Pros and cons. Please exclude politics as it'll just destroy the thread, we know all about it.
19 replies (most recent on top)
If you like to stay healthy and in shape, like a diverse plethora of culture, music, hunting, fishing and various worldly cuisines and reasonable COL with affordable large homes and estates, Texas is for you. If you are a pathetic woke out of shape old loser gorging on cheese and wine all day and like small expensive homes and to be surrounded by an echo chamber of close-minded progressive people with self-induced crime and extreme poverty and suffering just a step away, you will love California. Please do us all a favor and stay.
If you are fit, enjoy the outdoors and like culture, California is for you.
If are you fat, prefer to stay indoors or in a concrete pond, Texas is best.
No Californian uses the term “Cali”. Always glad when people decide to move to Texas. Happy for them and happy I’m not one of them. To each his own.
Weather is nicer in CA. You can be outdoors for almost the entire year in SR. Of course you pay for it with 10% income tax, real estate being 4x and just everything more expensive.
Houston is fairly terrible summer weather for 5 months and maybe 3 are cold. So you do get like 3 or 4 good months though. There are also major hurricanes. But of course the upside is you get incredibly cheaper houses and no state income tax. Oh and people are friendlier.
Overall if you are in your 20s CA may be the place still. In your 30s it could go either way. But once you get older and have kids and want more space than a 1 bedroom apartment Houston starts looking good.
In San Ramon I had a 1 bedroom 900 sq ft apartment. For the same monthly price I own a 4 bedroom home in Houston with a pool. Since I now have kids its just a no brainer.
The one thing I also say is that Houston is super pro oil. In CA as an oil company employee you are viewed as a pariah in many circles.
@1pib, Incorrect. Many of the most talented and successful career people in the entire world happily and eagerly move to various places for their company quite regularly and earn great experiences and gain great benefits, culturally and compensation wise. In fact, a lot of the more ambitious people try not to remain in one location and seek transfers regularly. Maybe working at an adult job with grown-ups is not for you?
Tough decision that you knew was coming for CVX employees.
Far more industry experienced workers available in Houston (folks that prefer working Downtown instead of the Woodlands). Negatives: Heat & humidity, worse traffic, property taxes and HVAC bills. Positives: Senior management FINALLY "bit the bullet" and consolidated in Houston, significantly lower cost of living while still retaining petroleum industry wage level and more reasonable real estate prices.
I don't think employees who refused package last time realized how quickly move to Houston was coming.......
https://twitter.com/JJWatt/status/1528891767025635328?t=LQFK59I6jddbBqVw_2xjWw&s=19
Texas is becoming California. They just do not know that yet.
@zra rocks
Only those who let a company dictate where they live are weak. You have to move to Texas to keep your chevron job? Find another one, chevron isn’t the only option out there.
Thanks @1xiy. Looks like Texas wins, hands down. Moving there tomorrow.
California
- Pros: Weather, Food, Diversity of Everything, Good Public Uni System
- Cons: Taxes, Often Too Left, Polution in some areas, Coast is Overcrowded, Not too bus friendly, Expensive Housing
Texas:
- Pros: Not Expensive Housing & Real Estate, Income Tax Low, Business Friendly, Growth (all kinds)
- Cons: Weather, Many areas are back-waterish, food is mostly bad
Thank for the write up @zra / @boethius - it's very insigtful and well written
Probably all O&G people will be rounded up and sent to TX in the long run.
Don't be the last.
Prices are spiking already for a house.
Cali vs TX can be summed up in three words: "cost of living". There's a reason why it's practically a one-way street leading from California to Texas.
Texas really does suck. Feel bad for all the poor souls who choose to move here. But given the alternative is start planning your career elsewhere, the pro/cons don't matter. If you want to stay with Chevron, you don't have a choice. You. Is. Moving.
Great write up @zra. I bought a fantastic home in Austin, TX during the 2008 financial crisis as a speculative purchase. It was only 5 years old and cost me a fraction of what I ended up selling it for last month. I turned $108,000 into $829,000 and it sold in only 3 days.
There are no benefits moving to Texas
I moved from California to central TX about 18 months ago. Take my comments as someone who is a native and nearly lifelong Californian. I've spent nearly all of my adult life in Norcal but was born in San Diego and lived in the central valley for several years in my teens and early adulthood.
Pros:
Real estate: You definitely get a heck of a lot more for your money. We purchased a home for the first time in 20 years after about 10 years of renting in Cali and the last 4 years moving every year (yea nuts but that's another story). We have about a quarter-acre lot, a pool, an exterior bathroom and shower for the pool, a converted shed office. The home is about 2900 square feet, 2 stories, roughly 50 years old, and was semi-flipped by the type that lives in the home as they upgrade/update/flip the property. It looked beautiful online but it has plenty of issues - wonky flooring, tons of shiplap (hey it's Chip and Joanna Gaines territory), weird tile work - but overall quite a nice neighborhood. Neighbors are great, nice, mostly older and retired folks. Lawns are large, most homes set 30-40' from the street, lots and lots and lots of trees. Overall the property is very attractive. This home would easily approach $800K-$1M+ from where we came from. We paid $430K though I do think even at that it was a bit overpriced but the previous owners budged very, very little on price.
