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No One Moves To PA For The Weather

So I was having a conversation a while back with a friend about PA.  They said "No one moves to pa for the weather".

It's true.  I mean.... Obviously people move to Cali and Florida for that.  So those two states, theoretically are filled with people that moved there for nice weather.  It got me thinking... What kind of people move to places for nice weather?  Does this mean that California and Florida have a specific type of person that lives there over... For example Pennsylvania?

I don't know.  I'm not in the place to commission a study on the type of people that live places.  What I do know is a couple years ago I went on a date with a girl that works in TD Bank's fraud prevention and detection department.  She moved back to NJ after living in Florida for nearly 10 years.  Fort Lauderdale to be exact.

Now, she basically moved back to NJ to be closer to her family.  So I would assume one reason people move to PA is family.  So there's that.  People maybe move for education or educational programs.  There are plenty of colleges in the area.  So I guess there's always that.

Family.  Education.  Maybe for a job?

So as we sat and had a beer and talked to one another and I found out as I asked her questions and she asked me questions... That she actually had come to hate Florida.  Apparently it's not the weather she hated... That wasn't so bad, not having winters was a plus.  And the sunshine was abundant.  No, it was the people.  She had so many "horror stories" of the people that live in Florida.

Ok, so fine, there's her own bias at play and I'm sure there are plenty of other people that love Florida.  But she was pretty convincing at how much the people there just aren't all that great.

The camp director of the camp I help out every June isn't too keen on Florida either.

Personally I have no opinion on it.  I imagine it to be a decent place filled with fine friendly folks.  I have only been a handful of times to visit friends and go on the Disney cruise with my mom for my 22nd birthday.

Yes.  I went on the Disney cruise with my mom for my 22nd birthday, and I enjoyed it.  I have a photo with various Disney characters.

I don't know why all the hate from this girl, but after 10 years of living there she was super over it.

So we then started to discuss her job.  I then asked for her to tell me the most interesting part of her work.  She loved intercepting criminal activity.  Whenever she was able to prevent fraud or to stop it, she said it was super satisfying knowing that not every person that tried to defraud the bank got away with it.  I then said... "What do you mean not every person?"

She went on to say that a lot of fraud is never caught.  That a lot of it is actually known but there isn't much you can do about it.  This blew my mind.  And made me angry.  She said that they are trying to improve their systems and that she was in charge of an initiative to create new ways to detect and prevent fraud to get the number even further up.  I then asked ok... So where does most fraud happen?

She said 3 places....

1. NYC.  There's a lot of fraud activity there.
2. California. Also a lot of fraud activity there as well.  And the final place?
3. Florida.  Lots of it happening there too.

So NYC is mostly glitz and glam.  It's not a super nice weather place...

But the other two?  Florida, and California.  High fraud areas.

I can't help but wonder... Does nice weather correlate with higher fraud rates?  Maybe?  And how about her hatred of Florida and the people there?

Is there something to this?  I've often wondered about it.  Are people that would be more likely to commit fraudulent activity also be more likely to live in places with wonderful weather?  Or do they not care about the weather?  Probably not.  It's probably that people with money are more likely to move to places with nice weather.

Then those people are the ones that are targeted by the fraudsters.

Yes, there are good and bad people everywhere.  But I'd love to somehow see a statistical analysis of the ratio of people that commit criminal activity...

I feel like PA might be lower on the list.  Because... PA is boring.  And that's most likely why I may stay here.  I just feel like I've been through some traumatic crap in my life... and I kind of just want boring.

Sure, it would be nice to live a flashy life full of glitz and glam.  But I feel like the glimmer fades eventually.  I feel like the gloss starts to chip and peel.  And then living somewhere "fun" starts to wear.

And like the fraud detection girl from TD Bank...

You just get over it.  And then you move back somewhere that weather doesn't matter.  It's family, friends, enjoying your job, not being a victim of a crime...

Just being around good people and feeling like you have a mission in life are what truly matter...

Not sunshine.

Again.  I'm just thinking outloud here.  I don't know.  What I do know is that while PA is boring... I definitely don't mind my neighbors.  Most of them are nice and they even brought over soup and sent cards when my mom passed away.  Actually, true story, one of my neighbors, who used to live in Southern California and lived the sunshine life for many years working in the movie biz for Disney as a personal acting coach for Raven on That's So Raven, prefers life here in Philadelphia.  To him boring was exactly what he wanted after all those years.  He was all about moving back here from Cali.  We had a conversation about that years and years ago.  So maybe no one moves here for the weather.  But there are plenty of other good reasons to move here.  Or at least, stay here... For now.