Beating Broke

Personal Finance from the Broke Perspective

Our Cross Country Move: One Year Later

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Almost one year ago, our family made the move from Chicago to Tucson, Arizona.  Honestly, I wasn’t that excited to be moving so far away from my family in the Midwest, but we thought the move would only be for two or three years.  The move was a smart choice for my husband’s career (something we still believe), so I tried to make the best out of it.

Now, a year later, I’ve found that a cross country move can evoke a wide range of positives and negatives.

The Positives

Cross Country MoveKeeping in touch with relatives is easy, thanks to technology.  My mom has made the trip out to Tucson three times in the year we’ve been here, so we’ve been lucky to see her so frequently.  Because of the cost of taking our family of five such a distance, we only expect to be able to travel to see her once a year.  She’ll likely cut her trips down to once or twice a year to see us from now on.  However, thanks to Skype, keeping in touch is easier than ever.  Whenever the kids miss grandma, we just Skype with her.

Having a back yard is priceless.  In the Chicago suburbs where we lived, we just had a tiny patch of yard.  Since we were renting, we couldn’t do anything with it.  Now, we have a full back yard for the kids to play in and we have three garden beds (though we’re still learning how to grow anything in this crazy desert).

A cheaper cost of living rocks.  No surprise, Chicago was expensive.  We could never own a house because property taxes alone were $12,000+ a year, and starter homes in less than ideal conditions were easily $350,000 as a starting price.  In Tucson, we’re able to own our own home, and the property taxes are a fifth or less of what they were in Chicago.

The Negatives

All health insurance policies are not the same.  My husband’s health insurance policy in Chicago was generous, but we always found it very annoying that medical bills were not paid until 9 to 12 months AFTER the appointment.  (Illinois’ tight budget was the reason.)  When we moved here, I was impressed that our bills were paid within a few weeks.  However, we pay more to insure our family here, and fewer expenses are covered.  We did not estimate just how deeply medical bills would impact our bottom line, and right now we’re recovering financially from the nearly $5,000 we had to pay out of pocket for the first four months of medical expenses in 2015.  (These expense would have likely been much less with our Illinois insurance.)

Moving is SO expensive.  We originally hoped to only be out here for two to three years, but moving cross country is so expensive.  Now I find myself hoping we stay here five years so we don’t have to spend so much money to relocate so quickly after relocating here.  We need time to recoup our expenses.

Moving cross country has been an experience, but despite the expenses, we’re still glad we did it.

Have you made a large move?  What did you learn a year or so into relocating?  Would you do it again if you had the choice?

Would You Consider Moving to Improve Your Standard of Living?

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Last July, our family moved from the near suburbs of Chicago to the suburbs of Tucson, Arizona.  We knew that there would be some significant changes to get used to, like the change in weather, but honestly, we weren’t sure how our lives would change.

Had my husband not been offered a job in Tucson, we never would have considered moving so far away from family and friends.  However, making this move turned out to be a wonderful decision.

Even though my husband is only making $2,000 more than he was making in Chicago, our quality of life has improved tremendously.

Benefits of Moving to Tucson

Moving improve Standard of Living
Original img credit: pbarry on Flickr

We can own a house.  In the near suburbs of Chicago where we lived, a house, even a fixer-upper, cost at least $300,000.  Then, there were the property taxes to consider, which ran $10,000 to $25,000 a YEAR depending on the neighborhood you live in.  In Tucson, we got a very nice house for less than $200,000, and our taxes are only $2,000 a year.

Our kids have room to play.  Even though we lived in the suburbs of Chicago, the population is so dense that the houses all have very small yards.  Plus, the house that we rented backed up to an alley, so I never dared leave the kids outside alone.  Now, we have a large backyard with a cement fence around it.  I can see the kids outside playing while I’m in the kitchen preparing food.  We love this feature of our new home.

Money stretches so much further in Tucson.  Although it’s a challenge, in Tucson, I have a grocery limit of $125 a week.  There is absolutely no way I could have such a low grocery bill in Chicago.  It simply was not possible.  Gas here is much cheaper, too.

The environment is so much quieter and friendlier.  In Chicago, many people were just, well, grouchy.  (Not all of them, but certainly enough of them.)  We lived in a middle class suburb, and we had some sketchy characters in our neighborhood like a woman who lived down the alley and routinely dug through everyone’s trash.  (I’m not making that up!)  There was also so much noise from the nearby fire station, trains, and constant traffic.  In Tucson, our neighbors are very friendly, there is no one sketchy (that we’ve met so far), and it’s much, much quieter here.

Drawbacks to Our Move

We’re far away from family and friends.  Most of them live in the Midwest, so we are far, far from family and friends.  That is a challenge.  If we move back to the Midwest, it will be because we want to be closer to family and friends.

