This post brought to you by California Association of REALTORS®. The content and opinions expressed below are that of Six Figures Under.
My husband and I are from opposite sides of the country. We met in the middle (sort of) during our undergrad years in college. In some of our earliest conversations, he told me about the beauty of the area in California where he grew up and how it made for an ideal childhood. (I would say he gushed, but he looked this over before posting and objected to the word.) I liked where I grew up, but it was obvious that he was passionate about where he was raised. Hearing him talk about it, you would think he grew up in the Garden of Eden!
After we were married, we spent some time in Central America, then four years of law and business school in the Midwest. While we’ve loved everywhere we’ve lived, when we were done with school, there was no question where we’d end up.
After law school, we headed west for California. In fact, we’re living on the same property where my husband grew up. Our kids are climbing the same trees, splashing in the same river, and attending the same wonderful school that my husband did decades earlier.
Why We Love California
California really has something for everyone — big cities, wide-open rural areas, and outright wilderness; oceans, deserts, plains and mountains; theme parks, museums, zoos and aquariums; cosmopolitan life and the casual small-town feel — whatever you’re looking for, California has it covered.
Outdoor Recreation
A glance at our “fun” budget reveals that we don’t spend much on entertainment. Fortunately, the money spent on entertainment is no reflection of how much fun we’ve had.
Our family’s preferred form of recreation is outdoor adventure. We love exploring the beautiful world around us– and California’s got it all in the outdoor recreation category! From beaches, to snow-capped mountains and everything in between, we never go more than a few hours to find a perfect outdoor family adventure.
We love to go camping and hiking in all seasons and so do our kids. California has miles and miles of national forest, and BLM land where you can pitch a tent wherever you want without paying a dime. We’ve also enjoyed exploring some of the amazing natural wonders preserved in California’s state and national parks. Our “to do” list of places to explore continues to grow!
Garden
While I admit that California isn’t quite the Garden of Eden, it can grow just about anything! Of course the agricultural industry of California is crucial for our country’s food production, but I’m most interested on what we grow ourselves.
My husband grew up in a family that did their best to live off the land. With the beautiful climate and rich soil, they grew all of their own produce. Today, our family garden includes tomatoes, lettuce, spinach, potatoes, carrots, pumpkins, watermelons, cantaloupe, peas, beans, strawberries, and zucchini, just to name a few. We also have a small orchard with apples, cherries, plums, peaches, apricots, and almonds.
Buying a House
There is something special about owning your own place and digging in your own dirt. During our four years of graduate school, we owned our first home. We loved being homeowners, and loved our little home. When it was time to leave, we were sad, but we had a great REALTOR® who helped us prepare the home for the sale and helped make the whole process quick and seamless. It was wonderful, while we were busy preparing for the move, to have a competent professional in charge of responding to feedback, handling escrow, and finally getting us to closing.
We are really eager to start shopping for our next home! Before we decided to focus almost exclusively on repaying student loans, we spent hours (I’m going to be honest… sometimes it was hours every day) looking at potential purchases. Now with intensive loan repayment as goal number one, one of the biggest carrots that keeps us motivated is that when we finish paying loans we can start saving for a down payment! Then the real fun begins!
We want something with a more rural feel, outside of town but within 20-30 minutes of work. The first thing we’ll do when it’s time to get serious is sit down with a REALTOR® who spends a lot of time in the areas we’re looking. Having someone who constantly sees new properties and can act as our eyes and ears in the search is a huge plus. When we find just what we’re looking for, having an expert on our side to wade through the paperwork, answer questions, and negotiate effectively will be invaluable. One great thing about using a REALTOR® to help find a home is that it doesn’t cost us a thing. Our agent is paid out of the sale proceeds by the seller, so we get all the benefit of extra help in finding just what we want, at no actual cost!
So that’s our plan. We’ve found a great place to be, and someday soon we’ll be finding a beautiful home to be in as well. We plan on enlisting an experienced professional to help us find the place and make it ours as smoothly as possible.
Now, it’s back to grindstone to get these loans paid off, so we can move on to that next step.
If you’re thinking of buying or selling, find a REALTOR® sooner rather than later. It might be surprising how much they can help before the actual sale process begins.
If you know someone interested in becoming a REALTOR®, the California Association of REALTORS® is the place for them to become Champions of Home! Hashtag us with #ChampionsOfHome.
How About You?
- What do you love about where you live?
