So You Want to Move to Maine?: A Foolproof Guide to Making a Successful Move

By Melanie Lee

If you have reached your limit with the rat race and want a simpler, more wholesome life, then Maine might be the place for you. But making a move is hard; uprooting and replanting yourself can be exhausting and worrisome. You need a place to live, a job, friends, hobbies, etc. In short, you need a new life, and you need it NOW. This little book will be absolutely invaluable in helping you to make that permanent move. It will save you a lot of time because all the initial footwork is done for you, including 100 links on how to find work and living quarters, getting your driver's license, pet requirements, programs for people with disabilities, programs for senior citizens, getting married in Maine, hidden taxes and expenses, hospitals, health insurance, handling a real winter like a pro, etc.

This book also contains a launching platform to Maine's most precious treasure: The great outdoors. If you are interested in camping, fishing, hiking, skiing, geocaching, farming, gardening, homesteading, or prepping, this book is for YOU. The information contained herein will start you on journeys that will supply you with a lifetime of memories which cannot be had anywhere else but Maine.

So stop being "just a number" or another face in the crowd. Walk away from the rat race. Become boldly individualistic and make your mark in life. You can still do that in Maine, one of the last holdouts of ordinary, old-fashioned, kind, and decent American living. Welcome!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Jun 13, 2020
• ISBN: 9781716851209

Book preview

So You Want to Move to Maine?

A Foolproof Guide to Making a Successful Move

Melanie Lee

COPYRIGHT

So You Want to Move to Maine?

A Foolproof Guide to Making a Successful Move

Revised edition

Copyright © 2021 by Melanie Lee

All rights reserved.

This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or scholarly journal.

ISBN 978-1-716-85120-9

DEDICATION

Never put the key to your happiness

in someone else’s pocket.

PREFACE

So you want to move to Maine, do you?  I don’t blame you one bit.  Maine is a beautiful, down-to-earth state filled for the most part with people who know and appreciate what they have and want to keep it that way.  Beautiful sunrises and sunsets, powerful ocean adventures, wide open spaces, fresh air, clean water, an abundance of wild life . . . What’s not to love?  You know you’ve had this urging, nagging feeling for a while now, and it keeps telling you that you don’t quite fit in where you presently are, for whatever reason.  You’re ready for a change.  That’s good.  You need that constant yen when making a major life change.

Maybe you’ve looked into moving to several different areas, but Maine seems to exert the greatest pull on you.  Maybe you haven’t looked into moving to any other areas at all, but you just know that Maine is the place for you.  We get both kinds of transplants here:  People who have thoroughly researched and know Maine is the right place for them and get here and are surprised, and people who haven’t done any research at all but know Maine is the right place for them and get here and are surprised.  Don’t worry about it—it’s all good.

As of the 2020 Census, Maine’s population was 1,377,963, and you’re dead-set on being number 1,377,964 in the state with the lowest population density in all of New England, the entire eastern seaboard, and all states east of the Mighty Mississippi.  Well, what’s one more person or two, right?  However, the way in which you make this move—mentally, physically, and emotionally—will decide whether that slight population increase will be permanent or just another blip on the radar screen.

That’s where this book comes in.  My hope is that you will read it thoroughly from cover to cover, and not just the parts with statistics, website links, nitty-gritty number crunching, and state rules and regulations.  This is all vitally important, of course, and you can’t make a successful move anywhere in the nation without it, but you may find yourself later regretting if you skip over the parts about Maine people, culture, activities, lifestyle, education, etc.  These are very important things.  After all, you have to live with the people here, and they have to live with you—and if you think you’re just going to walk right in without considering the locals, you’re going to be in for a big surprise.  Especially in Maine.  Nowhere will you find people who so fiercely protect their state and way of life than Maine.  Disregard this at your own peril.

Why, that sounds like a mild threat, you might say.  Well, that depends upon how you want to look at it.  You see, you’re moving to a place where you’re not going to be just a number anymore.  But, you say, I’ve always wanted that.  I’m tired of being a number!  You might, indeed, be tired of it, but you are still used to it, and we all snuggle up to the beast that is most familiar, whether we realize it or not.

But here in Maine, you’re going to be YOU now.  You’re going to be a person who is allowed to be real—someone who is considered exactly as he portrays himself.  That you will be much better off if he or she makes an effort to understand the local population and contribute to it kindly.  Why?  Because everyone around you is going to know very quickly who you are.  There’s no getting lost in a sea of people here in Maine, especially in the sparsely populated regions that comprise most of the state, and if you haven’t yet learned that first impressions are vital, you’re going to get a crash course in Maine.

That’s why it’s important to try to understand Maine people.  No, we’re not a bunch of mamby-pamby, whining prima donnas who want everything our way and are going to insist upon being catered to.  Just the opposite, in fact.  For the most part, we’re a bunch of freedom-loving, fiercely individual, hard-working, self-sustaining people, and we tend to expect that kind of behavior from others.  You had better be able to hold your own.  Okay, we are a bit stubborn, too, I’ll give you that.  And I won’t budge an inch on it, either.

