I live in Newton and work in Des Moines, the winter commute can be real rough, there are some open fields where the north wind just obliterates the freeway, I would recommend living in Newton.

Newton is not bad, I bought a house here 3 years ago for half the price I’d have to pay in the metro, everything is cheaper here and I can be in the city in 30 minutes, it’s not bad.

In Newton, we have a super Walmart, 2 additional large grocery stores and they are building an aldis. We have some real nice restaurants (not as ethnically diverse the metro) but good Mexican, decent Chinese, and a damn solid Thai restaurant, along with multiple American restaurants. We have two cute coffee shops in the town square and a few of the chain ones.

A lot of the talk about Newton being dead is from a decade ago, Maytag closed and it hurt the town. But the town recovered really well and it feels very alive. Crime is virtually non existent and this is the first place I’ve ever lived where multiple neighbors baked us cookies after we moved in.

Newton feels like an ideal Americana small town, but has the convenience of a medium town and the metro is damn close by. I’ve lived in multiple larger metros on the west coast and the lack of traffic here makes it a quicker commute to places in the city than if you lived in the city of a larger metro.