Hey YouTube, Alex here and in today's video I want to talk about why did I move back to California and I got some questions like, "Oh, you like to go to Philippines or Thailand, which are more uh socially conservative countries and and yet you're in Colorado or you're in California, which are liberal states." And this video is not a political video, but I thought I'd discuss this idea or this topic in relation to expat life or becoming an expat.
This video is more directed at young guys who are trying to figure out a financial plan that maybe today they're not ready to move abroad, but maybe they make like a 10-year plan or 5year plan, whatever their plan looks like.
They want to spend some time overseas.
They've been watching videos about it.
They're curious about it.
Maybe they've visited and they want to formulate it.
So, let's go ahead and get into it.
Uh, why did I move back to California?
Well, the first reason is geo arbitrage.
So, I'm originally from the southern US and the fact of the matter is the southern US has the lowest wages in the United States.
The wages are not high and yet the cost of living has gone up dramatically in the last 5 or 10 years.
It's not cheap.
A lot of people say, "Oh, it's so cheap." It's moderately cheaper if you are coming with, say, a pension from New York or Pennsylvania, um, California, for example.
Maybe you made a lot of money in one of the more expensive states, but that doesn't translate in many cases to higher pay for the southern locals.
Now, if you're a business owner or you own land or real estate in the south, yeah, you've done very well.
If you're not one of those people, it hasn't really made a meaningful impact on you.
The guys that I know that have done well in the south fall into one of a few categories.
One, they're a business owner.
Two, they work for a company based in like New York City or some other big city, so they're not tied to local wages.
Or three, they're they've inherited or set to inherit substantial assets.
So, uh, not the guy I I'm trying to think if there's any I think maybe I have one friend out of all the friends who's actually worked his way up just through hard work and effort to making a decent wage.
And even then, his role would pay more in other places.
And so, some people would say, well, yeah, but it's so expensive in California.
When I I left uh Tennessee for the first time to move to California, I was making $15 an hour.
And in California, my offer worked out to like total compensation $60 an hour.
So living in California, it doesn't cost me four times as much money even in the expensive cities to live as it did in Tennessee.
I have some additional expenses.
Certainly, some things are more expensive like taxes, but I don't just, oh, my landlord's like, "Oh, you know what?
It costs you uh 1,500 a month in Nashville to rent an apartment.
we're going to charge you six grand a month.
There's alternatives, right?
There's alternative options in California.
A number of my friends in California have either roommates or they live in studio apartments that have a low footprint.
Um they may not use as much in the way of certain utilities in California.
Uh and yet their income is a lot higher.
So for me, I started to review jobs and I'm like, "Wow." Like California, they have really high pay for most jobs, much higher than elsewhere in the country.
I'd say retail is an exception.
Like if it's not really worth it to move out to California if you're just going to be uh working in retail unless maybe you have family you stay with for free, something like that.
But if you're in any kind of higher value ad field, like you're a trades person or uh you're like in technology, which is what brought me out here originally, you're in healthcare, what I would ask of you, if you don't believe me, is to look up your job and Google what is that median income for living out there.
Now, some people will say you you they'll shift it.
Well, you can't buy a house.
Well, some people don't prioritize home ownership.
Um, and some people also find when they actually do the math.
If I invest the difference, right?
If I stay a renter, but I invest the difference in high quality stocks, maybe I buy real estate in another state.
Like, that's a dirty secret.
Um, a lot of people who are owning are buying real estate in Tennessee don't actually live in Tennessee.
They don't care about the people in Tennessee.
They're just there because there's an opportunity, a geo arbitrage opportunity.
Like, oh, can't buy a house in California, but when I retire in 10, 20 years, I can have this house paid off in Tennessee and live a more materially wealthy lifestyle.
So, I want to be making my money in the most expensive places to live where there's a higher delta, there's a higher difference between what I make and what I spend.
and then I want to spend it in the much lower cost of living areas.
I know some people will complain about, oh, you're you're rising the prices.
Everybody's looking for an advantage.
There's very few people out there.
I don't want any advantages.
And even if you don't want to try to take advantage of these geo arbitrage opportunities, other people are still going to do it.
