View from the pier in my beach town!
Most of you know that I am a tried and true California girl. Born and raised here. Sunshine, wheat grass juice, and the beach…I am lovin’ it all!
But as my girl Tonya pointed out in her post about SoCal living, it is darned expensive to live here. Yes, there are parts of the state where the cost of living is less, but our state wasn’t designed for easy transportation.
You want to get anywhere here, ya gotta drive. A lot.
Unless you live in San Francisco. And if you do, I am jealous. That city is awesome. Also, home of the 49ers!
But I digress…
As I was saying, Cali is expensive. And right now, we live in a 2 bedroom apartment about 10 minutes from the beach. The weather is awesome and I love the city we live in.
But here’s the thing: we are basically priced out of our area. We need to move into a bigger place (my dad is moving in with us) and we can’t afford a bigger place in the county we live in. 2 bedroom apartments? Fine. 3 bedroom apartments? The price goes up ridiculously!
It is so expensive, and they charge more because hey, they can! Everyone wants to live by the beach, right? Everyone wants the overcast mornings brimming with salty air, that burn off to a dazzling spectacle of sunlight.
So, as much as I love my beloved ocean, at some point, I will not be living “just minutes” from it. We plan on moving to a much more inland city, where we can get more for our money and basically rent a house for what we are paying in apartment rent.
My beautiful beach will still be there waiting for me to visit. It just won’t be as often. But I am taking every chance I can get right now, to go as often as I can before we move sometime in the next few months.
Maybe I’ll pick up some shells to house in my new place 
Have you guys ever been priced out of your area? Was cost of living a factor in where you live now?
Aww but at least you’ll still be living relatively close to the ocean! I live pretty much in the very middle of the US haha. Luckily living is pretty cheap here.
I would imagine the cost of living is less where you are
And you get snow! I wish we got snow in the winter 
This is exactly why we live in Omaha. My wife was born and raised in San Diego and her parents live five minutes from the ocean. Her friends about killed me when we decided to move to Omaha a year after we were married. The thing is though, for what we were paying to live in a studio apartment five miles from the border we have a house in Omaha. I lost count at the bottles of sand and jars of sea shells in our house long ago. Living in San Diego for 18 months myself though, I can completely understand why her friends were ready to kill me.
I’ve heard San Diego is a bit pricey, but I suppose all beach cities seem to come with their own price tag
We have always lived in an extremely low cost area so I can’t really relate. However, it sounds like it makes sense for you to move! You need more room!!! =)
We definitely need more room! And honestly, it will be nice to rent a house instead of an apartment. Hearing your neighbors through the walls gets old after awhile
We live in a very expensive part of Canada and I would be happy to ship you all of the snow that we have, anytime you like!! We just had over 10 inches of new snow on Sunday and it is still lightly coming down today.
We originally moved to this city for jobs and really didn’t take the cost of living into account because at that time we were making good money. Now that we are living on a tight budget we have discussed moving but there really isn’t anywhere else in Canada that we would like to live right now.
We didn’t really take the cost of living into account either, we just knew we wanted to live in this particular town. But now, we just can’t afford it
I’d love some snow, but I’m not sure my fellow So-Calers would
Well you know I completely understand. I still check craigslist pretty often with the thought that I probably should move, but can’t bring myself to do it right now. It depends on my mood. Right not work is great (even though the car isn’t), so it helps in staying, but as soon as things get dry…
Yeah, you know where I’m coming from… I love it here, but we need more space and the prices are just way too much. Decisions, decisions…
I’ve always wanted to live by the beach, but unless we move to Alaska, we could probably never have it make financial sense. We talk about living somewhere else a couple of times a year, but it’s just dang cheap to live where we do, and it’s certainly not bad most of the time. We’ll have to settle for vacations. Good luck with your move!
I’ve always wanted to visit Alaska! My husband wants to take one of those cruises that go up there
The good thing about living somewhere less expensive is that you can save up for awesome vacations! I totally agree!
When I finished grad school I moved in with the bf. It was sad leaving Manhattan, but we get slightly more space here in NNJ. Plus the place we bought would have been millions of dollars instead of half a million. Tradeoffs aren’t easy, but we have each other and that’s what makes us happy.
“Tradeoffs aren’t easy, but we have each other and that’s what makes us happy.” I love this! Well, said
We live where are are now due to the high cost of living closer to the city and even recently we looked at a new place around where we live now (but a little bit bigger) and it was way out of our price range. I think that if we want to move again it will be further into the outskirts due to the high cost of living in Australia.
It seems so many places are getting more and more expensive these days!
I am sure you are going to miss the beach. The good news is sometimes we appreciate things even more when we have less of it? LOL, trying to look at the bright side. Oh how I would love to live by a beach, even the dirty Galveston beach would work.
I am totally going to miss living by the beach, but I am going to spend as much time there as possible till we move
Living in Brooklyn, a stone’s throw from Manhattan, I can definitely relate with being priced out of the rental & housing market. We decided that we’re moving to Florida when we are ready to buy a house. I just will not justify paying over $400K for a very modest house built in 1900 that still needs $30K of renos…just won’t do it. It’s nice of you to have your Dad moving in. Do you mind me asking what prompted that decision?
Florida sounds nice
I’ve never been!
My dad is getting older and it just made sense for him to live with us instead of by himself. Us kids have to make sure our parents are taken care of, you know?
Price played a major role in my decision to move to Guatemala. Most of my friends live in cramped quarters and pay half their income for the privilege, I’d rather have space and visit them once or twice a year. Good luck with the move!
Thanks Pauline! I hope everything goes well with the move, too. I totally understand why you moved to Guatemala. Like you, I’d rather have peace of mind where I am living, and be able to visit other places whenever I want.
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