My family felt this little nudge to leave California about 20 years ago which led us to a search for a state that would offer what our family was looking for. We’d had a couple of friends who had moved to Boise from California, and they said it was the best, so we figured why not? Let’s give it a try! We left for Boise, Idaho in 2002 and we never looked back.
I know, because I listened to all of your stories, that uprooting your family to move to a new state, leaving Family behind, and leaving what you know, even if it is for something better, is not an easy decision, nor is it easy to do. I understand that it’s very different emotionally and mentally to actually take the entire responsibility for choosing to move somewhere completely new just for the sake of finding a better place to live than it is when you move for a job change or a different type of life change where you don’t have much choice.
Today we are having a conversation with my two wonderful sisters, Celeste and April, about leaving California, or staying! Celeste has chosen to stay in California, and April chose to leave California for Texas about five years ago so we’re going to talk about what has gone into all of our choices to stay or leave California and hopefully, it will be helpful for you to hear some different perspectives when you are thinking about leaving California or your current home state.
Let’s begin with a little bit of background on us. We were all born in Southern California where we lived in an L.A. beach town until the late 80s, and then our dad had a job change so we moved to the Sacramento area. Celeste moved back to L.A. for a time for school, and then lived all over with the Air Force, and now her family has settled back into the Sacramento area in 2009. April’s family was in Orange County for over 20 years with a short time in Virginia and then she moved to the Dallas area in 2017.
Let’s start with asking April some questions.
Summer: So, April, you guys moved about five years ago before everybody started leaving California. Some people had already started to leave at that time, and during that time, that was kind of the influx of people leaving to go to Texas. Boise wasn’t really on the radar then, so what was kind of the last straw that made you guys leave? You lived in Southern California and had your careers there and everything.
April: It was a hard decision. We loved California and, as you explained, we’d lived there most of our lives and there are so many great things about California but, I don’t know if there was one final straw, but there were several things leading up to it, but I guess the final straw would be that my son could not get the proper medical care that he needed due to some of the policies that were in the California Health System. So that was something that we just felt we really needed to make sure that he was able to get the medical care he needed, and we also had some concerns about what was going on in the schools. We had had our children in private schools for the last four years in California, but those things were trying to change, too and so we started looking elsewhere, and the opportunity came up for my husband to transfer to Texas. We took a vacation out there and met with a lot of people out there and asked a lot of questions, and it seemed like a really great place to raise our family, so we decided to take that leap of faith. We actually ended up on a street called “Faith Trail”, so we said that was a sign, this is our faith trail.
Summer: Like most of you guys listening know, and if you’ve called me and talked to me, we always talk about what a huge leap of faith it is when you’re leaving everything you know to try something new. There are a lot of difficulties to overcome. In this case, April, you had a senior in high school so it could have been a little bit easier to say, “Hey, you know, let’s just wait one more year and see what happens. We’ve got a senior”. But it was really the right thing to do. Did you find that once you got there that your medical care concerns were alleviated, and you have a little bit more freedom?
April: Yes, absolutely. I mean, we were able to find a great doctor right away and continue on with some of the care that we were receiving here, and it was so much better for our family.
Summer: And you were able to have your kids go back to public school there?
April: Yes, and leaving California was helpful financially, too. My kids all went back into public school. My daughter finished out her senior year and did great, and my son started as a freshman. He graduated and they had so much help for him. He has a lot of um disabilities. He has autism and so that’s why we weren’t able to really get the care we needed in the public schools in California, but once we got to Texas, it was just wonderful. They had so many things in place for him at the high school, and he ended up graduating as a senior with really great grades. They gave him the support he needed, and it’s been great.
Summer: Don’t sell people on Texas! You want Idaho! So, let’s talk about schools a little bit. Celeste hasn’t been super happy with the public schools in California, either. She’s in Northern California and for now, Celeste is choosing to stay, and we’ll let her talk a little bit more about the reasons why, but speaking about schools, and Celeste also has a child on the Spectrum. That’s a big concern, and I hear that from you guys when you call, too. I have lots of you call that are saying, “what does Idaho have to offer as far as children that are on the Spectrum, or have other special needs, or educational needs”? Celeste, you were able to mitigate that how?
