How To Prepare Your Wallet For A Move To Los Angeles
What can you afford? Let’s start there
--
I’ve always wanted to live there. It’s been on my list for a while now. After living in Orange county for a year, I felt the gravitational pull to migrate back after feeling like Maryland didn’t fit my future vision board. But, L.A. is too expensive, too crowded. I get asked a lot: why I would want to move there in the first place? But, I got a job in Hollywood that offered a raise big enough to afford me a studio or a pool house on a rich family’s estate and I thought, why not?
With two months before the big trek across country, and the immense pressure to sell everything to make it a light trip, I wonder how people do it. I wonder how people live in Los Angeles without giving away a kidney or bone marrow. I’ve concluded I want to move there for the obvious reasons: beautiful weather year round, a beach a car drive away, and mountains where I can still see winter if I choose. The mood-enhancing sunshine is hard to turn away from, after dark winters and even darker morning commutes. I don’t have the time to weigh my options, I’m moving without a concrete living space and a nagging email inbox full of Zillow and Trulia finds, thanks for the good looks by the way. If I really took the time to sit with what I could afford, I might have second-guessed the opportunity to leave a place where I could be living large for the same price.
Zillow and Trulia are wonderful. It’s the search that isn’t. Filling in the filters to curate something I am comfortable with is like trying to find a bobby pin I misplaced three months ago. It turns out teacher salaries can only afford you a private room with strangers, a pool house dwelling in a stranger’s backyard or a studio big enough to do 10 lunges in. Some may find the studio dwellings worth it with close proximity to the beach, and endless opportunities to be amongst the city dwellers, but I find the possibilities rather chaotic and stressful. Is there an easier way to avoid emptying my wallet and my self-esteem completely?
I work hard for this. The shaping young minds thing isn’t profitable. I get it. I used to want to live in the middle of a city, surrounded by the pull of people and the smell of opportunity on every corner. But, alas. At 29, I desire to be…
