Great read!

I had no idea that moving to Florida has reduced our overall monthly expenses by about 60%!
However, I truly believe that leaving the big cities (be it LA or Miami) is the way to go.

Florida in general is likely one of the more favorable states because FL does not have a state income tax… so more money in your pockets!

Great post. Thanks for sharing!

The Millennial Money Woman

I’m curious about that as well. I would think people will always go back and forth. It seems we are drawn to the congregation of cities in some way…especially when you are young. It’s probably a good real estate investment opportunity if you have the resources.

Yeah…it was a bit harrowing. thx Fred.

Thanks Angie…in about 15 years we’ll know if your estimation of our parenting is correct…hahah! I’ll let you know how it works out. in the mean time, my blog is playlouder.com.

I don’t have many bad things to say about LA…we really enjoyed our time there…and have not ruled out going back if we could figure out how to afford it while not having to work 60+ hours a week.

We also do like Florida more than we would have imagined, but the pan-handle scares me a bit on the hurricane front. It has been pretty hammered for the last few years. Long time residents of our area (Tampa) seem to think the geography is such that hurricanes tend to go around us, but who knows if that true. Texas just isn’t my state.

No reason to feel like a whimp…the truth is that a big change is hard. And I think one of the main reasons people don’t do it is because they are concerned they may like their new life less their current one. That would have been true for us if we had moved to TX for a job, and couldn’t leave.

My best advice to is to go visit potential places for a 1 week, and see what area you can live in exactly for your housing budget. Like LA is great, but if you have to live 50 miles outside the city to afford it, then it’s not that great really. If you decide to visit let me know and I’ll give you some tips.

I wish you the best.
Joe

thx for reading Steveark

I commend you for taking a leap. We often times whine without action, and the result is misery. My husband and I also took a major leap. We were born and raised in Los Angeles, but left twenty years ago because even back then, I realized that the life I eventually wanted would not manifest there. Lived in Arkansas with my husband for a couple years, then moved to Portland, Oregon. We stayed there fifteen years. You can imagine what we witnessed. What was once a cute, affordable, easy small city, became a crowded, expensive, high stress big city-still-pretending-to-be-a-small city. So, after a few years of misery of watching the city explode, we took a leap and moved our three children and my mother back to Arkansas.

My financial story is not as clean as yours. I came to the FIRE concepts late – about two years ago, after we had moved to Little Rock (I just turned 50 this year). There was a lot of damage we had to clean up, but the beauty is that we are in a LCOL area now, and after acknowledging, examining, and taking action, we are now in a radically different financial position. I owe this to the FIRE community.

But really what I wanted to say was that taking the risk from a HCOL area usually has other implications. To be totally clear, HCOL are perhaps more liberal than LCOL (not always the case, but often). This is rarely discussed when I see people moving for financial reasons from big cities to smaller towns, and I think it is an important discussion. There was much judgment thrown our way for moving (it was also 2017, and a new president was in the WH). But we did it anyway because financially we had to but also we thought that their judgment was narrow and oddly bigoted.

We love where we are right now. Love it. We have diversity here, a beautiful natural state, and wonderful friends. We have financial security like we have never had. Our lives here are also mellow and easy. EASY. Taking a risk has opened up our worlds. And sometimes those risks are more than just financial, but sometimes the benefits are too.