Hi everyone, I know I said I was going to post more way back in December, but uh, some things came up:
- I was lazy
- See 1
- See 1
Anyways, to get everyone caught up (again), for the majority of the time with this blog, I had been living in Honolulu, HI. We liked living in Hawaii, but after extensive talks with my wife during around the COVID era, we eventually made the decision to move to California.
Now then, this wasn’t something we decided on a whim. There were long discussions based around:
- Family
- School
- Finances
- Jobs
So break it down then, man!
Ok, so let’s start with Family:
My parents still live in Orange County. My sister and brother live a little more north, in Los Angeles county. My wife’s younger brother lives in the San Diego area. We kind of wanted to be close enough to be able to drive to anyone on a weekend, so we looked at a few different areas.
The rest of my wife’s family is over on the East Coast in New Jersey. The flight from Hawaii to New Jersey is 11 hours (nonstop), whereas the flight from LAX to EWR is around 5-6 hours, so that’s a significant difference. Also, for Hawaii to New Jersey, it’s 5-6 hour time difference as well, depending on Daylight Savings Time.
Being closer to family was a big priority for us, because when we lived in Hawaii we saw family maybe once a year. That plane flight is no joke and neither is the time difference.
As a reminder, I must remind everyone that I’m 100% telework now, so I can live anywhere as long as I can work my hours with a stable internet connection. In addition, my wife would leave her job in Hawaii and find a new one in California after we moved. For this reason, we could have lived anywhere, but I narrowed down the areas that I would want to live in to Irvine/Tustin areas and the San Diego area. My primary deciding factor for this was the excellent public schools in those areas.
Schools
For reference, here are some of the tuition costs of good private schools in those areas in California:
Sage Hill School – $53,770
TVT Community Day – $42,700
Francis Parker – $44,300
La Jolla Country Day School – $44,400
For comparison, here are some of Honolulu’s:
Punahou School – $32,930
Iolani School – $29,375
So then, we would not be moving to California to exchange a private school for a private school, since the costs are even higher in California. As such, the plan was to move to and buy a house (eventually) in an area with excellent public schools.
In addition, we were thinking long term about college. While the kids do have 529s, that money will go a lot farther with in-state-tuition. For more of my 529 posts, go here, here, or here.
Here is UCSD’s tuition info, and I think other UCs are similar, but this is the important portion here:
$36k versus $74k and $46k versus $83k, is no small amount, especially for 4 years. That will deplete your 529 quick!
For comparison, here is USC’s tutition info:
On campus, $99k and off-campus, $86k.
We’re reaching levels of $ that shouldn’t be possible!
If we had stayed in Hawaii, the only in-state option we would have would be University of Hawaii (Manoa, Hilo, West Oahu). Any out-of-state option or private schools would put us in those brackets up there, which would deplete their 529s quickly.
Finances
Can we afford this move?
Can we weather the storm of not having my wife work for a bit?
Will we be able to afford a house?
Where will we live in the meantime?
Anytime you move, it’s almost certainly going to be a net loss. It’s like starting over (again). I am well aware of the costs of moving and starting over since I’ve done it multiple times. It’s not just the moving costs, it’s all the changes, it’s the loss of comfort, it’s a lot. However, like I’ve said before, sometimes you need to be uncomfortable in order to move forward.
I calculated out (as best I could) about how much we would come away with from selling our house in Hawaii, and looked at the costs of houses in our area of choice. For a comparable house, the prices were relatively similar. So the plan was to rent an apartment in a good school district while we looked for a house in that district. Let me tell you, it’s not easy to figure out how to get myself, my wife, my mother-in-law, and two kids into an apartment. This is made even more difficult since I needed my own room for an office. However, we managed, mostly because my wife can handle pretty much any problem that arises.
We did eventually buy a house, but that is a story/ordeal for another day since as I’ve mentioned before we are/were significantly over-extended, and are just now trying to maintain some semblance of stability almost a year later.
Jobs
Nothing changed for me, I still work evenings/nights like I have been for the last decade.
However, after moving, my wife took this time to kind of sit back and re-evaluate things. In Hawaii, her commute was pretty brutal, 45 minutes to an hour in the morning and in the evening. She would leave early, out the door by 630 am and then not get home till around 6 pm. She hardly saw the kids during the work week, only really seeing them on Sat/Sun (if she wasn’t on call). Since we were in an apartment and were “ok” financially, I told her to take her time and really figure out what she wanted to do.
I think she really enjoyed her time taking the kids to school every morning and picking them up every afternoon. She was able to figure out what she really wanted out of her next job and what she really wanted. After a few interviews and offers from “normal” jobs – she opted to start her own practice. I was completely onboard with that, since I had wanted to her to start her own practice for awhile.
The New Practice
I cautioned her not to expect instant success since she was an unknown entity in a new area. She would need to get out and meet people and aggressively market in order to drum up business. Additionally, she would need to establish a PC, learn Quickbooks, payroll, etc. and pay for her own expenses, like office rent, licenses, CME, malpractice insurance, etc.
I think the most difficult thing was that she had to realize that being a physician in your own practice is only a small part of the whole. She is the CEO, CFO, Accountant, Secretary, Head of Marketing, and a laundry list of other positions, and then lastly a Physician. Lastly, I told her that she would most likely lose money for awhile before she broke even or even made a profit. This was the most difficult part of starting a practice I think. There is so much intangible progress that you can’t see and you won’t see the results of that work until weeks or months down the road. For much of starting your own practice, it feels like you are failing. This is something that the majority of doctors are not used to, since we are driven by success and results.
You need a runway.
I think if you want to start a practice, you need to give yourself at least a 1 year runway (if not 2) to see if you can make it work. This is the same thing they do when they are making start-ups. That said, a runway is a luxury not everyone can afford since you will be losing money – not making it. However, because we had relatively little expenses and were living in an apartment, this would be the best possible time to try. I figured we had enough runway to be ok.
Time marches on and things have kind of settled down. I believe she’s been able to establish herself and practice the way she wants to. She schedules patients when she wants, at the times she wants, and has opted to make sure she can almost always get the kids to and from school almost every day. Also, her commute is maybe 5 minutes since her office is just down the street from our house. There will be no more getting home after 6 or even 7 like she did in Hawaii.
Overall, I think she’s been able to achieve the work/life balance she wants. Will she make as much as if she was simply working a “normal” job? Probably not, unless she really wants to exert herself and book herself all day everyday, but that’s ok. I think the flexibility and happiness is worth it for her.
Remember, it’s not how much you make, it’s how much you spend.
I’ve been trying to convince her to write her own little book about how to start a private practice… but she hates writing, so she would need to tell me what to write and I would write it for her. Maybe we’ll self-publish on Amazon someday, LOL!
The End
I think that’s it for this post to catch everybody up on my life. Like I mentioned before, I’ll try to update some of these old posts with the new information when I comb through them. I’ve had friends ask me about various topics I have posts on, and so I usually just give them the link…but I am kind of embarrassed by how out of date some of them are.
Please be patient with me, I’m trying to be better, I promise.
-Sensei
