San Francisco--why it didn't work out

J and I have been talking recently about what went wrong here, and we've narrowed it down to these things:

1) J's job situation colored our perceptions. No doubt about that. However, that probably wouldn't have been a deal-killer except for:

2) San Francisco's charms were basically lost on us. As I may have mentioned, neither of us wants to live smack in the middle of a big city. We prefer to live outside of the city, preferably in somewhat rural suburbs, but with easy access to the city's offerings. In the town where we settled down, San Francisco was a bit too far away, and we found that the positive aspects of the SF Bay area didn't extend all the way out here. We moved to this town because it was affordable, but we might as well be living in Anywhere, USA.

3) Massachusetts had a bigger impact on us than we realized. We loved the weather, the landscape, the general atmosphere. Oddly, Seattle reminds us a lot of Boston, and many of the suburbs remind us of the towns we loved in Massachusetts--Sudbury, Acton, etc. Now that we've seen California, if we ever wanted to live in an warm climate again, we'd prefer to move back to Austin, Texas. We have family and friends there, and like the city (and there are the necessary rural suburbs).

4) The area is just too expensive. We really, really missed owning our own home. Even if this was the only negative, it would have worn us down eventually.

I think that's everything. That said, I'm ready to move forward!

Moving again soon

It's official--we're moving to Seattle. We hope to move by the 15th of December. Neither of us has a job yet, though J has had several interviews, and next week he has his second at a company that he'd quite like to work for. So, looking good so far, though there have been no bites yet on my resume.

We got a short-term lease, and prepaid four months' rent and utilities since we weren't employed. We actually offered to do that, thinking it would help, and it seemed to. Hopefully this place in California will rent soon and we won't be stuck paying for two places for very long. My gosh, the money we've been putting out lately--not just moving expenses, but travel. J went up to Seattle a couple of times for interviews*, and we had to go to Texas to visit a terminally ill relative. Most of this has been going on our Amex cards, so it really hurts to pay them when they come due, but at least we won't have additional debt. We haven't yet touched the money we got from our house sale, and I'm really hoping we won't have to.

I've been a bit depressed lately so I haven't been blogging. I haven't really been into my finances at all, to be honest. It's strange--when we owned our own home, when I was working and contributing to a retirement plan, and we were doing everything "right," the more interested I was in finances. Now I kind of feel like, "Why bother?" I know how dangerous that is. I'm hoping once we get settled and working again I can turn things back around.

---

*We felt our resumes were getting automatically rejected due to the California address, and the fact that many companies stated upfront that they wouldn't pay relocation costs. So, we opened up a Seattle post office box, and the phone really started ringing (especially for J)! That was great news; however, to keep up the "front" that we actually lived in Seattle, J had to make a couple of flights to attend interviews. If you're wanting to move and are having trouble getting a job in your chosen city, this plan works--just be prepared to spend some money.