Celeste: So, we were very blessed. Probably about 10 or 11 years ago we had some friends of ours who wanted to offer some different educational opportunities as opposed to traditional Public School, so they started a public charter school called John Adams Academy that offered a lot more of what we were looking for our kids. We also needed help for my son to again, sort of like what April struggled with her son, we were finding in the traditional public schools in California it was really hard to get the proper help for our son and switching him to John Adams Academy really made a big difference for him. He thrived there, he loved it there and graduated in 2020. That’s why we were super blessed to be able to have that opportunity here.
Summer: I know we have lots of conversations between all three of us all the time about all the politics going on and how it’s affecting everyone, so I know that there’s a lot going on with politics that you are not happy with, but you know what is making you stay. As a realtor, I’m always talking about politics to people who are leaving California and moving to Idaho, and so they hear it from me all the time, but it’s not the right thing necessarily for everybody to leave California. What are some of those reasons that made it worth it for you to stay?
Celeste: We stayed for, actually for several reasons. Our parents are here, and my husband’s parents are also here. In fact, we basically share a property with them out in rural California. We’re very fortunate to have a great piece of property. We were able to build our dream home on it. We have livestock and all kinds of things. We just love it out there, being close to my parents and my husband’s parents. We stay because my husband has a very secure job, and we just love it. We just honestly love it here. We are rural California, so we don’t see a lot of the issues out here where I am that you might see in the cities as much. We’re quite a bit removed from that.
Summer: Like I’ve talked about with lots of you guys that call, everyone’s in a different phase of life and sometimes you might be in a phase of life where it is getting too expensive for you to stay in California, or you’re in between jobs, or you don’t have that job security, and it makes it worth it for you to leave to some place like Idaho (not Texas) and try to find a better place for you. But having said all that, Celeste, you have had to do quite a bit to adjust your lifestyle, right? So, their power gets turned off all the time because they’re in the hills where if the wind is too great, or it’s too hot, they could lose power for two weeks, so they got Tesla batteries.
Celeste: I think it was about three years ago now we had massive power shut offs all across rural Northern California. When the winds get really high, it gets really dry here at the end of the summer time, they shut the power down for safety reasons so as to not spark these massive fires that have come through from time to time, but yes, we were without power, and our longest was seven days which, the problem with us is, we are on a well and when we lose power, we also lose water. We did end up getting a big solar system, and we did get four Tesla batteries, and those have definitely come in handy. So far, the power’s been shut off a few times since we had it and it’s nice that our lights don’t go off.
Summer: And that you have water. So, we don’t really lose power where we are in Idaho, and most places in Idaho don’t. I mean, of course there’s the occasional “somebody runs into you know a power pole and power’s gone for a couple hours”, but we don’t, and April, you guys don’t generally have a problem with power loss, either.
April: Just that one time when we had this big snowmageddon last year where everybody’s pipes froze, but it’s not like a general expectation like it is in California.
Celeste: We expect it at the end of every summer and into the fall. I guess it’s just a part of life. You hate to say it’s normal and you expect it, but we do.
Summer: What are some of the things, April, that you guys feel like you’ve gained since leaving California? What was the hardest thing for you guys about leaving? Their transition was really hard. They had a long transition, like a year-long transition period. Talk a little bit about that because that happens to you guys when you come and move to Idaho, too. A lot of people may say, “hey, I don’t want to deal with that, so I’m just not moving”, but if you do it and do the hard work, then you get the reward of getting to a new place to live. So, talk a little bit about your challenges when you did decide to move.
April: So, for us, we had already decided that leaving California was the right choice. That was kind of a no-brainer for us but figuring out where to go was kind of hard. My husband looked at different opportunities, we even looked in Idaho, which we loved, and I would be just as happy in Idaho because of my sister, I assure you, but we were just looking for, I don’t know, some place that we could go where my husband could still do the same line of work. When he came to look with a job position in Boise, he was really used to living and working in Orange County in L.A., and for him, he felt like it was a little small and he just was used to bigger cities and different opportunities, so that was kind of his main concern. When he came to check out Boise it was just so much smaller than he’d grown up with his whole entire life.
Summer: But what happened when you guys tried to move?
April: Okay, so trying to move…we just had a really difficult time finding a house. I actually found a house that fit all those things, but it had some problems with water in the back, so we backed out of that and my husband, he had taken this job, so he moved to Texas about nine months before we did, and I stayed back to kind of secure things and get the house that we were leaving finished.
Summer: Then they did what I do all the time for clients in Idaho. Her husband was there in Texas and was working with the realtor, and then April was not there. She was in California, and so you had to do all these video tours, and so she had to rely on her husband because they bought the home they live in now with her husband having seen it in person, but she hadn’t seen it.
