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- [Briggs] Are you thinking about calling a Realtor
and moving to Colorado?
I'm sure most of you have.
Colorado's a very popular state to relocate to,
and it has been for a very long time.
What is going on, everyone?
Let's take a look at the pros and cons
of the Centennial State, Colorado.
Colorado has about six million residents,
making it the 21st most populated state,
and it is the eighth largest state in area.
This is a state that has very different landscapes.
On the east side,
you have the flat brush land of the Midwest,
you have the Rockies sort of in the middle,
and then past the Rockies on the west side,
you have a mix of farm land and desert-ish type landscapes
of the American West the closer you get to Utah.
Colorado has some good things going on,
but it still has some negatives.
Today we're looking at five of the biggest problems
the state has and five of the best things
about living in this beautiful state.
Let's take a look.
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Number one, Colorado has four seasons of fun.
If you're an outdoor type person,
Colorado is the best place.
It doesn't matter what season it is,
Colorado is always in the top 10
for whatever outdoor activity you're looking to do.
Skiing, snowboarding, mountain biking, hiking,
camping, fishing, whatever you wanna do outdoors,
Colorado will have some of the best offerings
in every sport that happens in the great outdoors.
You have amazing small towns that are known for skiing,
like Steamboat Springs, Aspen, Breckinridge, Vail,
and in the spring and summer,
you have plenty of sunny days.
Even though this place is known for the Rockies,
its winter sports, and snow,
summers and spring in Colorado are amazing.
If you're sad or depressed,
buy a snowboard and move to Colorado.
It is really hard not to have a smile on your face
when you're on a snowboard.
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Number two, money matters.
Colorado is a great state when it comes to your money.
They have a booming economy.
Actually, it's considered the second best in the nation
right now, only outdone by Utah.
When it comes to wages, they're actually ranked ninth
in the nation.
And Colorado residents have a lower overall tax burden.
When all the taxes are considered, such as sales tax,
real estate, personal income tax,
even taxes on alcoholic beverages,
it's all lower in Colorado.
So that means less of your income
will be going to the state.
And when you go past taxes and start looking at fees,
like the DMV or whatever else the state or county
might put on you or city,
it's lower than most states.
They're actually ranked seventh in the nation
when it comes to fees.
Colorado is also ranked fourth when it comes
to owning a business in the state.
It's like the fourth most business-friendly state we have.
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Number three, the weather.
This one might be hard to believe,
but Colorado has some of the best weather
in the United States.
I know you're thinking the Rockies
and we just talked about skiing and snowboarding
and all that nonsense.
Well, that is great.
That's obviously gonna happen up in the mountains.
Weather in the mountains,
usually a little bit different from down in the plains.
When you look at states with the most sunny days,
the most sunshine, Colorado is ranked sixth.
They beat Florida.
Florida's known as the Sunshine State.
Colorado's not setting any records
when it comes to rainfall,
and their summers and springs don't get very humid.
Now, I'm sure if you're living deep in the Rockies,
you might be experiencing something a little bit different
than everything I just said.
You're walking around your cabin,
you gotta think you got a rock in your shoe
and turns out it's your little toe.
But if you live on the Front Range,
which is like Denver, Colorado Springs, Boulder,
in that area, they generally experience mild winters,
hot summers, and not too many inches of rain.
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Number four, festivals.
Colorado is sort of known for its festivals.
Just to give you an idea how many they have
every single year, they have nine automotive
or motorcycle events, they have 28 charity events,
312 children events, competitions like races and stuff,
they have 36 of those, craft and hobby shows, 20 of those,
culinary, which includes food, wine and beer,
they have 184 of those, dance and theater events, 261,
cultural and ethnic ones, 172 of those.
They have a lotta festivals.
Some of the more popular ones that the locals really enjoy,
Pikes Peak or Bust Rodeo,
Colorado Springs Labor Day Lift Off,
which is a hot air balloon festival,
Colorado Shakespeare Festival is really good,
the Renaissance Festival in Larkspur,
of course the Colorado State Fair,
Telluride Balloon Festival, Telluride Bluegrass Festival,
Crested Butte Wildflower Festival,
and of course the Denver BBQ Festival,
which I plan on going to this year.
I should say this next year.
But it just seems like food and music festivals are huge
throughout this state.
Every type of music, it's not just country or bluegrass
or whatever, folk music.
They have every type of music festival you'll want here.
And if you like beer, yeah, even more so.
And they always seem to have a good vibe.
I mean, I've been to festivals in California,
I've been to festivals in Arizona,
and there's always some kind of nonsense
that goes along with it, someone being a jerk.
I've never had a bad experience at a Colorado festival,
even the one about the dead dude in a freezer.
That's a nice festival to go to.
It's weird.
I don't know if they have it anymore,
but there's a guy that's frozen
and they have a festival about him every year.
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Number five, the food and drink.
Yeah, the food and drink scene doesn't just end
with festivals in Colorado.
They're known for their microbrews or craft brews,
whatever you wanna call it.
Beer plays a big part of the economy of Colorado.
It's a major industry here.
You'll find large breweries, microbreweries,
anything you want.
From the Coors brewery to Wonderland Brewing Company
and everything in between.
I shoulda mentioned this in the festival one,
but wine is a big part of Colorado too.
They have a lotta wineries
and they have a really killer wine festival.
And when it comes to food,
the barbecue in especially the Denver area
where I've had experience,
and I'm sure it's other places too,
but the barbecue I've had in Denver is always great.
And then, throughout this state,
their Mexican food, outstanding.
So, those are like three of my favorite things,
beer, barbecue, and tacos.
Colorado was made for me.
I just wish it was closer to the beach.
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Number one, the cost of living's a little high.