Other people aren't going to, oh, I feel so bad.
Uh I I need to just not make very much money and uh that's just going to be the way it is.
Actually, that's not the case at all.
You see a lot of people in uh certain countries where the wages are not that great.
They prefer to move to a country with higher wages.
This is very common with health care professionals from the Philippines.
They see what they can make in the Philippines.
They see what they can make in the United States.
It's a no-brainer.
They don't sit there, oh, the United States is so much more expensive than the Philippines.
No, it's like I'm I'm clearly coming out ahead.
even if I pay more for rent, transportation, food, taxes, whatever it may be, I'm I'm still getting ahead.
And so for me, it was a no-brainer.
Uh you know, I had people telling me swearing up and down, don't move to California.
It's going to go so bad.
Ultimately, when I got a laid laid off after a year, I got four and a half month severance.
I got uh accelerated stock options, and I would have qualified for decent unemployment had I stayed in the country.
Well, when I came back and I was like, "Well, yeah, I got like, you know, enough money to live in Southeast Asia for a while.
I I went back to Tennessee just to leave my car in Tennessee." Oh, you never would have gotten that in Tennessee.
Well, yeah, exactly.
That's why I took that part of why I took that job in California is they they have stronger worker protections.
This this idea that everybody in Tennessee can be a successful business owner or any southern state, really any state for that matter, is ludicrous.
Not everybody's meant to be a business owner.
And for me, doing the math, I actually come out way ahead in California.
I'm able to save much more save and invest much more meaningful amounts of money and put it toward my financial goals.
This isn't to say it's going to be the same for you, right?
If you are a family of four, you may find that depending on where you're trying to go in California, it doesn't work out.
You may find that the taxes are too high for for your situation.
I'm not judging you.
like I think you should do what's best for you, but also this this hyperpoliticized I'm going to make decisions uh based on local politics is for me not a priority for you maybe it's a priority for me it's not a priority.
Um the next thing is unique opportunities.
So point number two would be that in California you have unique opportunities.
So California fourth largest economy in the world if you uh pretend it's a country.
So what that means is that there are a lot of unique jobs here throughout the state of California.
There's jobs that exist here that don't exist in other states and they have more opportunity to move up due to just size of organizations or businesses that don't exist in other states.
So tech was an example of this.
Tech is not in a good place right now.
I'll be the first to admit it.
But if you're in the tech industry and you're in um Witchah, Kansas, no shade to anybody in Witchah, maybe there's like one or two.
I don't know any tech companies in Witchah.
Maybe there's one or two, but you're going to top out relatively quickly and there's just a lower ceiling there where if you're in Bay Area tech, for a while there, people were switching jobs every like 2 or 3 years to get a substantial increase in pay and responsibilities.
And that would not be possible in many other cities.
It's not that, oh, I'll just I'll just quit my Bay Area tech job and go go go uh, you know, I'll go join a startup in uh Jackson, Mississippi.
Like, once again, no shade to Jack.
And these are extreme examples.
I know most people aren't choosing between San Francisco and Mississippi.
Uh, but the point still stands.
If you're looking to have longevity in your career, you want to join a company or an industry or an organization that's big enough, you've got to be in a high population area.
You've got to be in a place where there's enough opportunity to move around, to shift around to like, oh, okay.
Um, if I'm living like in a small town and I lose my job, odds are I'm going to have to leave that small town to find a new job.
where if I'm in a bigger city, if I'm in a a higher population density area, let's just take Bay Area because I lived there for a couple years, I can go try to find another job in my immediate area.
I maybe I have to move an hour away, 30 minutes away.
I'm not having to necessarily move cross country if I can find another opportunity.
I know it doesn't work out for everybody.
I know what it's like to have to leave after getting laid off, but still uh there's there's these unique opportunities that exist depending on your industry that don't exist elsewhere.
There's um nothing like it.
And now with the return to office mandates, you know, some of these people that hate California, oh, you got to go back to the office.
Well, that actually doesn't really help the states that don't have the tech jobs.
If people have to go back to the office, they're moving back to California.
They're moving back to Massachusetts or New York and they're paying taxes in those areas.