April: I have to say my Summer helped me a lot. This is before you became a realtor. Maybe this is why you’re in real estate, because you helped me. We would go on Zillow and go on all these different websites to look at houses and stuff, and we basically found the one that we loved, and I had to sign electronically, sight unseen, for this house. It was scary. The thing that did help us was I did fly out earlier and my husband I drove around to all the different places that were near driving distance from my husband’s work, and we kind of narrowed it down to three places that we thought were great, and so I would just start to look at houses in those specific neighborhoods and areas, and that really helped, I think, because then I knew that I would at least love the location, and it had good schools. I had done some research to find out exactly where we wanted to live.
Summer: First of all, that’s exactly the way to do it and that’s how I help people all the time. You come out for a visit, get to know those main areas because, even though our inventory is changing, the inventory is still pretty low usually for what people are looking for and so if you’re waiting for that right house to come on the market, or have a situation like April’s family did, then that way when I’m doing video tours with you, you can see, “like okay. I remember that neighborhood. I like that neighborhood.” It gives you so much more confidence in the home that you’re buying because the house is important but, of course, the location and the community are very important. Okay, so some of April’s comments reminded me that I was going to ask Celeste about this: Talking about the comparison of the cost of living. Are you guys doing anything to mitigate the rest of the cost-of-living issues in California?
Celeste: We’ve definitely had to make some changes. Like everybody across the Nation, inflation has hit everyone. The price of gas in California is always…
Summer: Let’s say gas prices. Gas where you live, Celeste?
Celeste: Well, the cheapest right now is about 4.95 a gallon.
Summer: Okay, so we’re about 3.49.
April: We’re 2.79
Summer: Texas is the winner on the cheap gas! What are some of the other things, Celeste?
Celeste: Energy costs in California are outrageous, which our solar system helps with, but we paid, even with our solar panels, we probably paid double last year of what we paid the previous year.
Summer: Oh wow!
Celeste: Gas for our cars. Again, we are in rural California. We do a lot of driving so gas is a big expense for us because we’re about 10 miles out of town, and about 15 miles from my daughter’s school, so that’s a lot of driving. We do have livestock also, so there’s feed for them and that honestly has doubled in price.
Summer: You can definitely see how it’s very interesting how people who are in a position to be able to stay will stay because you can make those changes, you can choose to have your kids go to a different school and you can drive them 15 miles to get to that charter school, or you can make those changes and get the solar panels with the battery storage that you need, or you know all of these changes that people can make that can make it so that they can stay in California. Then there’s, you know, obviously going to be a large portion who can’t so for us, I know a lot of you guys move to the Boise area and I help your whole entire family move, which I’m so jealous because we obviously all live in different places and our family’s always been a little bit that way where we just try to get together how we can. So, April, how has that been you, living farther away from family? I guess in relation to thinking about how anyone watching this might be thinking, “well, if I leave, I’m going to be so far away from my family”. How has that been for you guys in Texas?
April: I think that has been something that’s been difficult. We’re all pretty close, I mean, we love each other so much, but in Texas I do feel very isolated. It is not easy to get on the flight. Our closest airport is Dallas Fort Worth, and it takes about an hour without traffic to get there. It’s just…there’s not a lot of direct flights that we’ve found, so that’s kind of hard, and I do kind of get that homesick feeling. It’s not as easy to visit family, and we don’t have any family in Texas. I mean, you know, the closest we have is Idaho and California, so it does seem like that is something that I do feel bad about. When I lived in Southern California, I could get to my parents’ house in a seven-hour drive, you know, or to see Celeste, and it was easier to fly out because there are more airports down there. It is a little bit more isolated in Texas.
Summer: My husband’s brother finally moved to Boise, but we still don’t have any family that’s come. We’ve been there over 20 years and we still don’t have family that’s come so, you know, to go from Boise to Northern California is a super easy flight and an easy eight-and-a-half-hour drive. My daughter and her husband and little baby ended up moving to Southern California, back to Orange County, so that’s part of our lives again. I mean, for us, it’s not a big deal because we drive a lot, so a 14-hour drive to me, that’s a day drive. Overall, April, would you say it seems like the benefit for your own individual family of living somewhere that met your family needs better is worth having had to leave your family behind?