This book is designed to save you time.  The 100 links herein will help you find a job and a place to live.  They’ll give you some real counseling and resources on how and why you should lower your debt.  They’ll give you information on getting your Maine driver’s license, requirements for pets, how to get married in Maine, how to find help for those with disabilities and for senior citizens, and how to move toward getting health insurance in Maine.  They’ll introduce you to culture and arts sites as well as recreation sites, including hiking, camping, and skiing.  They’ll give you some solid information on becoming a Maine farmer, homesteader, or prepper.  They’ll also give you the facts about the cold in Maine, how to dress properly for it, how to identify frostbite, and how to prepare yourself to not only survive but to thrive in a Maine winter.

In short, this book is designed to be a great first step in your move to Maine.  A good amount of what you’re going to need to know to make a successful move is all right here at your fingertips.  I have done all of the initial work for you, although I encourage you to further explore the links I have included.  Many of the links themselves contain dozens of more links that will really get you up and running and place you far ahead in the game.  The more knowledge you have, the more confident you will feel in your ability to do this.  And you can do this.

What are my qualifications for writing this book?  Well, I’m a Mainer and I live in Maine and have done so for a long time.  I passed the half-century mark quite some time ago, and I may have learned a thing or two about living along the way.  I have worked at many different kinds of jobs in Maine, from cashier, to ad and grant writer, to community organizing and development, to secretary, to poultry farming, to lab tech at a hospital—to name just a few.  I have hiked in Maine and farmed and gardened in Maine.  I have voted in Maine and volunteered in Maine.  I have struggled hard in Maine—sometimes winning and sometimes losing.  I have lived on the ocean, in the woods, and in a city—all in Maine.

I love Maine and I’m fiercely protective of it.  I think it’s the greatest place in the world.  For the past six years, I have written a blog and run a Facebook page, both called In Pursuit of Maine.  (https://inpursuitofmaine.blogspot.com/ and https://www.facebook.com/inpursuitofmaine/). They are entirely about the state of Maine and country living through my eyes and my experience, with a bit of oddness and eccentricity thrown in for good measure, for which we Mainers are famous.  There are other people in Maine, of course, with a much different opinion than mine, but they’re not writing this book.

Over the years, a great many people have contacted me with scores of questions about moving to Maine.  Some have been younger and some older.  Some have been wealthy and many have been poor.  Some have been adventurous and some desperate.  They all wanted to know how to go about doing it.  They all had their own unique situations, assets, and liabilities.  They all wanted to know how they might give it their best shot.  But most of all, they wanted encouragement.  So this book is for all of them and for you as well.

Here’s what you won’t find in these pages:  I’m not a federal government or Maine state employee, so I don’t have to abide by any government guidelines or pretentiousness (as long as I don’t break a law)—and as far as I’m concerned, that’s a really good thing.  I don’t have an agenda, other than making sure you know what you’re getting yourself into and hoping that those who do move to Maine contribute to it positively.  There’s no sense in coming here if you’re not interested in community and the Maine way of life—and there really is a certain kind of Maine community and most definitely a Maine way of life.

I also want to sell books, but I don’t have to tell you something in a certain way or hide something or sugarcoat anything, because I don’t have a keeper.  I’m my own person.  And if I’ve learned anything about people over the years, that’s one of the biggest reasons why they want to come to Maine in the first place—because they don’t want to have a keeper anymore and they want to be their own person.  A good life is actually pretty easy to achieve, but it comes with a price, and that price is hard work both on the self and at making a living.  There are no free rides here.

I’m not politically correct at all or overly inclusive, and I make no apologies for that.  This doesn’t mean that I’m not open to different kinds of people—I am.  But what I’m most open to is people—any kind of people—who are interested in creating a good life for themselves while at the same time enriching the state of Maine.  I’m interested in community.  I’m interested in goodness.  I’m interested in fiercely protecting what I see as one of the last holdouts of ordinary, old-fashioned, kind, and decent American living.  And if you think you fit that description—no matter who you are or where you’re from or what you look like—then I am interested in you.

And speaking of American living, this book is written mostly from the point of view of moving from one of these United States to another.  This isn’t to say that someone from another country won’t get anything out of this book.  They will—quite a bit, actually.  But the subject of emigration from another country to the United States is beyond the scope of these pages.  However, the subject of living a good and full life is something that everyone everywhere can certainly appreciate, and you will find a good deal of that in these pages.

This book is geared mainly toward the average Jack and Jill, the kind of people who haven’t got endless resources to call upon with fat bank accounts to cushion their mistakes.  If you are in a comfortable position monetarily, you will still get a great deal out of this book, but if you are monetarily challenged (as most Americans are), you will get even more out of this book.  Penny-pinching doesn’t just occur at the grocery store.  It’s a smart way of life for many people who have set certain goals for themselves and need something to bridge the great divide between their dream and their current position.

As I said, there are 100 links in this book.  We all know that sometimes links end up in the internet trash heap, so periodically I will go through this book and check the links to make sure they are up to date.  If you do come across a defunct link, you can probably find it through a Google search.  I’d appreciate it if you’d let me know about it.  You can send me a message