Possible relocation to Austin

I don't have too much to say. I moved to the East Bay a few months ago from Florida, and when I was considering where I wanted to move a couple of years back, Austin was high on my list. If you can, go out for a visit and see for yourself. Sometimes visiting a place and meeting some of the locals can change your mind about it. It is a big decision to move halfway across the country, and if you end up moving there, you will probably be happier if you have some ownership over the decision as opposed to going along with it in spite of your preference to stay here.

Does a move to Austin have to be forever? We just returned from four years on the east coast. If you keep your bay area home and rent it out, and you invest in some regular flights back and forth to keep your relationships with bay area people strong, perhaps a return could be possible after this phase of the career. We have good friends in Austin who find vibrant community there - we've visited them and it seems genuine. You might find you love it and you don't want to come back here (or the career keeps you in Austin since you find new freelance work there too) or you might view it as a mind-expanding, lengthy but finite family adventure you go through together. Liberal use of air conditioning in homes, cars, and places of work/school make the heat much more tolerable.

I grew up in L.A., attended law school at Berkeley, started my career and family on the East Coast and have lived in and raised my 3 children in Houston for the past 12 years.  It was a bit rough getting used to the heat and mosquitoes and took 3 years to feel like home.  But my children all attended diverse public magnet schools based on their interests.  People are generally open, welcoming and not snobby.  I'm not sure the Bay Area can make that claim, although if you already fit in there you don't have to worry about it.  People are also polite and respect people older than themselves.  I knew we had probably done something right when we were visiting friends who live in Albany and had just traveled to Italy the summer before and I asked how the trip was.  The kids kind of shrugged.  YOU WENT TO ITALY AND ALL YOU CAN DO IS SHRUG?  WASN'T THE FOOD AMAZING AT LEAST?  "Well, you know, we have pretty good food in Berkeley, so it's hard to be impressed."  I think there is a lot to be said for kids in particular not "having it all" while growing up.  Every time we visit a real city we are so excited and appreciative.  As for living in a red state, you may not have considered that actually YOU are already living in the bubble in California and unless you plan to secede or never have your children or grandchildren leave the state, you may face a harsh reality on the outside.  My 14-year-old son has no desire whatsoever to move to California because he enjoys having to defend and explain liberal views.    At the very least either way whether you move or not you may have a new appreciation of the environment you have been blessed to live in.

Austin is terrific. You can have a beautiful home with a pool & some acreage, up in the hills where it's beautiful, great schools, fun & interesting neighbors, great food & music. Really! Check it out - look at homes and schools in the hill country. People are SO friendly. 

Now, moving always sucks, I can't argue that part away. 

Austin has all colors and backgrounds - lgbtq friendly - but, you have to sacrifice neighborhood ethnic diversity if you want the best schools. However, you gain diversity in backgrounds & viewpoints. For us in the Bay Area, it's normal to 'embrace ethnic diversity' but really, really hard to accept folks with conservative viewpoints. Your cultural competency will be tested. That's my view on it - travel in the south is about learning to accept differences that are more than skin-deep. I don't mean to be preachy, it's just a different way to look at it. 

Hi! I have never lived in Texas but I do live with a husband who has moved around a lot! We lived in Oregon, San Francisco, Beverly Hills, Australia, Singapore and now after 8 years back to Berkeley. At the time, we had one child and now we have two so they are experts at moving around .... a lot! 

All I can say is that if we had to move to Texas, Austin is where I would want to live. Have you had a chance to travel there and take a look around? I believe there are a lot of "young" companies in Austin so I think you would find "your people." As far as the heat, we don't like heat either and it will just be air conditioning, but you would get used to it. 

Sorry I could not offer any concrete advise on the area, but I can say moving to a new State can have many benefits, plus the cost of living would be less than here, right?

Feel free to email me if you want to chat more about moving as I am an expert at it and my husband is not even in the military! 

Best of luck to you and your family. I definitely "feel" for you as it is anxious provoking to even think about!

Amy

I could have written your post.  For the same reasons, we are absolutely not leaving the Bay Area.  My spouse worked out an arrangement where he can work remotely and commute to Austin one week a month.  It's not ideal by any means, but much better than leaving!  As a previous poster said, you should check it out for yourself...but it's just not the right fit for our family.

