In reply to Snowdoggie (Forum Supporter) :
As someone who lives and works in the Bay Area, timing is everything traffic wise. Most hours of the day, you can travel freely wherever you want. Just not during commute time. I don't understand the people who insist on joining the Friday commute with their boats and travel trailers and ski racks. Go early or go late, and you won't have traffic issues.
Do you have time to sell the car in Wisconsin, fly out to find living arrangements, buy a car in Cali on that trip and drive home? That's what we did before we moved to South Carolina. I sold my rusty Jeep Liberty, flew down to Greenville and bought a rust free Yukon and drove it 1000 miles home. Fly and drive was quite a lot of fun and I got a rust free vehicle out of it.
Boost_Crazy said:In reply to Snowdoggie (Forum Supporter) :
As someone who lives and works in the Bay Area, timing is everything traffic wise. Most hours of the day, you can travel freely wherever you want. Just not during commute time. I don't understand the people who insist on joining the Friday commute with their boats and travel trailers and ski racks. Go early or go late, and you won't have traffic issues.
At least for trips to Thunderhill (I'm not really a fan of skiing) "early" means leaving home before noon to avoid getting stuck in traffic. "late" means after 9. I've got the flexibility at work for that not to be an issue, but not everyone does.
In reply to RacetruckRon :
Verbally accepted negotiated offer today with a plan to start in late August/early September so probably not. I don't want to drive a car back to WI just to turn around a week later and tow it back to CA! Great vacation idea though.
In reply to pointofdeparture :
Congrats! I spent the first 30ish years of my life in CA, between actual NorCal (Redding, not the Bay Area), the Central Valley, and Oxnard/Ventura. I had friends living in the East Bay and my only real complaint was cost of living. Sounds like your new cover easily covers that so you're all set. I would never recommend moving to the Central Valley, but the rest was nice.
The smog laws aren't the doom and gloom the internet likes to make it out to be. Personal experience showed me the car scene is thriving in all parts of California.
Interesting thread. We just came home from a couple of weeks wandering California on a fly-and-buy retrieving an old Saturn to a new Wisconsin home. One goal of the trip was reconnaissance on possible places to live in CA during the cold months.
I spent most of the past 3 decades in tech based in Wisconsin working for silicon valley companies and have spent a lot of time in the bay area and also have family in CA working for big tech. There's a lot of good advice here but I think you have sorted out the important stuff - IF you can make enough to make it worthwhile (and it does not require a 2X salary bump if you're already near 100K) and have the opportunity to advance professionally, it's worth it - even with the downsides of taxes, traffic, etc. I think I'd rather raise kids in Wisconsin, but since that's not a consideration it makes the decision that much easier.
Congrats!
Welcome to the Bay Area. I have been here 23 years now. Feel free to PM me. I am happy to help you get established.
There are a few other GRM'ers around. I've been thinking about trying to organize a meet and greet of some kind.
Again Welcome.
Congrats sir! Looking forward to CA hijinx!
I'd totally move back to San Diego where I grew up. Real estate market there is just too much higher than where I live for me to get what I want/need...
Type Q said:Welcome to the Bay Area. I have been here 23 years now. Feel free to PM me. I am happy to help you get established.
There are a few other GRM'ers around. I've been thinking about trying to organize a meet and greet of some kind.
Again Welcome.
Thank you! I will definitely reach out to those of you that are local (maybe just start a new thread) when things are more solidified.
Probably the hardest question right now is what the heck I'm gonna do with my tools in Wisconsin, if I should bring them or sell them. I would at least like to bring my HF rolling box but it's seeming like all the apartments I'm penciling in to look at only have a carport, and I really don't want to get a storage unit just for tools.
Don't foresee needing tools for a whole lot depending on the car I pick up in California, and I don't even know where I would be able to do work (though it would be nice to not have to pay a shop for every little thing I need to do), but it's hard to part with almost 20 years of accumulated tools nonetheless.
In reply to pointofdeparture :
I'd think you can find someone trustworthy to stick them in the back of their garage/shed/barn for a few years until you're ready for them. Might even be able to GRM-relay them with the Challenge coming up in a few months.
In reply to Pete Gossett (Forum Supporter) :
Yeah, that's an option, but I also don't want to be the guy that foists his crap on someone else. It's not like I have a priceless Snap-On collection or anything either.
The tools are easily replaceable if it comes down to it, having a place to do work is what I foresee being the hard part!
Show up on CA with as little as reasonably possible. The loved one is staying behind for now? Leave the tools with her or other family.
Once established in CA, reevaluate what arrives on subsequent trips.
How do you envision arriving in CA?
If your current furniture is not heirloom, you can buy a lot of similar, used, in CA when you arrive via CL/FB. Rather than spending thousands to bring your crap, spend thousands at Ikea, Amazon, Target after you arrive
You mean you can't get a place with at least a one car garage for one rolling tool box? They still aren't paying you enough.
This is why I turn down every single job offer I get from California, although I really get more offers from the DC area. Another place I would never go.
