Middle America

In case you didn't know, I'll mention that my family lived in Omaha, Nebraska for a couple of years when my daughter was born about 6 years ago. We wanted to move to a smaller town that had a lower cost of living where I could stay home with the baby and we would live fine on only my husband's salary. We liked it there, but we moved because the town was still too big for us (390,000 people).

Now we live in Eureka Springs, Arkansas which is very small (2,278 people) and it suits us just fine. Since tourism is the biggest industry, there are usually more people here so it feels more like the population is around 4,000 most of the time.

One place we've never been too, but looks nice is Boise, Idaho. I checked out the statistics and the population is 186,000, the weather is average, the crime rate is low, and there are plenty of hospitals and colleges there also. The residents are very well educated, with 91.1% high school graduates and 33.6% with a Bachelor's degree or higher. One myth that a lot of people believe about small middle-America towns is that the people are uneducated or "back woods" and that is just not true.

The median house value in Boise, Idado is $120,700, and Idaho real estate is looking good right now because people are making the decision to move so they can improve their quality of life and live more relaxed.