Hi, first my sympathies for your predicament. It's tough to think of moving when you don't really want to. I lived in Austin in the late 90's/early 2000's and I loved it. Once a year, I seriously consider moving back there but my husband has a great job here. We spent a couple of weeks there last summer and my children loved it. My three year old fell in love with a place called "The Thinkery" -- a kind of hands-on children's museum. He still asks regularly when we can go back. My older kids loved Barton Springs and all the public pools around town. My husband and I loved eating at all the different yummy food trucks. It's a great progressive town full of cool nooks and crannies. HOWEVER, Austin has changed a lot since I lived there. It has grown tremendously and I was appalled at how much traffic there was. It's also become more expensive so it felt more commercial and less funky/artsy than I remembered it. I bet a lot of artists have moved out due to the high costs similar to what's been happening here. And I will say that you will be living in a bubble. I never went to other parts of Texas when I lived there, not even Dallas or Houston. The one time I did drive through Texas on a road trip I had a hairy experience with a cop who wanted me to sit in the front seat of his car with him and answer personal questions. Luckily, I had some girlfriends with me who stood outside the patrol car and stared him down. I hadn't been speeding or doing anything wrong. In other words, I'm a minority and I never felt safe outside of Austin. Also, it is hot. There is no getting around that. Air conditioning is readily available everywhere but you still have to go outside sometime. Maybe you can go and spend a couple of weeks there and see how you feel? You might like it more than you think! Good luck with your decision -- it's always stressful to think about moving.

I feel for you.  But you might want to think of this as an opportunity rather than a bad situation.  View the job offer in Austin as a temporary situation as if your husband was offered a job in another country.  Take control of the situation by framing it as a close ended assignment, say 18 or 24 months, at which point you will return home.  Make it real by holding onto your house here and telling your friends that you'll be back in 18 months.  But you want them to visit you in your exotic temporary assignment.  Your husband can start searching for a job back here, after a year, perhaps with a better resume.  In the meanwhile, you can view your time in Austin as a chance to bust out of your normal routine and do fun stuff like the strange inhabitants of Texas do.  You'll probably have more money and more space to do whatever you want.  Imagine what you could do if you had an extra $500 or $1000 a month b/c your housing costs are so low.  Try activities that might be easier to do there, maybe horseback riding?  You can also travel to places now closer to you and a lot more often:  back here, NYC, New Orleans, Mexico City, Cuba, all of Central and South America. And don't forget all the cool things that go on in Austin, Dallas, San Antonio, Houston and other parts of TX.  By the time two years roll around, you'll have barely scratched the surface of all the things to do.  

My sibling lives in Austin, and it's cosmopolitan and liberal (don't be put off by the Texas flags in front of homes!). The worst things about the city are the heat and the traffic. But if it weren't for those things, I'd find it a very desirable place to live. You can get more for your money in a home. Jobs seem to be plentiful. There are so many transplants to Austin that you rarely hear a Texas accent there. And people are very friendly - a welcome change from the Bay Area, where I've lived for over 30 years since moving here from the Midwest. My sibling is in the opposite position: she wants to stay in Austin but her adult children now live in California. I hope this helps.

I went to graduate school in Austin, and while it was quite a while ago, I wouldn't feel too discouraged. It is a really terrific town, with many of the things the Bay Area offers, including interesting culture, great music, good food, progressive politics, lots of beautiful outdoor opportunities. If I didn't live here, it would be one of the places I would be happy to be. I had a hard time my first year there, as I kept focusing on the things I missed in the Bay Area (at that time, a real lack of good bread and lack of bookstores, but I'll guess you can find those things easily now...and Austin's population is generally very educated).

I started to love Austin when I started to appreciate it for what it has that is uniquely its own. The things I miss including great southern and Tex-Mex food, extremely warm and friendly people, some very beautiful places (especially for swimming and camping: find Hamilton pool, a natural swimming hole outside town that makes you feel like you are in Hawaii), great great music and culture around the music (even if you don't think you like country music, learn to two-step and go and enjoy it, as it is genuine fun and not what your stereotypes might tell you...you can even go to gay country bars), lots of arts and creative people, and even the heat (it takes a while to get used to the hot summers, but spring and fall are fantastic, and nothing is more pleasant than sitting outside after dark on a warm summer evening, something you can't ever really do in the Bay Area). Get out of town and get to know Texas! It is not as bad as your stereotypes tell you! In fact, the regular folks in Texas are in many ways preferable to the smug city dwellers of Austin (something you can say about California, too, no?). Even if you find you don't want to be there forever, you may find it very enjoyable for a while.