Considering moving from upper Midwest to San Diego without a job lined up - bad idea?

[meilingo]

Originally Posted by someguy10

Thanks for posting. Would you mind sharing a few more details, especially the general area you're living in and what your rent looks like? Did you live in an apartment in the Midwest? What is your savings rate now vs. in the Midwest?

No problem - sorry it took a while to get back to this forum. I just got a reminder from my email that people were still posting here. I'm living in Mission Valley East, a neighborhood called Grantville in central San Diego. My rent is currently $1,450 for a one-bedroom apartment in one of those giant complexes. It's pretty comfortable for the price - we managed to find a place with central A/C, a dishwasher, new carpet and lots of storage space (which is hard to find in our price range). The complex has all the amenities you normally find - a gym, two pools, a spa, etc.

A similar apartment in my hometown in Missouri would likely run about $650 per month. When I was living in the Midwest, we were able to purchase a 3-bedroom ranch style home. We renovated it and it was definitely a nicer living situation that what we could afford here. But again, we knew what we were giving up when we left. We chose to keep the house as an investment property as I have family who owns a property management firm, and currently have it leased to tenants. As far as savings, the move set us behind for almost an entire year. Just about 6 months ago, we were finally able to start contributing again to our Roth IRAs and personal savings account. We were only contributing 10 percent of our income at first, and just bumped it up to 20 percent recently. Hopefully we can maintain that, but it's difficult.

The reason we chose to give up the nice place to live was because in the Midwest we couldn't find appealing job prospects. Our hometown was largely a service economy - not much happening in our respective fields. I'm a journalist, and I now am a reporter for a business publication in San Diego. There was only one newspaper in my hometown, and their staff was never hiring. After graduating college, I was desperate to get into the field and knew there would be more newspapers/publications in a metro area rather than a small town.

I was right, and found a job as a reporter here within weeks. I received two awards for Excellence in Journalism this year, and my second salary raise just today. :-) :-) My point is that the seemingly irresponsible sacrifice (to give up comfortable living situation and financial security for risky move across the country) did have merit when it came to long-term career goals.

Financial security (especially when you're young) is not everything.

Hope this helps.

[1AngryTaxPayer]

Originally Posted by Jha125

Maybe Portland Oregon or somewhere in north arizona where's theres mountains and snow( that's where I'm from) or Colorado.

Relentless sun with relentless lack of sun. No thanks, have fun. I don't consider rain gear a fashion