"Hi I wanted to ask you a few questions and would appreciate any feedback you have. I am a 25 year old single mom and my dream is to live in Hawaii (Hilo in particular). I want to move by the end of the year, and I am currently saving up enough to move, get a place, and have transportation money to get my son from daycare and to find a job. I want to have enough money for a cushion until I can get these things taken care of. I know it may sound hard and I do not know anyone from the island but I want to live there, that is all I can say. What should be my steps when moving there? How much should I save? And what is the best part of the island to live without having to gouge out my pockets for a place. I looked up some places and they were not too bad. So basically it will just be my son and I moving. I don't know where to start."
--Savannah P.

Hi Savanah,

With your spirit and desire to live in Hawaii, I am sure that one day it will happen.

The most challenging part of your scenario will be finding a job. Hawaii is very tourist dependent. While Hilo is less dependent on tourism, because of the economy, jobs are hard to come by. I would recommend that you apply for jobs before you make your move, that way if you are hired, you will have a better idea where to live so that you are close to work. There will be more jobs on Oahu, but the cost of living is much higher.

If you plan to save up money to live on while you look for a job, estimate $600/month for rent (although you should look at the local papers to get an idea how much rent is: $100/month utilities, $300/month food. If you live in Hilo, you can get around by bus. So if you live frugally you could probably get by on $1000/month, just for the basics.

When you're ready to move, contact a property manager at a real estate office to help you find a place to live. They can help you get settled and make you r transition much easier. My property manager is Tammy Medeiros at Clark Realty Property Management and she is really nice. 

It will be tough making the move and not knowing anyone. You won't have that support network of family and friends when you get there, so join a church or a canoe club and try to establish friendships as soon as you can. Maybe take some classes at the community college.

My last piece of advice is to take more money than you think you will need, because everything moves much slower in Hawaii (and costs more). Also, checkout the PunaWeb forum. They are happy to answer your questions, too.

Good luck!

We recently had a single professional woman arrange to stay in the Canoe House for a month. She had taken a job in Pahoa and had only arrived on the Big Island two weeks previously and was staying at another vacation rental. When she came to look at our rental she complained that the first place she stayed at wasn't described accurately on the web, and the house was infested with fleas! Our rental wasn't available for another week but she agreed to rent it at that time.

A day before she was supposed to move-in, she calls us from Massachusetts to cancel her reservations because she had moved back home. She was unhappy with her new job and her car was hit by a drunk driver and she couldn't take it anymore!

The point I want to make with this story is it is very crucial to have some sort of support network in place when you do something big like move to an island in the middle of the Pacific. We were there. When we moved we didn't have any friends or family here to help us. I imagine if this woman had stayed with us from her initial arrival to the Big Island, we could have acted as her support network and perhaps reassured her, been her friend and given her the support she needed. Her experience probably would have been totally different and she would still be living her dream in Hawaii.