April: It is because my husband is so much happier. I didn’t mention that before, but in California, he was having a lot of problems with his building. He was a healthcare administrator and so he’s in charge of a lot of buildings, but was getting sued constantly in California, and it was becoming really hard and stressful on the family. Not only that, but just a lot of the policies that went into running those buildings in California, and the laws that kept changing. Things were getting really stressful for him and so when we finally made the decision to move to Texas, he’s so much happier and has kind of found a different career opportunity for him that he’s been able to change within the same field. It’s just, he’s home more, he’s less stressed, and our quality of our family life is so much better than it would have been in California. We wish we could all live close together, but we do need to do what’s best for our individual families.
Summer: I did try to drive to Texas once from Boise. This was a while ago, and I put my three kids in the car and I’m like, let’s just drive! It is so far to drive. It was like two 15-hour days straight.
April: Texas is so big.
Summer: It is big, it is far away. Another thing that people need to deal with, something you may be concerned about when you are moving to someplace totally new, is the cultural differences. I’d say basically in Boise to California, I mean I don’t know, we’ve spent a lot of time in Washington. We had a grandma there. That whole West, it seems to be pretty similar. There are slight cultural differences but it’s pretty similar. You’re not going to feel like you’re necessarily living in a totally different world except, for people in Idaho are definitely very friendly. They’re going to hold the door open for you. I know when April moved to Texas, this seemed to be quite a cultural difference between Texas and California, the first thing was that her daughter was going to go to prom or homecoming, and everybody was like, “are you getting a mum?” April’s like, “what’s a mum?” I was like, “that is not real. People do not wear mums. That is not real”. That was kind of your first, I think, introduction to there’s this whole under current of this society in Texas, these deep roots. So how has that been? Have you adjusted to that?
(These are Mums!)
April: The culture was a bit different. They are considered to be the South, so we had to get used to eating brisket all the time. I probably gained six pounds within the first three months, and they said, oh yeah, everything’s bigger in Texas and that is true. They’re very hospitable. You eat more. I feel in California, it’s much more of a health-conscious state. I did find, so my sisters and I all are all gluten-free and dairy-free, not by choice, but because we all have dietary issues, so it was a little bit hard and still is a little bit hard. I don’t know anybody in my area that seems to be gluten-free, so I have to kind of venture out to find that, where I feel like California was a lot easier to find things that I could eat. I’m getting used to that, kind of used to bringing my own food to barbecues. I think that I’ve just had to teach my kids to embrace the culture. My son Richie with autism got in trouble all the time because he would not say “ma’am yes ma’am”, “no sir”, “no ma’am”, so I told my kids this is a fun adventure. We’re in a different place and we need to kind of learn to accept their culture and just embrace all the great things that come along with it. You wouldn’t think it’d be that different, but sometimes it’s almost like a different country, different bugs, different weather, different activities.
Summer: Bigger bugs. That’s why I’m not moving to Texas. I went to her house and the bugs were no good for me. So, as you all know, it’s not necessarily the right answer for everyone to leave California to move to Boise (and not Texas). It really is an individual choice and for Celeste, they chose to stay. Do you have any last things? Any last words of wisdom that you’d like to share about staying and your feelings on that?
Celeste: We just love California, you know, and with our parents here and my husband’s parents here, it’s nice being close to them, and they’re in their Golden Years. Knowing we’re around to be able to help if they need our help.
Summer: A lot of you guys are in those situations. Your parents aren’t needing to, or aren’t willing to move, and that is a huge decision factor in it because also, Celeste’s in-laws are in a position where they aren’t going to move and don’t need to, and don’t have the motivation to, and that’s fine and that works for them. It would be probably very different if both your husband’s parents and our parents were needing to leave. I think you would still probably stay.
Celeste: We might, but that would definitely depend on where everybody went. I love my land and my animals.
Summer: It’s hard to give that up when you have that. April, what about you? Any words of advice for people who are doing exactly what you guys did and leaving?
April: I would just say, like we talked about before, it’s just that leap of faith. If you make your pros and cons list, and there are things that are obviously are going to be important for staying maybe where you are, but there’s going to be a list that’s good to move, and so you just have to kind of weigh those both out Once you make that decision, just take that leap of faith and embrace what your decision. Go forward and you can always find good things in where you’re moving to.
Summer: I want to thank Celeste and April for being with us today and having an honest conversation about leaving California.
Feel free to reach out to us to talk about getting to know what Idaho has to offer, and the timing, and seeing if it’s right for you. I hope this conversation with my sisters has been helpful for you guys and we will see you next time
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