Are You A Terrible Person If You Move For Less Expensive Housing?

Or does everybody have a right to a lower cost of living and their idea of a better life?

It’s something I have thought a lot about lately. This idea that if you choose to move to a country with a lower cost of living, you’re everything from a colonizer to exploitative opportunist leeching off of people who are less fortunate than you are. At least in the eyes of a vocal minority.

I almost always get a response or two to that end when I write about me and my partner’s future plans.

I call bull shit for several reasons I hope to articulate sufficiently, if not well by the end of this article.

For reference on my situation, plans and broad sentiment, see these two Medium articles on the matter as well as my Living The Semi-Retired Life newsletter, which I link to at the end of this story.

Today, we deal directly with the elephant in the room.

Charlie Brown recently wrote a Medium piece that gave me the push to write this one.

Here’s a key excerpt —

This is an important topic because, like the scapegoating of all groups, misinformation about the role of Digital Nomads perpetuates mistrust, anger, and an us vs. them mentality that literally does nothing to further our world…

Because here’s something many people don’t consider. Just because a digital nomad can pay more for their rent doesn’t mean they do. There’s an almost reverse snobbery in this department. DNs take pride in securing the lowest rent possible and sneer at those who overpay…

I’m not a digital nomad. However, my partner and I do intend to move from Los Angeles to Spain. Most likely Valencia.

Charlie’s general theme is important — the idea that certain groups get scapegoated and the size of these groups massively overestimated by people — particularly the media — looking for a story and easy answers to a complicated situation.

First of all, I don’t just take pride in securing the lowest rent possible. My partner and I have no choice but to secure the lowest rent possible based on the amount of money we make. Without doubt, we have choice in the matter. I’m hardly sheepish about or ashamed of this fact.

Choice in that we both probably could work longer hours, secure jobs that pay more, or a combination of both. However, we both want to work less now so we can work less longer. We simply don’t need, want or desire the overhead many people take on with respect to housing, transportation, lifestyle and discretionary spending.

So we organize our work and money around our lives, not the other way around. Put simply, we have relatively modest lifestyles (and rent control) and can only make it in the heart of Los Angeles because of all of this.

Second, to how we benefit now, but certainly not forever with rent control.

We live in a Los Angeles neighborhood where the median price of a home, as of June 2023, was $1.8 million. Actually up 20% from a year ago. We can only live where we live because of rent control, but before and aside from that, because of my girlfriend’s smart choice before she knew me:

Years ago, when I didn’t know my girlfriend, she was looking for an apartment.

Instead of taking on $2,000+ rent, she opted for a $1,400-a-month one-bedroom apartment in a top-tier Los Angeles neighborhood. She got this deal because the apartment, while large by urban LA standards, needed work. Mostly cosmetic.

She did the work.

End result — thanks to rent control, she’s living in a $1,400-a-month one-bedroom apartment that could easily rent for $2,500 today.

Now we live together and split the rent, paying $702 each. If we move out tomorrow this unit would go for at least the aforementioned $2,500, if not closer to or north of $3,000.

Rent control only takes you so far.

With just 3% annual increases, our rent could inflate to around $2,000 within ten years. We can’t buy a house here or anywhere we’d want to live in or out of California in the United States. And, while we could technically afford a $2,000-a-month rent payment in 10 years when I’m 58 (that will only continue to go up as we get older), we don’t want to. Simple as that.

Take all of this together and we have no choice but to move if we want less expensive housing as we approach and enter relative old age in a vibrant urban setting. Really, you could put a cap on our rationale with that last part. Even if the cost of living was the same — or comparable — between Los Angeles and Valencia, we would move. Because we prefer the lifestyle and culture.

But the cost of living isn’t the same. We’ll slash our cost of living by at least 40% by making this move. And we have a chance — it’s our goal — to buy a small apartment in Spain.

Home ownership as an ideal means nothing to us. As the end all and be all. We will buy a home (an apartment is a home even if you think we’re weird because we prefer apartment living!) not only if we can afford it, but, more specifically, if it will make us better off financially today and for the duration than we were yesterday? And, based on our math and the present landscape, it absolutely will make us better off instantly and going forward in Spain.

In the shell of a nut, our goal is to secure as manageable a monthly housing expense as possible. Based on the type and amount of work we’re willing and capable of doing. We have that today in Los Angeles. We won’t have that “tomorrow” in Los Angeles — or really any place else in the parts of the United States where we’d enjoy living. It’s a balance between our financial reality and preferences on work and place.

We would be fools to sit here, look at the very clear writing on the wall, fully comprehend our fate if we stay in the United States, but not exercise the options — the alternatives — available to us. We’re not gluttons for punishment. We’re not martyrs or altruists willing to sacrifice our financial well-being and, subsequently, risk our physical and mental health out of idealistic and utopian senses of fairness, particularly when we don’t see anything unfair about our plans in the first place.

Which brings us to the label (some) people who move abroad get as generally terrible people.

There are around 1.6 million Americans living in Spain. Remember, Americans don’t only live in the United States. Of those, roughly 40,000 are U.S. nationals, good for a 13% increase between 2019 and 2021.

Head to Spain and you’ll find a ton of people who don’t identify as Americans. They call themselves Argentinian, Colombian and so on.