- If you’re saving for a home, what keeps you motivated?
5 years ago we moved from Minnesota to California’s Central Valley. We looked at a few cities, so worked with a few different realtors. The last realtor we worked with drove us around the city a bit after we looked at some homes and then said she just had one last thing she HAD to show us. We drove just a little bit outside of the town to a lake. She knew what it would take to sell this girl from the land of 10,000 lakes!
The funny thing is that we haven’t been back to the lake. But that thoughtful, personable realtor left a good impression on me that colored my impression of the city itself and that impression has proven to be true. I love living here and I’ve met wonderful people. And the first thing that impressed me was that the salespeople in every store I went to were never crabby!
That was a great read! Makes me miss California a lot! I am from Northern Europe and I love it here. But I have also lived in Southern California (Newport Beach) over 3 years and I still have family over there. I love the weather and the beach and who knows, maybe one day we will move there as well 🙂 Although it is so expensive!
We live in Southern California and it’s beautiful and perfect and sunny and SO darn expensive. I look at real estate listings in the midwest (I grew up in Wisconsin) and swoon over what I could get for a quarter of the price of our current home. It’s certainly a trade off. I do daydream about moving to a cheaper part of the country, but when I zero in on what makes me truly happy (being outside, having dinner outside, grilling outside, gardening, hiking, going to the beach, outside, outside, outside -notice a theme?) I realize that here I can do those things year round. It makes it worth it for us.
We lived in the South Bay area for a summer internship, and our new friends there were always trying to convince us to move there because of all of the houses and condos they knew of that were ONLY $500,000. I think I’m spoiled in the midwest.
Well, I grew up in Oregon, so as far as I’m concerned all the trees in Oregon point south because California sucks! 🙂 But having recently spent time in California and Oregon on a family vacation, I will admit California has some pretty places. Not many of them along the I5 though! We enjoyed the Redwoods. (Oregon is still better.)
We’re raising our family in Australia. My husband’s Australian and much like your husband, he gushed about what a great place it is to raise a family. At least one of us was always going to have to pull roots and leave, and, well, I was 19, it seemed like a fun thing to do at the time, I didn’t really give a thought to it being permanent . . . and I’m still here. I like it. It’s home. Raising kids in Australia has a lot to recommend it (the government is very serious about helping families out), but it sure was nice to take my family back to my home turf and show them around the prettiest place in the world.
We are saving for our next down payment and staying motivated is hard work! I am working my buns off to sell stuff in my etsy store (because every penny counts) and I can’t wait until we have our 20% to buy. I am hoping we can find some nice land, a little removed from the city, where we can build a house we love and live off of the land. I love gardening and I would like chickens and ducks 🙂
That’s exciting Elise! Keep up the hard work and you’ll be land-shopping soon! 🙂
When I was a teenager, I was desperate to live in California ( I’m English) it seemed the height of cool to this romantic teenage heart. This was late 60s/ early 70s, Flower Power lived on in my mind!
It was not to be and I’ve lived in the UK, and the Mediterranean, as well as France.
I live by the sea in SW England.
That’s awesome that romanticized about California as a teen!
I feel like on personal finance blogs less expensive areas to live tend to be highly espoused, and rightly so… to a degree. But as someone who was born and raised in SoCal, I will take the higher prices for the area (and make the sacrifices to be able to afford it!)
I just have to close my eyes, plug my ears and go “la la la la” when I hear about what you can get for your money in other places in the country!
Yep… priorities! I do wish Aldi would come to California, though.
Oh you’re making me to want to hop on a plane and come to California! I’ve actually never been that far West, which makes me a little sad. But I do love where I live. I live in North Georgia, home of wacky weather, mountains, and red clay. I’m sure the hubs and I will move out of state one day but for now Georgia will do. 🙂
I was actually born a Georgia peach (though I haven’t been back there since I was 2)!
We live In California, and just this past weekend we were deciding between Yosemite and Muir Woods for the day. They both had free entrance days last Saturday. We decided on Muir Woods and the beach and all it cost us was the gas to get there and back. It is nice to have all these choices, but the summer weather does get to me after a while.
We are in the middle of escrow right now on a house here, and I am ready to move in right now. We ended up buying a house that was for sale by owner, but had a Realtor helping us search before we found this one. He was great and if we ever decide to sell, we’ll probably use him.
Ooo we’ve never been to Muir Woods (the pic at the top is from Yosemite though)! 🙂