What it's REALLY Like Living in Las Vegas!

So you may think living in Las Vegas is like this or this .

It's really like this and this .

Hey guys , it's Ruby .

And six months ago , my husband and I sold all of our stuff , drove across the country and moved to Las Vegas today .

I'm going to be sharing with you all of my experiences and what it is really like to live in Las Vegas .

So let's just start right away by talking about the process of moving to Las Vegas .

We ended up driving about 1800 miles across the country .

We went through Iowa , Nebraska , Colorado , which I have to say Colorado is the most beautiful place to drive through ever .

But also the most terrifying if you know , you know , now the movers did come with our stuff later on and I have to say we had a really bad experience .

They lost all of our stuff and broke things .

And I think when all is said and done with moving , it cost us around five or $6000 and that was before we ended up buying all new stuff .

So it was definitely pretty pricey .

Now we are renting the home that we're in right now .

We knew right off the bat we weren't gonna want to try to buy a house before coming out here .

We definitely want to take our time to find a home and be here a while before we decided what neighborhood we wanted to be in .

I'm very happy with our place .

We rented a four bedroom house , we have an office space .

It's massive compared to the flat that we had back in Milwaukee .

Uh The cat is loving the space as well .

Say hi , I do the camera .

Well , let's talk about cost of living a little bit in Las Vegas .

We initially did look at apartments when we were coming to move here and we noticed they were like anywhere between 1500 to $2500 because you're paying for like a pool and a gym .

And ultimately , we decided to go with the house route because you get so much more for your money and houses here are anywhere between two and $3000 to rent .

We're kind of right in the middle of that .

Electricity seems to be pretty much the same .

I'm very curious how it will be once it gets very hot and to air condition the house , but our gas is way less than it was in Wisconsin because we barely needed to use heat .

Let's move on to talking about our neighborhood specifically .

Now there are a lot of good neighborhoods all around Las Vegas , we were told you definitely want to be in Summerland and most people are going to be either in Henderson or in Summerland or the Spring Valley area .

When you think of Las Vegas , you basically just think of the strip and that like city looking atmosphere with all like the pylons and everything , but it is not like that at all .

Once you get off strip , the mountains are so breathtakingly beautiful .

If we step outside and just look out , you can see them and they feel like they're right on top of you and they're just so pretty , especially when you have the red rock mountains and all the different colors .

And even through the winter with the snow on the top , you just feel very peaceful out here , there's parks and places you can walk , you can't go 10 ft without hitting a shopping center , any business you can think of off the top of your head right now .

I guarantee there's one within 5 to 10 minutes of us .

Every restaurant we could think of any sort of supplies or anything we needed .

We did not have to drive far at all to get to .

It's actually easy to see why people don't go to the strip now that we live here because there is so much we can do just out here .

For example , we live right by Rampart and Sun Coast .

Those are our local casinos that we like to frequent Tivoli Village .

Is right by us , an absolutely beautiful shopping center with some really great dining options in there .

We're not far from Red Rock and downtown Summerland and again , downtown Summerland is basically just shopping and dining and there's some really excellent restaurants in there as well .

So you could gamble , eat , go out and never be Summerland .

There's so much to do .

One thing that was tough for us was having totally different grocery stores .

That was an adjustment .

We like Winco the best .

You're going to find the absolute cheapest prices at Winco .

One thing to note though is they do not take credit cards , which is frustrating because we do like to get our points .

They also have Trader Joe's really nearby and I love Trader Joe's one huge plus though .

No tax groceries here in Nevada .

Let's talk about another big adjustment and that was driving .

Nothing is super far here in Las Vegas and most things are within a 20 minute drive .

Henderson is the farthest week drive and it's like 30 minutes or so , so pretty easy to get around .

And the freeway systems are really easy .

There are two major ones and that's like the 2 15 which kind of goes in a circle around Las Vegas and the I , that's the big one .

That's the one that's gonna drive right next to the strip .

And that is the one everybody takes .

And that's the one that gets really crazy .

Busy rush hour is a thing here .

But again , if you're from those big major cities , the rush hour is not gonna feel that crazy to you .

When we first moved , people told us to watch out for the real scary drivers .

The crazy drivers .

I don't see quite as many of those as I see the other type of driver which are people that are going five , even 10 miles under the speed limit .

I have never seen that .

We lived an hour outside of Chicago .

So people drove like they were on a mission to get somewhere and people here do not drive like that .

I also have never seen a cop radar in here the entire time .

We have lived here .

And that is very strange to me in Wisconsin , you can't go more than a few blocks without finding a cop monitoring the roads and here they do not do that .