My girlfriend and I interfaced with a few Argentinians, particularly in Valencia. The most memorable ones for me own a great little cafe that, according to their Instagram, is hiring. They’re part of a vibrancy that’s palpable in that city — among Spaniards and expats. Not to mention the fact that they’re helping introduce Spain to Fernet and Coke!

Anyhow, with all the migration and immigration happening throughout the world, I got to thinking even more.

And I wrote this in my Living The Semi-Retired Life newsletter (I’m not linking to it because the post is paid and I hope you’ll stay here with me — on Medium — right now):

There was a time — a decade or two ago — when people from California started moving to Oregon. Lots of San Francisco, Oakland and Los Angeles migrations to Portland.

And, if you believe the media and amplified online outrage, people in Oregon hated Californians. While that’s probably partially true — and remains so today — it was, no doubt, as overblown as the digital nomad situation Charlie Brown wrote about.

But I look at it like this, if I may break it down to what I think were and still are two common cases:

• Person A makes $5,000 a month and pays $2,500 a month to rent in San Francisco. They saw they could get the same or better apartment in a prime neighborhood in a very cool city, Portland, for, say, $1,500 a month. This takes a lot of pressure off them financially. Or maybe, they saw they could afford to buy a home in Portland, but could not do so in San Francisco. So they look to the lower end of the Portland market and lay the financial groundwork to move and buy in a less expensive city.
• Person B made millions in tech in San Francisco. They think/thought Portland was cool. So, flush with cash, they want to buy a $750,000 Victorian in NW Portland that, even 10 or 20 years ago, would run you $2,000,000 in San Francisco. Because they can, they enter, if not create a bidding war and make a cash offer of $850,000 for the house. They get it. They’re loving life and living like kings in Portland.

You can think of other scenarios on either side and in between.

I know my initial reactions to these cases, based in part on my past experience, current situation and anticipated future.

But, trying to be objective, where do you draw the line on ethical and value judgments, particularly in a capitalist economy? Does the person with millions have less of a right to save a few thousand bucks a month on cost of living than the person who really has to run the numbers to be able to afford a home even in a less expensive city?

Aren’t the people who pound the table incessantly and scream gentrification a bit hypocritical when, on one hand, they chide people for overspending on housing and cars and drinking and eating out, yet they don’t see the logic in making a move to a less expensive place, even if you have lots of money? Which is it? Should wealthy people just spend indiscriminately because they have money and are capable of doing so? Should they only be able to overspend in San Francisco or Napa, but not Portland or the Oregon Coast?

Then, there’s the rest of us. With more modest means, tighter budgets and, yes, a desire to work less now so we can work less longer.

Chew on that, as we move back to my situation.

If I move to wildly inexpensive Toledo, Ohio to rent or buy a house, am I colonizing the people of Toledo, Ohio? I mean, no offense to Toledo, but nobody’s overpaying to live there. So, now, I’m just making a decision based on the aforementioned balance between working, earning, cost of living and place preferences. And the world’s likely to be just fine with it, maybe because I’m not in a position to overpay (even in Toledo, Ohio) or maybe because they don’t care.

If I move to wildly inexpensive Toledo, Spain, it might be another story…There’s certainly hysteria around people moving to Spain (and other parts of the world), but, as with digital nomad hype, it’s overblown, if not manufactured to help simplify the complicated situation of how and why necessities such as housing continue to get more expensive.

All of that aside, am I an exploitative colonizer because I see the writing on the wall regarding my housing situation in Los Angeles and I move proactively to do something about it? By moving to Spain — after planning and saving for what will end up being several years — and entering the relative low end of Valencia’s housing market. Whether we rent or buy (and we’re hoping to do the latter within a few months of the move, if not sooner), my partner and I will “bid” lower than the asking price. And, when we buy, we’ll use up most of the money we saved to get in the door and ensure we have manageable housing expenses as we near relative old age.

This sounds like common sense to me. And hardly a case of exploiting somebody else’s situation. Because we’re not the couple from America who will rent the “overpriced” $1,200 apartment. We’ll aim to find the more reasonably priced $800 apartment. We’re not the couple from America who can pay a million bucks for a flat. We’re hoping — by choice and out of necessity — to stay closer to $200,000.

That’s my situation. Raw and real. I just don’t want to be broke and overworked during the second act of my life. If that makes me a terrible colonizer, so be it.

Should I stay in a country with housing markets that are insanely expensive and will slowly, but surely become cost-prohibitive, most likely as I hit my golden years?

Should I stay in a country with a public social life and political climate I, to put it mildly, don’t vibe with at all?

Or should I move to a place more in line with my needs, wants, preferences and values and do my best to learn the language and respect the culture by modestly fitting into it rather than asking it to bend to my will?

Thanks to Charlie Brown, Kevin Alexander, Michael Jensen, Cork Hutson and Olaf Ransome and all of the subscribers to my Living The Semi-Retired Life newsletter for helping shape this article. You can subscribe to my newsletter where we go even more in-depth and get way more personal here.

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This article is for informational purposes only. It should not be considered Financial or Legal Advice. Not all information will be accurate. Consult a financial professional before making any major financial decisions.