Tons of insightful comments on these boards, so I wanted to see if some could help me think through my situation.
I transferred divisions within my company and can now work from anywhere. My annual salary is around 200k consulting and have about 750k in net worth. I'm currently renting in SoCal and considering relocating to Dallas for LCOL and my sister's family is there. I'd be able to take the salary with me. Here are my considerations:
Work: I manage a small team of 10, half in SoCal that I meet up with about once a week. Other half is remote, so a lot of Skype meetings. The majority of my clients are in CA, so if I move, I'd have to fly about twice a month to CA, whereas now I drive and can be home for dinner.
Family: wife (SAHM) and 3 kids (10,5,1 yo), so concerned about the college payment coming up. In an awesome school district now (one of top in CA, but uber-wealthy friends), we cannot afford to buy in the district. We were considering buying a house in another LA suburb (650-750k), but my reasoning is that if they have to switch districts anyways it doesn't matter if it's LA or TX, housing around 400k. We used to live in the upper Midwest, and wife had bouts of SADD, so LA sun was definitely a blessing. We would have to give up some of the sunny days. On the flip side, wife is a home-body, so the thought of a larger, newer home in TX is appealing and the reason we dont want to keep renting.
Taxes: a lot paid to CA, over 10K. Having SALT limited to 10K is even less incentive to have a house in CA.
Lots of considerations swirling around, and know there's no perfect world without tradeoffs. What am I missing? Early retirement would be nice, but staying in CA would probably delay that by 10 yrs.
Thanks in advance, BJ
I transferred divisions within my company and can now work from anywhere. My annual salary is around 200k consulting and have about 750k in net worth. I'm currently renting in SoCal and considering relocating to Dallas for LCOL and my sister's family is there. I'd be able to take the salary with me. Here are my considerations:
Work: I manage a small team of 10, half in SoCal that I meet up with about once a week. Other half is remote, so a lot of Skype meetings. The majority of my clients are in CA, so if I move, I'd have to fly about twice a month to CA, whereas now I drive and can be home for dinner.
Family: wife (SAHM) and 3 kids (10,5,1 yo), so concerned about the college payment coming up. In an awesome school district now (one of top in CA, but uber-wealthy friends), we cannot afford to buy in the district. We were considering buying a house in another LA suburb (650-750k), but my reasoning is that if they have to switch districts anyways it doesn't matter if it's LA or TX, housing around 400k. We used to live in the upper Midwest, and wife had bouts of SADD, so LA sun was definitely a blessing. We would have to give up some of the sunny days. On the flip side, wife is a home-body, so the thought of a larger, newer home in TX is appealing and the reason we dont want to keep renting.
Taxes: a lot paid to CA, over 10K. Having SALT limited to 10K is even less incentive to have a house in CA.
Lots of considerations swirling around, and know there's no perfect world without tradeoffs. What am I missing? Early retirement would be nice, but staying in CA would probably delay that by 10 yrs.
Thanks in advance, BJ