 Moving to Hawaii? Prepare to sacrifice
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 Dear
Real Estate Adviser,
I'm a pharmacist, making around $110,000 a year.
I'm interested in moving to Hawaii. I would like to
know about the cost of living and if my salary could support a comfortable
lifestyle. Please let me know if you have any advice or a Web site
I should visit.
Thanks so much.
-- Katherine
 Dear
Katherine,
Ah, Hawaii, the land of rainbows, perpetual sunshine, big waves
and even higher real estate prices.
But before you start singing "Blue Hawaii,"
realize you might have to endure some major lifestyle concessions
if you plan a Hawaiian move. A third-quarter, 2005, cost-of-living
survey by the American Chamber of Commerce Researchers Association
places Hawaii as the most expensive state to live in, in the U.S.
But you may already have suspected that.
The median sales price of a single-family home exceeds
$600,000 in Honolulu, topped only by San-Francisco-Oakland and Anaheim-Santa
Ana. (You'd pay a little less in smaller Hawaiian cities.)
Certainly, you could subsist on a $110,000 salary
in Hawaii, but here's another hitch. Because so many people like
you are hankering for a taste of paradise, salaries in most professions
are not commensurably higher with the cost of living in Hawaii.
The median salary for a pharmacist in Honolulu, while still larger
than the national average, is just $105,000, according to
Salary.com.
Luckily for you, pharmacy jobs are in relatively high
demand, thanks to the escalating prescription needs of the aging
baby boomer generation, so your chances of finding a good job there
are much better-than-average than other professions -- like journalism,
for example.
More sobering data: If you're living quite comfortably
on your current $110,000 salary somewhere in the middle of America
-- let's say in the quintessential "average" city of Peoria,
Ill. -- you'd need to make about $217,000 a year to lead a similar
lifestyle in Honolulu; $186,000 in Kailua Kona, Hawaii; $172,000
in Pearl City, Hawaii, and $144,000 in Hilo, Hawaii, according to
the salary
calculator at Realtor.com.
But, hey, it is Hawaii, after all, and if you must follow your
dream, you're in a better financial and professional position to
do so than a lot of other dreamers.
For more information, check out Bankrate's own Cost
of living comparison calculator, and the newcomer's
guide at the Honolulu Advertiser, Hawaii's largest daily newspaper.
Aloha, and good luck.
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