Feliz Navidad Mustachians!
Apologies for the long post, didn't realize it would be this long! I would appreciate any advice that could be passed on for those daring to read the below novel lol.
My wife and I are currently debating what course of direction to take our lives. We are wondering if anyone could offer advice as to what things we should be valuing etc in order to arrive at the best decision... Currently it seems we are at a cross roads between the financially smart move and a move that could really boost our happiness. I am not sure which criteria is more important as they are seemingly correlated, to a point...
Option 1: Stay with current state
We currently live in a small town in Southern Indiana that has basically one major employer. It is a Fortune 200 company, but there are no other jobs for about an hour drive in any direction. One result of this is this town has very low expenses, especially relative to the amount they pay. Currently my wife makes about $110k in a job that has a market rate of about $80k (so enjoys a healthy premium). I earn about $60k in a role that has a market value of about $75k (so I am underpaid), but my wife's premium is greater than my deficit so we are winning as a team. Combined salary: $170k.
We are currently spending about $5k per month combined. This will go down to $4k per month if we buy a house in cash next year (~$100k). This would allow us to save a ton of money and retire in about 6 - 7 years from now. However the issue is the town is unbelievably boring and the town's major employer would render our house worthless if they were to run into financial trouble because they are the only source of jobs in the town. This scares us... On the plus side, it is a small town with good biking trails so commuting to work via bicycle is definitely an option as we live only 3 miles from work. Thus to summarize: Housing will be minimal as we could purchase a house in cash and commute via bicycle to work.
Option 2: Commute to preserve home value, boost entertainment options
We have thought about moving about 45 minutes north to a town that is a suburb of major city in order to have a more stable home price (because we intend to sell our home in 6-7 years when we retire to move to Tampa Florida). This would also greatly boost activities (especially cheap/free options) that we could engage in for fun. However as all mustachians know, the three categories to take care of for a high savings rate are housing costs, transportation and food. We both strength train so we eat a lot of food, but we only go out to eat once a week so we eat about $900 per month worth of food, but that amount is 90% grocery store. Moving north would depreciate our cars much faster than we do now (drive about 5k miles per year currently) and our gas costs would sky rocket.
Option 3 - Move to Tampa Florida now
Tampa FL is where I was born and where my dad, the most important person in my life other than my wife, lives. I very much enjoy biking, running, paddle boarding, kayaking, swimming, etc. that Florida offers year round. I have lived in Florida before as an adult (Miami) and felt an immense amount of joy during my time living here (currently in Tampa visiting for the holidays). The only reason I left was at the time my student loans had rendered me so cash flow constrained that the only way to get my life back on track in a quick way was to find a place with a large gap between earning potential and cost of living, hence this is why I ended up where I am now... However I have been debt free for years and my wife and I have about $100k of disposable, post-tax cash to invest to go along with our annual max contributions to both 401k and HSA plans. I feel we may be at a point now where maybe we start to enjoy our lives a bit instead of delaying all gratification until retirement.
Tampa housing looks like it will run us about $200k for a house of similar size as our current community. Assuming we both get market rate for jobs down here (per Glassdoor), we would end up with about $150-$160k per year combined income. But actual pay rates could vary widely as we dont have experience with the labor market here. However we likely would end up working in very different locations and would need to commute long distances in very congested traffic to get to work, which would obviously but a huge negative swing on the happiness curve... Car clownism at its worst :(. Other than that, monthly expenses should be similar...
Sorry for the long post, didn't expect it to be this long!
Do you guys have any advice on the best way to sort through these options? I currently see Tampa as the high risk high reward option while staying put is the low risk, low reward (in terms of current happiness) option.. The expected value (probability of success * happiness utility) is probably the same for both options... We have been going back and forth for weeks and can't come to a solid answer in any direction!
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