Maybe if they give me the CEO's house with a three car garage and a large backyard for the huskies. They would have to do that to match what I have in Dallas. I haven't lived in an apartment since college and have no desire to ever do so ever again. I need space for large dogs, three sports cars, a motorhome that no HOA could love, a beat up Jeep XJ, motorcycles, tools, collections of books, record albums and VHS cassettes and so on.
No.
Just no.
In reply to John Welsh :
This is the plan. I am going to be driving in with a moving truck full of stuff, but a lot of the heirloom stuff will be going to my parents' house until I own a home again at some point in the unspecified future.
That said the cost of buying all new stuff outweighs the cost of bringing a lot of the more expensive stuff I have so I am going to go through the trouble. Cheap furniture is one thing but when you get into nice sofas and electronics and all that kind of stuff that you would just be rebuying it feels like it makes more sense to bring it.
We are selling our house in Wisconsin and SWMBO is getting a month-to-month apartment until she finds work; at the end of the day I am really not worried about the tools nearly as much as stuff like grandpa's handmade 1930's dressers and that kind of thing which will not be making the move yet.
Snowdoggie (Forum Supporter) said:I need space for large dogs, three sports cars, a motorhome that no HOA could love, a beat up Jeep XJ, motorcycles, tools, collections of books, record albums and VHS cassettes and so on.
No.
Just no.
It sounds like we live very different lifestyles and it sounds like you are enjoying your life in Texas. I'm not sure why you feel the need to rain on my parade but I am making some small sacrifices in support of much greater things in the long run and I'm very excited about it. I can still have fun with cars from an apartment and carport. It will just look a little different than how you do it.
To clarify, I have found places with a garage that are within my range of affordability, but as a newbie to California I'd rather have something on the cheaper end in a great location as I'm going to want to spend much more time out and about exploring my new world than I will huddled up at home or in a garage.
When SWMBO finds work and moves out the plan is to pool resources and get a townhouse with a real garage which will be more along the lines of what we have in Wisconsin.
pointofdeparture said:Snowdoggie (Forum Supporter) said:I need space for large dogs, three sports cars, a motorhome that no HOA could love, a beat up Jeep XJ, motorcycles, tools, collections of books, record albums and VHS cassettes and so on.
No.
Just no.
It sounds like we live very different lifestyles and it sounds like you are enjoying your life in Texas. I'm not sure why you feel the need to rain on my parade but I am making some small sacrifices in support of much greater things in the long run and I'm very excited about it. I can still have fun with cars from an apartment and carport. It will just look a little different than how you do it.
To clarify, I have found places with a garage that are within my range of affordability, but as a newbie to California I'd rather have something on the cheaper end in a great location as I'm going to want to spend much more time out and about exploring my new world than I will huddled up at home or in a garage.
I'm not really raining on your parade. I'm responding to recruiters on Linked-In that keep calling me about jobs in places I am not interested in, some of them can be quite aggressive when a commission is involved. I am also surprised that there are no garages available around there. Garage condos are getting to be a big thing here in Texas. They also have higher end apartments here in Dallas that actually have garages. I would be surprised if they didn't have those in California. If you don't care about that then you don't have a problem. If I really had to go back to California I would probably get a place somewhere like Discovery Bay where I could get a boat dock and a big garage and commute in for work.
I really want to get a few acres out in West Texas on a work from home gig that would be even closer to the skiing in New Mexico and still close enough to the race tracks in Dallas where I could have more dogs and ride my dirt bike in the backyard. I like the desert.
At any rate, good luck to you.
In reply to Snowdoggie (Forum Supporter) :
Ah, my apologies for mis-construing.
I wholeheartedly agree on the LinkedIn recruiters. For every rare one that is offering a vaguely decent opportunity, it seems like there are 10 that are relentlessly pushing crap jobs in hope of finding someone desperate, and they are always the ones you can't get rid of.
I intend to fly out next week and look at apartments, we'll see what I can find, always the chance of something popping up or driving past a place not advertised on the usual sites. I'm not going to lose sleep over not having a garage though, it sounds like I might be able to swindle a local GRM'er into helping me put a roll bar in a Miata if push comes to shove 
Our home in Wisconsin is only 1100sf on a city lot, so it's really not going to take a lot of downsizing to make a 750sf apartment work for just me.
I'm excited for you! I went through a lot of the same stress over deciding what to bring and leave and it sounds like we're ending up in mostly the same place. Especially if you're getting relocation assistance, in my opinion it doesn't really make sense to rebuy stuff, unless you're worried about the move breaking things (I too left some more expensive/hard to replace furniture behind to be retrieved later).
I had a kind of weird experience with house hunting - the market up here at least is crazy, so all the places I had planned to see a week or more in advance of arrival were gone by the time I got here. My wife flew out for a long weekend for house hunting and we ended up finding new places to look it, but it was eye opening. The house we ended up renting I actually found and looked at right after dropping her off at the airport, but it has worked out really well for us over the last 4 years.
Re.: selling off all tools. I’ve yet to meet anyone who said “selling off all my tools is the best decision I ever made.”
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