The highways are kind of a free for all .

Having a car here is more expensive than back home in Wisconsin .

Gas prices are really expensive .

It's the west coast .

So I think if you're from this area , you might be used to that .

But registering your car is also going to be a huge shock .

I think back home in Wisconsin to register a car , it was like 100 and $50 or something like that .

We paid $425 to register our vehicle this year .

That was pretty alarming insurance also costs more out here .

I'm guessing it has something to do with all of the accidents .

There are some things I've noticed that feel very uniquely Las Vegas .

For example , you're gonna find slot machines in the grocery stores and you're gonna find them at the gas stations .

Also , the gas stations are called Terribles .

And I think that is so funny .

I don't know why they're called that .

That is such a weird name for a gas station .

Alcohol sales are also totally different here .

It depends on the state you live in , but back home , you cannot buy alcohol after nine PM .

And here it is a free for all .

You can buy it any time you want 24 hours a day .

One thing I will say if you go out in the mornings early , it's like a ghost town .

People don't get up the same time here that they do back in the Midwest .

So if you're out at like seven AM expected to just be like absolutely dead out on the roads , I don't feel like they start picking up until like 10 o'clock it seems like .

So just in general , the mentality on the west coast is totally different .

I feel like in the Midwest area , like being on time and getting where you need to go and being there promptly is very important .

It's kind of like time is of the essence , don't waste it .

And out here things feel a lot more chilled people are just not really in a rush .

I feel like we just noticed a lot more people kind of just taking their time .

Definitely a mentality shift for us and something that I hope we kind of adopt more of because we're definitely people who get really stressed out about being late .

Another huge difference for us is that Las Vegas is such a new city now , obviously , like the first casino was built here in 19 oh five , but there was like nothing around it .

For reference .

Our house that we lived in in Milwaukee was built in 18 90 they didn't start developing Summerland to live in until 1990 .

You lose a little , little bit of that old charm and that old history you're not gonna have as good luck antiquing out here in Nevada that you will back home in the Midwest .

I want to talk about a few pros for us and a few cons .

These are obviously very specific to our situation , but they might be helpful to you guys .

First thing , no state tax .

This is huge for us .

Not having to pay state tax , saves us so much money .

We just our taxes for this year and we still had to pay for Wisconsin and I cannot wait until next year .

We're going to save a ton better health insurance .

Oh , my gosh .

Again , we're independent contractors , which means we just have to pay for our insurance out of pocket .

Moving here for just a couple of 100 more bucks .

We were able to get like a silver plan with all these amazing benefits and super low deductibles .

And let's talk about a few cons , let's talk about a few things that we noticed that we don't like living here .

Internet .

That's a huge one .

There are only a couple of internet companies out here .

The best one is Cox Internet and we have one gig download speed , which is really good , but only like 30 megabyte , upload speed for most of you .

That probably doesn't matter .

But with how much we upload it to the internet , it's terrible .

It slows us down so much .

It has really caused problems for us to get our floats up .

And it's been a huge pain .

Sales tax here is 8.3% .

It's really high now , like I said , you don't have to pay tax on groceries and there's no state tax .

So they get you in other ways when you buy other things , it's definitely higher than what we're used to .

Oh , man .

If you come here and you were gambling a lot , you're going to lose all of your comps .

I hate to say it .

But as soon as you're a local , all those like free room offers , those are gone , they're gonna give you counts and you're still gonna get like free play and food and beverage , but they're not treating you the same as when you were traveling .

I don't know what it is but they just , they don't want to give the locals the free rooms and overall , I feel like there's a lot of positives to living in Las Vegas , the weather of being a huge one .

And before you make a comment about how I'm gonna be wishing for colder weather .

You are dead wrong .

I cannot wait for it to be 100 degrees .

I am gonna be so happy .

So how has living in Las Vegas changed my perspective being a local versus a tourist .

Well , first of all , I have to say we still love the strip .

However , it does become kind of like a full day experience when we come down here and we don't find ourselves down here that often because there are so many other places we can go and so much other content we can make .

I am really glad that we were tourists as long as we were because the perspective is just totally different .

Waking up every day on strip and spending a week long .

Here really is a different perspective than being able to just drive home and be 20 minutes away .

I still love it .

I just love it a little differently and I feel like having perspectives have been so helpful now that we're locals .

I feel like we know a lot more about driving and parking , which on strip isn't so bad , but downtown there is zero free parking .

It is really troublesome .

I hope you guys enjoyed this video and if you're considering moving to Las Vegas , I hope you found it helpful .

See you guys all in my next video .