This happens to any state, any city, any town
that is popular, and Colorado is popular.
Your cost of living will start to climb,
and it has been climbing at a faster pace
than most other states, I'd say.
And if you go to those resort towns we were talking about,
like Vail and Breckinridge and Aspen and all that,
the cost of living is obscene.
One guy said a night of drinking in Vail
costs about as much as the average Joe's house payment.
That's pretty harsh.
Obviously, it's not true,
but kinda gives you an idea of how expensive
those ski towns can be.
But if you're in Colorado, let's say versus Kansas,
expect to pay more on fuel, groceries,
Slim Jims, and Slurpees.
Luckily, you have a little bit of a trade-off,
like I said, they aren't killing you with taxes here
and the average wage is a little bit higher
than most states.
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Number two, they don't want you.
The locals don't want you moving to Colorado.
For quite a few decades,
this state has been overrun with everyone seems
to end up in Colorado at some point.
It kinda slid down the list when you look at like Texas
and what's going on in Idaho and a couple other states.
They've slid down a little bit in recent years,
but they're still in the top 10 by most estimates.
And this has caused the locals
to have a little animosity towards newcomers.
When you have too many newcomers coming in,
that just raises the prices,
especially in housing and cost of living.
Like I've always said,
if nobody wants to live there, it's dirt cheap.
Look at Mississippi.
A night of drinking in Jackson, Mississippi
costs the same as the average Joe's parking ticket.
This is my experience with this situation.
When I was in Colorado with the military,
you kinda get a free pass,
but people will openly tell you that they hate newcomers.
They don't want anyone else moving to the state.
And then if you go back and look at this channel,
look at the comments section of any video I've done
on Colorado and it is filled with people saying,
"We don't want you here.
Don't come, we're full, sorry.
No vacancy."
They have all kinds of funny little things they wanna say,
but you can tell just from my comments section,
compared to any other state,
Colorado residents don't want people moving there.
I promise you, the comments section of this video
will be filled with that too.
Californians, Oregonians, people from Kansas,
people from Utah, they all seem to go to Colorado.
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Number three, the housing market is crazy.
Colorado is one of the most expensive states right now
to buy a home.
And it's in the middle of the country.
Normally, when you see really, really high home prices,
it's gonna be on the coasts,
East or West Coast, especially the West Coast.
Colorado has their own agenda.
They're giving you West Coast prices
in the middle of the fricken' country.
Currently, as of February 2022,
it's actually March, but the latest update is February 2022,
the average home price in Colorado right now is $558,000.
That is close to 200,000 above the national average.
Now, that's according to Zillow,
and I'm not talking about the median home price.
That's the average sales price.
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Number four, drivers and traffic.
Colorado is one of the states that offers
a 75 mile an hour speed limit
on the open stretches of highway.
This will lead people driving on those highways
to do at least 25 miles per hour over the speed limit,
so you're talking (laughing) the average Joe
is doing 100 miles an hour on the open road in Colorado.
Speed kills.
So does answering a text at 100 miles an hour.
And then you have the traffic in the cities,
like Denver, Colorado Springs, Boulder area, whatever.
Traffic is bad.
If you move here from like Los Angeles, Boston,
maybe New York City, San Francisco,
you might not think the traffic is horrible.
But if you're from anywhere else in the country,
the traffic in Denver is horrible.
And it's a little bit different here too
when it comes to traffic patterns.
In Los Angeles, San Francisco, whatever, New York, Boston,
the weekends are usually a little bit easier.
Colorado, it's actually worse
because so many people are trying to get out of town
to get into the mountains.
It's just mind-blowing how much traffic
they get on the weekends.
I watched one guy do a video on how he goes skiing.
He lives in Denver and he goes skiing every year.
And he's learned that on the weekends,
he'll actually go out at like midnight
and drive up to the wherever he's gonna ski
and camp out in his car overnight.
Because in the morning,
like a two-hour trip turns into a seven-hour trip, he said.
I don't know how realistic that is.
Seven hours seems to be a bit much,
but it's pretty bad.
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Number five, wildfire season.
If you live in the West or actually any part of the country,
you're gonna see wildfires,
but when you're out West, it gets pretty bad.
California, Oregon, and Colorado seem to be the worst.
Washington too.
I shouldn't cut them out of the wildfire misery
because they get their fair share.
But Colorado is extremely bad
and a lot of it has to do with how bad the air quality gets
here during fire season.
The Front Range already has to deal
with their fair share of smog because of city pollution.
Add the wildfire smoke to the equation
and you have some days
your lungs will never forgive you for.
Now, wildfire does destroy the woods and all that stuff,
but over the last decade or so,
dozens of Colorado communities have been forced to evacuate
and their homes, in some cases, have burned to the ground.
That happens in every state that has wildfires,
but it happens quite often in Colorado.
The Marshall Fire in December of 2021
burned quite a few homes in the Denver and Boulder area.
But the air quality is where it really, obviously,
if your house catches fire,
that's the worst case scenario,
but when you look at overall,
how bad the air quality gets during this time of the season
makes a lotta people from Colorado just miserable
and they can't stand it.
And it's just gonna get worse in the coming years.
As the planet warms,
forest fires become more intense
and they happen more often.
All right, that's today's video.
And you know, here's my take on Colorado.
Colorado is a great state and their pros
far outweigh their cons.
Just the vibe these people have when, I mean,
except when they find out you're an outsider,
the general cool, nice vibe they have is a lotta fun,
and it's just kind of a,
I don't know if it's a hippie or frontier attitude
a lotta these people have,
but it's very much a do your own thing type vibe
and I love it.
All right, everyone, like I said, that's today's video.
Hope you guys enjoyed it.
Hope you got some information out of it.
Now go out, have a great day, be nice to each other.
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