Prices HAVE gone bonkers in places like Austin. We did not try to buy there. 14-15 competing offers on homes. Forget it. Much less so in other cities though like everywhere prices HAVE gone up.
Jobs/employment: Austin is a hot spot for technology - semiconductors, Dell, and of course now Tesla - and other startups. Dallas and Houston generally are pretty robust. Energy (Oil) in Houston is huge business but obviously incredibly cyclical. Probably doing very, very well right now. Lots of healthcare around if that's your bag. I had worked for a semi company now almost 15 years ago that had its IT hub in Austin and almost moved there then but ended up getting laid off along with many others back in the 2008 era recession.
Food/cuisine/culture: We live in a relatively small college town (~100-150K I think when coupled with the immediately adjacent city) so we're biased that way. BBQ, chicken tenders, and kolaches are a huge thing here. I have no idea why other than BBQ which is heavy duty religion in the South. Mexican is almost all Tex-Mex here. It's dreadful. I've seen specials on TV that claim ALL Mexican cuisine north of Mexico is effectively Tex-Mex or Tex-Mex-adjacent, but I just don't buy it. It's all fajitas here. Almost no one does shredded beef or carne asada (though technically fajitas are carne asade-ish).
That said, there is SOME good Mexican here. We've found some good Mexican around town that isn't overly Tex-Mex. We recently went to Austin to a very well regarded Mexican place (called Suerte) and while quite expensive was worth it. Their brisket suadero tacos were amazing.
Even pizza - PIZZA, in a COLLEGE town - is lacking in options. I don't think I've found one really good pizzeria in the town we live in. Every place with thin crust is absurdly paper thin and floppy. I'm down for a thin crust but it's got to be crispy. If it's going to be New York style foldable it's gotta be thicker than that. Incredibly I've even resorted to just going with Dominos half the time and I HATE Dominos normally. I'm not kidding when I say I've had my kid and my wife both bring my favorite pizza from California on an airplane when they visited relatives out there.
All this to say foodies will be much, much, MUCH better off in the larger cities in TX (Austin, Houston, Dallas/Fort Worth, and probably San Antonio). Much more cosmopolitan, much much larger cuisine options. Smaller towns and cities it's mostly chains and a handful of genuinely good one-off places to eat. There are a few really good restaurants here but for cheaper staple type stuff like Mexican and pizza you'll probably be disappointed in small town/city TX cuisine.
Also, thankfully and blessedly you CAN find In-N-Out Burger in the larger cities in TX.
Pro or Con:
Weather: Ah yes, the weather. Well first off it depends on where you choose to live. West Texas is basically all sprawling desert. Dry, dirty, dusty. If that's your thing by all means go live there. That said, most gravitate toward the triangle of large TX cities - Austin, DFW, and Houston (with San Antonio hanging off to the south of Austin).
We're kind of in the middle of that rough triangle of cities that is generally considered Central Texas.
This time of year is considered thunderstorm season. It lasts until July or August. Yes it can thunderstorm and be 86 degrees so 95-100 heat index (a term I had never heard of until I first visited DFW over 20 years now). We're about 3 hours from the Gulf Coast so that often affects the weather throughout this part of the State. The first year we lived here it rained A LOT throughout thunderstorm season. I'd say it's rained considerably less this year but still quite a bit - maybe once every 2-4 weeks we'll get a good blast of thunder and rain. Compared to California the amount of rain might as well be Seattle in comparison.
I was deeply fearful of humidity before we pulled up stakes and moved here. I had been to Oahu in the summer about 7 years ago for two weeks and while a stunning paradise the humidity was unimaginable. I think I showered 5 or 6 times a day. When I visited Austin for an old employer about 2007 or 2008 I was drenched in sweat by the time I walked from the elevator at the Austin airport to my rental car. I figured I was in for the worst when we moved here.
I will say it hasn't been QUITE that bad since moving here. When you start approaching 90-95 degrees the humidity here at least tends to dry out and it feels pretty much like any dreadfully hot summer day in Southern or Northern California. Sometimes in the morning you will walk outside and it's say 80-85 you'll get that blast of insane humidity but really it doesn't seem terribly common. I wouldn't say it's like Florida or Louisiana or New York in the summer.
That said the weather does keep things vastly greener than pretty much anywhere in California throughout the summer. Here I don't think about crazy wildfires at all. The summer we moved here the city we lived in in Cali had absolutely crazy wildfires very close to our old home. I mean business as usual for California and I was glad we weren't there.
TL;DR: If I were to try to summarize from the wall of text above I would say: Live in a large city in TX. From that you're life and lifestyle will probably be vastly better. To save as much money as possible I would look at the suburbs in Houston or DFW. Understand the weather will probably and almost certainly suck compared to California. Go from there.