Today is my last day of paternity leave. I can’t believe it’s only been 4.5 months–surprisingly it feels much longer. In the last 4 months, we invited the 5th member into our house, moved our family down to Texas, went to urgent care multiple times, changed sleep configurations 10+ times, and saw my net worth increase by at least half a million only to see it dissipate in the last week. In this post, I will talk about my FIRE update, my experience moving to Texas, and share a little bit about the cost of living in North Dallas. Are you ready? Standby.

FIRE update

As of this morning, I am -$127,733.59 behind schedule. My original target was $4M by end of 2022. However, there’s still a good chance I will hit that number, but with so much uncertainty in the world, I am seriously considering working at least until the recession is clearly behind us. Whether that will be 18 or 24 months, I’m not sure. But there doesn’t seem to be any positive signs right now:

• US emergency oil reserves tumble to lowest levels since 1984. With all of the geo-political tensions present, this leaves us and our economy in a vulnerable situation, as we are no longer energy independent.

• Despite the Fed raising rates by 0.75% multiple times, inflation is still higher than expected, and not sustainable.

• Layoffs, hiring freezes, and hiring reductions coupled with 15% minimum corporate tax via the Inflation Reduction Act will make it tougher for people to be gainfully employed in the near term

• Tensions between Russia-Ukraine, China-Taiwan, and China-US are still a threat to economic predictability

This isn’t the end of the world though. I am very optimistic about America’s future. There’s still a ton of great innovation happening and people are still lining up to enter the country to pursue their own American Dream. That’s why I haven’t stopped my weekly purchases of the stock market index.

As for my job…more on that in a couple of months :).

I moved to Texas!

It was last October when my wife and I decided to purchase a new construction home in the North Dallas area. Almost a year later, it is finally done. We just completed our move last month! The overall process of moving was a lot harder than I imagined. I didn’t think a 3rd kid would make life exponentially harder. And I didn’t know that I could spend that much more money at Costco. All in all, I learned a thing or two about Texas and life, in general, in the last 2 months. Here are some of the highlights:

Texas

• Crickets are everywhere in North Dallas. They are big too! I hear they are more common in areas of new construction. As I’m writing this article I know I have at least 30 crickets in my garage. Good thing I haven’t seen any inside the house. My kids would be chasing them all day!

• It’s common to get pest control 4x a year in my area. Prior to this, I had no idea what pest control was. But there goes $400 a year.

• No HOV lanes. In the Bay Area, we were able to take the HOV lanes because we always go to places as a family. It was a nice perk to be able to fly past people on the highway. In Dallas, there are a ton of Tollways without HOV. While it’s convenient, well-maintained, and fast, it gets expensive.

• I’m relearning how nice people are in Texas compared to places like California and Washington DC. People who work in customer service here are usually smiling and never rush us. While it does mean that we get helped slower, it feels like people here are generally happier. We’ve seen this in affluent areas as well as poorer neighborhoods.

• Some of my favorite Asian places are here! 7Leaf, Somi Somi, Gen Korean BBQ, and Ranch 99 are all in 1 shopping complex. I didn’t think I would see those again outside of California.

• In true Texas fashion, it is very easy to get access to a private bay at a gun range. I was able to walk straight in pay for a membership and shoot by myself after being interviewed by the owner. Here is a sample of how I spent some alone time during my paternity.

Cost of Living

• Grocery is cheaper (30%) and eating out is cheaper (20%) than in the Bay Area

• Car insurance is cheaper (15%)

• Gas is cheaper (35%)

• Childcare is cheaper (37%) and is open from 6am-6pm. In California, we would pay more and the schools would only be open from 8am-5pm. This isn’t ideal especially if you have a job that requires you to work until 5pm!

• Property taxes are significantly higher (2.4% vs 1.25%) than in the Bay Area. However, of the 2.4% that I pay, 1.4% goes directly to the local school district. That’s a huge plus for us, especially since we will have 3 kids going through the public schools.

• Energy is significantly cheaper (65%) than in the Bay. We pay 13.9 cents per kWh in TX vs 40 cents per kWh in CA. Even though our TX house is 4x as big the bill is actually cheaper overall.

Moving in General

• Furniture costs a lot. The bigger the house the more furniture there is to buy. So if you’re like us moving from a 1,000 sqft house to a 4,000 sqft house be prepared to spend some Benjamins to buy enough furniture to kind of fill in the place. 

• Garbage collection takes planning, can’t just dump everything into a shared dumpster. 

• Now that we’ve moved to a place without family, I’m learning what life is like with 0 help with the kids. I find this to be the hardest to adjust to so far. But here are some things that have helped us make the transition easier:

  • Give everything that sucks a little bit of time. I constantly need to remind myself that it’s OK that all 3 kids are crying at once. Life sucks and then it will hopefully get better, with time.

  • Sticking together with my wife. It was important for us to communicate and never blame bad situations (at least for more than an hour) on the other person. 

  • Enjoying the moment. Even if I’m only running on an hour of sleep, I still make an effort to take my kids out to the park and pool. I still make an effort to sing ABCs and Spiderman theme songs with my kids. While I will definitely choose sleep over play, I make my best effort to be in the moment. It makes it a lot easier. 

  • Despite the lack of recent sleep in the last 6 months and some unplanned visits to urgent care, I am very lucky to have the financial resources to handle it. Even when my net worth has plummeted by more than $1.7M this year, I still feel very secure financially and this is the power of FI.

Conclusion

In conclusion, it’s been a wild 4.5 months. And I can’t believe that I’m saying this, but I’m kind of looking forward to showing up to my meetings tomorrow. At least to me, it marks an end to the CA-TX transition and the beginning of FI, but not yet RE life.