They're supporting businesses in those areas.
Uh how is that a victory for Alabama, right?
Like that's uh or Wisconsin.
Like how is that a victory for those states if people have high paid jobs uh people working high paid jobs have to return to those centers of industry?
Uh the next point, the third point is entrepreneurial and investor-minded and really shared values.
So one of the things I struggled with back in my home state is that whenever I bring up investing or learning how to invest, learning how to uh deploy capital, efficiently use capital.
Oh no, investing is gambling.
We don't do that.
I don't gamble.
Investing is not gambling.
Uh investing, the difference between investing and gambling is that investing, if you have an investment that goes wrong, you still own an underlying asset.
If you gamble and it goes wrong, you got nothing to show for it.
So if I buy a real estate investment that turns out to not be that great, typically I still have something of value there.
If I roll the dice and it goes wrong, I've got nothing to show for it.
And so in Tennessee, I would try to bring it up cuz for me, it's something I'm I have a lot of curiosity about, a lot of interest is how do I build wealth to support my life overseas?
It's uh really it's it's not free to live overseas.
It could be economical, it could be cheaper, but it's not free.
and you got to build up like assets to pay pay you while you go over there.
If you're not uh open or you'd like to do a little bit faster than getting to traditional retirement age, you're going to have to own like uh real estate, stocks, crypto, whatever different thing you're looking at.
And so I noticed among my friends in California, they're always happy to discuss investments.
Now, is I always sit around talking about all day is how to make money or how to how to like uh stay on top of inflation?
No.
But I can approach them and like, "Hey, man.
Like, I know you uh I know you bought a house in in Texas a couple years ago.
How's that investment working out for you?" Or, "Hey, man.
I I noticed that you're you're working at this company.
Like, um what do you think about the state of the industry?" like not not getting them to to divulge information they're not supposed to.
Rather just like hey you have some insight that the common person doesn't have and you know more about this subject like engineering for example than I do.
What are your thoughts about that?
Where back home it's like h I don't want to talk about it, man.
Like there's this I don't know.
It's this combination of like the economy has really made a lot of Californians and New Yorkers wealthy in the last 10 20 years.
And if you didn't jump on that train, if you were in a state that didn't get in, wasn't involved in the tech boom, you kind of just had to wait from the sidelines.
And maybe there's some level of embarrassment there.
Maybe there's like I don't want to know what I missed out on.
But for me, I want to be around those people that are starting business.
A lot of people say California, oh, all the businesses are leaving.
That's not the case.
If you look at the AI boom, that's happening in Bay Area, California.
Like, that's not happening in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
No offense to Al people in Albuquerque.
I I think Albuquerque is a fine city.
I think there's a lot of merit to being there.
Uh but if you're thinking about like if you're thinking about uh how to improve your life, like how to um get better financially, like you have to think about these things.
Is it for everybody?
No.
But these are the things that are working out for me.
Um so yeah entrepreneurial shared values like businessminded how can we improve our material circumstances all these are true for the people that I know in California and alongside that a lot of people that I grew up with that are ambitious moved out to California so it was very common for my social circle if you're ambitious you're moving out to California if you have ambitions to work in film and television if you have tech ambitions finance these high value ad industries.
I didn't notice too many health care professionals.
But now that I'm I've been researching healthcare opportunities, then it's like, wow, you know, they get paid not that much where I'm from, but in California, they actually make a lot of money.
And so, yeah, a lot of ambitious people from where I'm from moved out to California.
And that's uh that's a sign to me that there's a lot of value to be had out here for me personally.
The next point is high quality of life.
So where I'm from, it's very hot in the summer and it's very cold in the winter.
It's humid.
When I got back from Asia, I basically stayed inside for 3 months and I didn't really do a whole lot outside because there's bugs.
You're getting constantly bit by mosquitoes.
It's just not very good.
said, "You go to the You go to the grocery store, most everything is trucked in from out of state." There's this mis mistaken belief.
Oh, Tennessee, there's farms everywhere.
A lot of those farms, in fact, almost all those farms produce soybeans, cotton, and corn.
And it's not soy soybeans or corn for eating.
