6 Helpful Tips for Those Looking to Move to Hawaii (Pt.1)

Moving to Hawaii is the dream of many people. You may have come here for vacation, or you may have studied what it would be like to live in Hawaii. Either way, you have fallen in love with the idea.

In April of 2010, my wife and I went on a one-week vacation in Maui. We planned on having a good time, but that trip changed our lives. On the plane ride home we kicked around the idea of moving to Maui. I talked about our move here on the Huffington Post.

The craziness of life set in, and we stopped talking about moving until the death of my father. We started planning our move to Maui at the end of 2013, and didn't make the move until April 8th of 2014.

As of this writing, we have technically been here for six months. I made a solo trip in February of 2014 for three weeks to find a place for the family. We signed a six-month lease that started March 1st. That lease has expired, and we just signed a two-year lease, so it looks like we'll be staying for a while!

Moving here was a different experience from all the information we had studied before the move. If you're thinking of moving to Hawaii I hope these tips can help you. I have also kept these tips very general because each island is different.

1. Living in Hawaii is not the same as vacationing in Hawaii.

When you vacation somewhere you're only there for a small amount of time. You don't get to experience the ins, and outs of everyday life; you experience the "honeymoon" version.

Living in Hawaii means a lot of things that you don't think about on vacation:

• How far away you will be from your family. You may have thought about this, but once you make the move, you start to miss your family and friends like crazy.

If you want to move here you may have researched some of this, but understand once you move here, this will be your life. Is that a life you can handle?

2. Finding a place will take longer than you think

I made a solo trip here for three weeks to find a place; I didn't find a place until a few days before I was scheduled to go back to Wisconsin. I was very close to giving up.

Looking for places here was downright depressing. Every place. I went to look at, I encountered dozens of other families looking at the same place. The rental market in Hawaii is fierce.

When we talked about our budget, we wanted to find a place that was $1,500 a month or less. With what I saw on the rental market, we were willing to go as high as $2,500 a month just to secure a place. In the end we found a place for $1,300 a month, which was a steal.

When you research moving here, you're told Craigslist is the best place to find a place. What they don't tell you is how many of those ads are fake, and how much competition there will be to find a place.

Realize that finding a place may be the hardest part of moving here; give yourself more time than you think you'll need. Be flexible, and willing to settle for something less than you want. Once you get here, and get your foot on the island, you can take time to find what you're really looking for.

3. It's hard to find a job here from the mainland.

I'm in a very fortunate situation because I make a living as a writer, speaker, and coach. I didn't have to find a job here. My wife is a C.N.A. and was looking for work.

She applied at job after job while we were still on the mainland with no luck. She was able to find a job the second day after our move. Even then, for the first few months, she didn't get many hours because they wanted to make sure we were staying.

There is a high turnover rate of people that move here and can't make it. This makes companies really hesitant of hiring people that are, or have just moved here.

It's going to be very hard for you to find a job before you move here if you're not in an in demand profession: doctor, nurse, etc. If you're going to move here, you have to plan for the likely hood that you won't find a job until you get here.

This article is going to be a little longer so I've broken it up into two parts. In the next post I'll give you three more tips that really helped us as we moved from Milwaukee, Wisconsin to Maui, Hawaii.

Moving here was one of the hardest things we did, but it's been one of the best. We thought life would be good here, but it's far exceeded our expectations. We LOVE life here, and wouldn't trade it for anything in the world.

Have you thought about or are you planning a move to Hawaii?