The other day, I stumbled upon a blog—an actual, old school blog—that someone has been writing since 2016 on Wordpress. This young woman who goes by Alphe writes about everything, from her travels around London and the UK, her DIY art projects, her cooking, and her health & fitness habits.
When I read her About page, I was surprised to learn that her lifelong dream wasn’t anything related to her career as a software engineer, nor her DIY projects or her cooking or health. It was to move to London from her home country of Poland. That’s what she considered her dream and she was proud to have made it happen.
In a way, that’s kind of what my husband and I did back in July. We moved from Portland, Oregon to sunny Orlando, Florida where the bugs are plenty and the drivers are maniacal. Aside from that, it’s been great.
I’m not going to tell you to move to a sunny place if the sun isn’t your thing. Or to endure big city life that isn’t your thing. What I am going to tell you is how we made the decision to move in the first place. I’ll give you two versions: the short one and the long one. Choose your own adventure and take what you will. Whatever you do, just don’t take five years like we did.
Without further ado, here it is:
The short version (in 6 easy steps)
Buy a house in bad neighborhood. Wait a year.
After a year, tell your spouse that you want to move. (He says no).
Wait a few more months. Bring up the subject again. Remind him of how awful your neighborhood is.
Compromise on the fact that you will not move overseas; instead, you’ll stick to the continental U.S. only. Do your research and narrow it down to six cities.
Spend thousands of dollars visiting each city. Don’t even look at your credit card spending for each visit.
Wait some more. Finally, decide that it’s now or never.
If this is enough info for you, then feel free to stop reading here. But if you’re a little curious, let me indulge you in…
The long version
It was October 2020, a year after we purchased our house when I told my husband that I didn’t see us living there long term. Which was sad, because we, like many people who achieved the American dream of buying a home, wanted to stay forever. But my gut told me something else.
“You don’t like this house?” he asked, incredulous.
“It’s not that I don’t like this house,” I replied. “I just don’t like this neighborhood.”
I went on to explain all the things I didn’t like. The big one being the lack of sidewalks. I realized how much I took sidewalks and lush trees in our old neighborhood for granted now that we no longer had it. Instead, we had pot holes and gravel.
We continued to drive over pot holes and gravel for the next five years, cringing every time we did.
I can give you a longer list of things that didn’t work with our lifestyle, but none of that is relevant, because we told ourselves we couldn’t move. We had to make it work somehow. After all, it’s not easy buying a home. Our process was flawless. We were lucky that we had all of our ducks in a row and the right people to help. But that wasn’t everyone’s experience.
And let’s not forget that we were in the midst of a worldwide pandemic. Many things were unknown, including how long the pandemic would last. So I gave up this crazy idea of moving overseas to the UK.
I’ve always been pretty open about my seasonal depression. It hits both of us actually, although I presume that it’s more of a domino effect. I get it first then pass it on to my husband. Together, we were two miserable people in the winter, existing miserably together in Portland.
About a year later, in October 2021, I brought up the subject of moving again. This time, he was more in tuned with the idea. He even indulged me in the ‘moving overseas’ thing for a while. Then we decided, rationally through Google docs, that we will stick to the continental U.S. only.
But where? And when?
We tackled the ‘where’ question first by examining all the cities/places we might be interested in. Several from California popped up. Then we decided it was too expensive to be in California, period. We considered Washington, Texas, Rhode Island, Florida and Minnesota.
Usually, when people relocate to another state, it’s because they have a connection—either a job, a friend, or a family member. We had none of those things. The only states where we had family was Texas and Washington.
And so, flights were booked and itineraries were created as we spent the next two years or so visiting our top six cities—Houston, TX, Austin, TX, Providence, RI, Seattle, WA, Orlando, FL, and Minneapolis, MN. If you look closer, you’ll notice that all but one of them are large states in terms of size.
We made pros and cons list for each city and state. By the end of 2024, we knew that most likely, it would be either Texas or Florida. Both of these states have one thing in common: they are warmer states. Florida has sunshine practically year round and Texas, while humid, has a strong Vietnamese/Asian presence, something that was important to us.
But could we really handle the concrete barricades that are the freeways in Texas? No. Communities seem so vastly disconnected and something was off about driving on the freeways there. It felt a little sad to see nothing but beige and white.
Still, we thought we were going to move to Washington. This was because in early spring 2024, I got a job working for a transit agency in Seattle. The job required me to have residence in the state of Washington. So it felt like a no-brainer to move up there. We could be near some of our relatives and still enjoy nature in the Pacific Northwest.
Again, my gut told me something was off, for as soon as we began our search for a home in the Seattle metropolitan area, we found that it was immensely expensive. While my income at the transit agency was decent, my husband’s job was not transferrable, which meant that he would have to find a new job.
Since we didn’t know how long it would take for that to happen or what his new salary would be, we realized it would be a tough sell for a bank to give us a loan for $450,000 USD. That’s literally what we’d need in order to obtain a house that wasn’t falling apart and located in a better neighborhood than where we were at the time.
What tipped the needle for me was after we took a family vacation to Orlando in January 2025. I don’t know why I wanted to go to Orlando. After all, my husband had visited the city and we’d crossed it off as “nope, we’ll probably end up paying too much for insurance” kind of place, which ha ha…ironically became true. I suppose I was simply tired of seeing constant, all day gray and mist and feeling the chills and driving through torrential downpours isn’t exactly fun for me.
After the trip, I realized that we had spent nearly five years swinging the pendulum back and forth: to move or not to move, that was the question. We’ve shared enough Google docs and spent many hours talking along with countless text messages. It was either now or never.
“I’ve done enough thinking,” I told him. “I think we should move to Florida.”
Frankly, I felt somewhat smug by my decision. Nobody told me. I just knew. I thought about my parents’ generation and the generations before them, how they all suffered and had few choices. My parents moved to the U.S. because we were sponsored by my uncle. It wasn’t their choice. I have them to thank because it is precisely their generation that paved the way for me. I realized I have the privilege to move, because I want to, not because I have to, and I sure as hell aren’t going to squander it.
Isn’t that how things should be? One generation makes it better for the next one? I’m not saying that pulling my kids out of their cozy and comfortable life in Portland where they had a routine and a group of friends was the easiest idea. It was tough emotionally, just as it was tough for my parents to have to leave a place they didn’t want to leave.
But in retrospect, my life is better because we left Vietnam. 1000% better. My parents helped me come to terms with the fact that taking a risk is okay, that it may not be great at first, but it’ll work out in the end.
A long awaited introduction
This guy, otherwise known as my hubby, has been working on his woodworking hobby for the past three-ish years. What started out as a little whittling project turned into full-scale experimentation with various wooden projects. I’m kind of biased, but I think it’s pretty great.
There is an excellent selection of new products just posted. They would make great gifts or home decor items. They’re all meticulously designed and crafted, made for entertaining and building connection with others. Go check it out!
Also, join me on LinkedIn!
If you’re on LinkedIn, then please join me in October as I weigh in on the ridiculousness of this thing called “job searching” in 2025.
Every day of the month, I’ll post the real truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth…in graphics form. Think of it as an image with text. It’s basically job search humor. I’m hoping that this coping mechanism will elicit a few laughs, but if not, at least I can laugh about it.
And no, I have not gotten a job offer yet. The most I’ve ever gotten is ghosting after an interview. Honestly, if it wasn’t for savings and free Panera coffee, I don’t think I’d survive.