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cheap but nice areas of IN to live?
we bought our 1st home last year, and fixing it up. we plan to start a family in about 2-4 years and cannot live on one income in this house. we want to be within driving distance of our family (chicago western suburbs i.e. darien, lemont area). We'd like to be within 2 hours away.
we want a 3 bed, 2 bath ranch house. we'd LOVE a basement, if possible. Something that's roomy, cute, looks newer/updated , not a fixer since we'll be having a baby = no home remodelling time 
We want to live in a neighborhood that has other young families to make friends with. Looking to spend less than $150k so we can live on DH's disability income (no need to worry about finding jobs) only.
can you recommend some towns to look into? We don't know much about other areas other than western suburbs. We know nothing about IN. young, nice neighbors are important b/c we won't have family that close by.
Re: cheap but nice areas of IN to live?
If you want to be close to Chicago, Lake County is the way to go.
I have heard lots of bad things about Gary. I do know that Crown Point is rather nice if you're into the suburban thing. My best friend's parents live there. I don't know how much it costs in that area though.
Personally, I have never lived in "the region" (which is the area in IN that is close to Chicago.) I have only visited.
You could also do the "Michiana" region and it'd be within two hours from Chicago.
South Bend, Mishawaka, Granger, Elkhart - you can purchase a nice home for $150,000 in any of those areas. Granger is the newest area, and probably the most expensive. One area that is really growing and improving is the south side of South Bend.
Like all cities, each of those has bad areas and good areas. Generally though, IMO, $150,000 will get you into a nice area.
This is a good realty website for the area: http://www.cressyeverett.com/
You can search by price only, you can narrow it down by county (and further by township), or if you narrow it down to a specific area, you can do an atlas search that will pull all the homes that are on a map.
Generally speaking, the cost of living here is a drastic improvement over Chicago!