photoguy
Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
- Joined
- Jun 15, 2010
- Messages
- 2,301
Tl;dr Quit work and sold home in San Jose. Traveled for 2 years across the US and Canada to look for a cheaper/better FIRE location. Ended up back in California (San Diego).
This is going to be a long post, but I'm hoping it will be of interest to those looking to move as part of their FIRE process. In spring 2014, DW and I pulled the plug on work and declared ourselves officially FIREd. We were living in San Jose and in order to make the finances work, we needed to sell our house and move to a lower cost of living area.
We drastically downsized and sold/donated/threw away everything except what would fit in our car. We have a honda element, which has a huge amount of cargo space, but we also needed to make room for our dog and her crate, bed, etc.
For the next two years, we traveled all over the US and Canada checking out various spots including Ames IA (her family), Boulder/Denver, Toronto (my home town), Santa Fe/ABQ, Bishop, and finally San Diego.
Boulder was the first place that we thought could work for us. The city is very nice with an incredibly mild winter, superb hiking and trail system, beautiful scenery, low crime rates, etc. But we decided to push on because we thought we might find someplace we liked more and kept it as a backup.
Our last stop was San Diego and we arrived here in November. It's very hard not to enjoy SD with the weather, beaches, outdoor activities and the culture was comfortingly familiar. Housing in SD is cheaper than most major areas in California, but it's still damn expensive. We decided to stay if we could buy housing in our price range (to lock in costs). We started looking in Feburary and closed on a condo in downtown at the end of July.
I had misgivings about buying now due to home valuations (considered high when compared to historical rents/incomes) plus we are at very low mortgage rates. On the other hand, waiting runs the risk of getting priced out of the market. Ultimately, the wife did not want to rent anymore, is thrilled with our small loft style condo, and is happy to have our own place again.
We've been in our condo for two weeks now and we've been busy moving, painting, and setting it up to our liking. I had no tools other than a leatherman so have gone on a bit of buying spree. Wife is busy looking at furniture and deciding what pictures we want blown up and put on the walls.
In hindsight, we would have been better off heading straight to San Diego right after FIREing due to rapidly increasing housing prices. Not sure why we didn't do so, but we probably had to leave CA to realize how much we like it.
Some observations:
* Cost of living didn't vary much (outside of housing) no matter where we lived. Food (grocery) is pretty much the same and while services/gas/restaurants might be a little less in the midwest and mountain states this can be offset by winter costs (clothes, auto, heating).
* Having too much choice made decision making difficult and led to analysis paralysis. It would have been easier had we visited many of the places before FIRE and come up with a shorter list. But we never had enough vacation time to do this.
* If we had more money we probably would have stayed in San Jose. However, I think this would have been a mistake as SD overall is a better place for us as retirees. Staying in SJ would have been a local minimum in optimization terms.
* The constant travel was awesome at the beginning but started getting tiresome sometime after a year or so: It's hard to make friends in a new place and then have to move right when you start to know people. We also began to miss certain comforts like having a couch, books, big screen tv, paper shredder, and more than 1 pot and 1 pan.
* It's possible to furnish an apartment for basically nothing if you are careful buying and selling furniture on the used market. Had some good finds on freecycle and dumpster diving (best skill from grad school).
Picture 1: All our stuff when we arrived in Boulder.
Picture 2: Car packed up ready to leave Boulder. We ended up with a bit more stuff than when we arrived so we got a roof bag. Extra cargo was for camping gear, cooler, winter clothes, and two tables we hadn't managed to sell.
Picture 3: Our net investible assets.
This is going to be a long post, but I'm hoping it will be of interest to those looking to move as part of their FIRE process. In spring 2014, DW and I pulled the plug on work and declared ourselves officially FIREd. We were living in San Jose and in order to make the finances work, we needed to sell our house and move to a lower cost of living area.
We drastically downsized and sold/donated/threw away everything except what would fit in our car. We have a honda element, which has a huge amount of cargo space, but we also needed to make room for our dog and her crate, bed, etc.
For the next two years, we traveled all over the US and Canada checking out various spots including Ames IA (her family), Boulder/Denver, Toronto (my home town), Santa Fe/ABQ, Bishop, and finally San Diego.
Boulder was the first place that we thought could work for us. The city is very nice with an incredibly mild winter, superb hiking and trail system, beautiful scenery, low crime rates, etc. But we decided to push on because we thought we might find someplace we liked more and kept it as a backup.
Our last stop was San Diego and we arrived here in November. It's very hard not to enjoy SD with the weather, beaches, outdoor activities and the culture was comfortingly familiar. Housing in SD is cheaper than most major areas in California, but it's still damn expensive. We decided to stay if we could buy housing in our price range (to lock in costs). We started looking in Feburary and closed on a condo in downtown at the end of July.
I had misgivings about buying now due to home valuations (considered high when compared to historical rents/incomes) plus we are at very low mortgage rates. On the other hand, waiting runs the risk of getting priced out of the market. Ultimately, the wife did not want to rent anymore, is thrilled with our small loft style condo, and is happy to have our own place again.
We've been in our condo for two weeks now and we've been busy moving, painting, and setting it up to our liking. I had no tools other than a leatherman so have gone on a bit of buying spree. Wife is busy looking at furniture and deciding what pictures we want blown up and put on the walls.
In hindsight, we would have been better off heading straight to San Diego right after FIREing due to rapidly increasing housing prices. Not sure why we didn't do so, but we probably had to leave CA to realize how much we like it.
Some observations:
* Cost of living didn't vary much (outside of housing) no matter where we lived. Food (grocery) is pretty much the same and while services/gas/restaurants might be a little less in the midwest and mountain states this can be offset by winter costs (clothes, auto, heating).
* Having too much choice made decision making difficult and led to analysis paralysis. It would have been easier had we visited many of the places before FIRE and come up with a shorter list. But we never had enough vacation time to do this.
* If we had more money we probably would have stayed in San Jose. However, I think this would have been a mistake as SD overall is a better place for us as retirees. Staying in SJ would have been a local minimum in optimization terms.
* The constant travel was awesome at the beginning but started getting tiresome sometime after a year or so: It's hard to make friends in a new place and then have to move right when you start to know people. We also began to miss certain comforts like having a couch, books, big screen tv, paper shredder, and more than 1 pot and 1 pan.
* It's possible to furnish an apartment for basically nothing if you are careful buying and selling furniture on the used market. Had some good finds on freecycle and dumpster diving (best skill from grad school).
Picture 1: All our stuff when we arrived in Boulder.
Picture 2: Car packed up ready to leave Boulder. We ended up with a bit more stuff than when we arrived so we got a roof bag. Extra cargo was for camping gear, cooler, winter clothes, and two tables we hadn't managed to sell.
Picture 3: Our net investible assets.