It's soybeans or corn for industrial purposes.
So most of the produce is basically trucked in or flown in, mostly trucked in from other places that produce food.
So you're not getting in many cases like a wide variety of salad greens or different kinds of healthy foods.
And it's not to say that the food is bad.
Actually, the food is pretty tasty in the salad.
But for me, as I get older, I become more health consscious.
I'm more worried about like how what's my sodium intake like?
What's my sugar intake like?
And when I go to the grocery store in Tennessee, they just don't have the same options as they do in California for interesting kind of like well, you know, I did keto for a while, low carb options.
You don't have near as much salad options as you have in California.
California, there's all kinds of different uh healthy food options and not just fads, but also like things that are formulated because it's more of a kind of a cutting edge mindset kind of place where people are more open to uh trying these different kinds of health options.
Another thing is like if I want to go out for exercise and out here like California, it's dry.
The weather is dry, it's sunny, sunny most of the time, it's a comfortable temperature, and even in like the hotter parts of California, let's say you're away from the coast, you're in San Bernardino.
I've never lived in San Bernardino, but I've driven through there.
Well, even if it's hot in the middle of the day, like in the morning or the evening, it's a comfortable temperature.
you can go out and exercise where I noticed like a lot of people won't believe this.
I felt that Tennessee is hotter than the Philippines and so it just you get discouraged.
You're getting bitten by bugs like bugs are landing all over you.
It's uh you know for those people that don't mind it, I guess it's cool.
Like I ain't judging you, but for me here it's nice.
I like that I can go out and exercise any time and I already can feel myself starting to make uh progress on losing weight.
Like I just I get out more.
I spend more time in the sun.
The weather's beautiful here.
I have healthier options.
I am in a better mood because it's not overcast and raining all the time.
Aside from that, like there there's just so many different reasons why California offers a high quality of life.
And so while I'm working toward moving overseas, I get to still enjoy a good quality of life now rather than, oh, I'm just going to suffer for the next 30 years and be miserable and then eventually things will improve.
It's like, no, I can enjoy today as well.
I can enjoy my day-to-day life here and do a lot of things that will keep me present and focused on the target and still break away.
Like if I want to fly to Asia, I'm not that far from a major airport where I can get on a plane and 12 hours be in uh any number of Asian capital cities where that's just not possible.
Like where I'm from, I'm having to fly to California or New York and make it to LAX, make it to SFO, maybe Seattle airport only to then take another flight.
And that adds a layover and and just another layer of complexity.
The final thing is the fifth and final point.
I love California.
I don't believe in getting overly political when it comes about comes to making certain kinds of decisions.
I'm politically homeless.
I will never tell you I'm on the left or I'm on the right.
I look at like I don't worry about things outside of my control, right?
I try to focus on what's within my control.
I try to focus on the things that I can make a meaningful impact on.
That's things like I can work hard.
I can choose good topics to make videos.
I can move for work.
There's a lot of things that I have control over and those are more meaningful.
So for me, if I could choose a location that is more in line with my values, I earn more money and I'm able to accelerate my process to move overseas or get away more easily if I'm not um quite ready to move overseas.
These are all opportunities that are great.
Plus, like if I want to be around Asian-American communities, like uh trying to think of a specific one, Bay Area has a big Filipino community, right?
So, if I if I don't have the time or the money to go to the Philippines for a couple weeks, I could still go to like a Filipino grocery store.
I could go to a Filipino restaurant.
I can go and hang out with Filipino people.
And it's not the same as being in the Philippines, but there's some level of advantage there.
And that's not the same in many other parts of the country.
This video is not to poo poo on wherever you live.
Everybody has to pick where they want to live.
I think where you live is the most important decision you'll make in your life.
And I have experience that has indicated to me that that is the case.
If you disagree, if you hate California, let me know down in the comments.
Ain't going to offend me.
It may not be a good solution for you.
It's been a good solution for me.
Give us a thumbs up if you enjoy this video.
You want to see more content like it.
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to keep up to date with my travels and my experiences and how I'm moving forward on my goals.
So, thanks so much.
We'll see you soon.
Bye-bye, everybody.
