price right now in Parkersburg is 3.25 .10 cents higher than the national avg.
Donna, I know what you mean about the car insurance! When my husband and I were married, I about had a heart attack at what it did to our car insurance prices. They blamed the high price on my husband’s 4-wheeler accident a couple of years before. We checked around at a bunch of companies and went with the “cheapest” … $180/month for a 95 truck and 99 car. Our agent was really nice and after 2 years he told us that some companies would ignore the 4-wheeler accident because it had been so many years since it happened, but his company said it would be on the record for another year. We looked around and were able to purchase car insurance and life insurance for $87/month! Talk about savings!!!!
The other thing that cracks me up about our rates is they blame it on accidents involving deer. We do have excessive amounts of deer around here but the WVDNR insists that the population is decreasing and keeps lowering the season bag limits each year. If the deer population is decreasing, shouldn’t my car insurance rate decrease too?
We paid $3.19 for gas in Spencer today. We saw as low as $3.17. We have to go to Charleston later this week and to Huntington next week so I’m curious to see the prices there. A couple of weeks ago, our prices were $3.12 and in Charleston it was $2.99! Argh!!!
Dianne, I really don’t know much about health insurance costs. Because I’m self-employed, we looked into the prices awhile back but on one income, they weren’t affordable. The best price we found was something like $367 / month for the two of us. That insurance was the kind where the first $1000 of doctor visits, labs, tests etc is covered and after that you pay. Plus they gave some type of disability income for so many days. I liked their concept because paying for insurance out of pocket and then paying a co-pay or deductible at the same time just doesn’t make sense to me. Long story short, my doctor offers sliding fees based on income and all labwork is discounted 90%. At this point, that’s our best option. If something major were to happen to either of us, it would be an issue, but for now, I like paying $10 to see the doc and $5 for my lab tests (the same labs I was paying $17.80 for when I had insurance at the newspaper)!