Everything is so far away.  In Chicago, I was very spoiled.  I had three grocery stores within a two mile drive.  Our dentist and doctor were each less than 4 miles away.  In Tucson, everything is 10 or more miles away.  We have to drive a half an hour to get to our dentist.  Driving so much can take up a large part of our time.

I never would have considered moving to improve our standard of living, but now that we’ve done so, I can see what a great move it was for our family.  Our quality of life has improved dramatically, and this move is giving us a chance to improve our financial situation.

Would you, or have you, moved far away to improve your standard of living and financial situation?  Or is this something you would not consider?

Cost of Living Makes a Big Difference

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Where you live, and how much it costs to live there can make a huge difference in what your finances look like.  The differences in the cost of living between someplace like Seattle, or San Francisco and where I live, in North Dakota are stark.  Oftentimes, when you see someone using a calculator of some sort for your retirement “number” there are some assumptions that get made.  People simply assume that they are talking to people who have the same economic circumstances.  They also assume that a 20 year old male is going to need the same amount in their retirement account as the next 20 year old male.

Now, let me tell you something that will knock your socks off.  At least, it will if you live in one of those bigger cities.  Me and my family of 4 (+1 dog) do just fine on less than $70,000 a year.  We’re not extremists, living in a small trailer in a campground somewhere, eating only rice and beans all the time either.  Could we survive on less?  I know we could.  We have debt; student loans, car loans, medical bills, a mortgage, and your regular monthly utilities and such.  But, the cost of living here makes it not only doable, but affordable to live on that amount.

There are some things that cost about the same everywhere.  New and used cars, for instance.  A new pickup here still costs about the same $40,000 (depending on model and features, of course).  Other, more universal goods, like books, computers, and pretty much anything you can buy off the internet, still cost about the same.  But, for many of the other standard items, we’re a lot closer to the source.  A pound of hamburger is only about $3.50.  A pack of cigarettes is only about $4.50.  Compare that to the prices in someplace like New York, and you start to see the benefits.

Where the real difference is, is in the local goods.  Property being the big one.  I’ve compared a few times in different markets.  After the real estate crash a few years ago, prices have gotten a little better, but still aren’t all that close.  We own a 2+1 bed, 1 bath, house with no garage on a good sized city lot.  When we bought it, back in 2004, we paid a little over $46,000.  Some of you reading this likely drive cars that you paid more for.  The houses value has gone up some over the years, but the last time we had it valued, which was in 2011, it was worth $57,000.  I truly hope there aren’t too many of you driving cars that you paid more than that for, but I’d bet there’s one or two.  Comparable houses in some of the larger markets usually are priced closer to $250,000.  If I do the quick and dirty math on that, the mortgage payment would be $2,040 more in one of those larger markets.

I don’t have any real way to compare the utilities, but I have the suspicion that we pay less there too.  Our house is older (c. 1950), so it’s not the most energy efficient house out there, but we still only pay about $90 a  month for our electricity, and about $35-$40 for our natural gas a month.  Water, sewage and garbage are lumped together, and usually end up around $50 a month.

Another huge way that our cost of living is different is in travel costs.  I don’t mean vacations.  For most of that, we’re far enough from a major travel hub that it is usually a little more expensive.  What I’m talking about is commuting costs.  Last week, I slept through my alarm.  I’m supposed to be at work at 8.  I woke up at 7:55.  I skipped the shower, but I was able to get up at 7:55, get dressed, quickly help get the kids started getting dressed, and still made it to work at 8:15.  How many of you would just call in sick because you’d have missed the whole first half of the work day?  When I time my drive to work, it’s somewhere around 5-10 minutes depending on traffic.  And, when I talk about traffic, what I really mean is if there’s anyone coming when I have to make a turn onto a  street and I have to wait ’til they pass. I usually have to fill my 12 gallon tank with gas about once a month.  Sometimes I stretch it to 5 or 6 weeks.  And then there’s the savings on wear and tear on the vehicle.  I rarely put more than 12,000 miles on a car in a year.  That makes it really easy to keep a car for 10 or more years!

Now, I’m not telling you all of this just to boast about how cheaply I can live here.  Really, I just wanted to make you aware of the differences.  What you perceive as “normal” sometimes isn’t.  The same is true for me.  What is a good paying job here, would be considered a poorly paying job in a big city.  People who live in those big cities usually have a lot of amenities that come along with those extra costs.  Choices in movie theaters.  Professional sports teams.  Entertainment venues that can hold more than 30,000 or so people.  They pay for those extra amenities in extra costs that aren’t always monetary.  Crime rates, crowding, and more competition for jobs to name a few.

How does your cost of living compare?  How big is the city that you live in?  (for reference, the city I live in is about 15,000 people.)

img credit: afiler, on Flickr