My wife and I have decided to leave Dallas Texas. After considering many cities we decided on Raleigh, North Carolina!

We’ve purchased ~1.5 acres in the city and are in the thick of designing a custom home (more on that soon). We’ll be here in Texas until it’s ready late next year.

But why leave?

Below is the 18 month journey we went on to find the right place for us. It’s about how we decided where to go, what we considered, our values, where we’re moving, and why.

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How we got here

I was born in Texas and lived here until I was 19. Then life took me to St. Louis, South America, Canada, and even a stint of nomadic life in Europe + Asia. When it was time to settle and start our family, I convinced Jaimie (my wife) we should move to North Texas.

We moved back in the middle of 2019. It was the right decision for our family at the time.

Fast forward to 2023... we started discussing the idea of not living in Texas forever.

We have a house, a cabin, 2 kids, friends, family, routines, school, and commitments here. This was not a choice taken lightly.

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What we don’t like about Texas

Let me start by saying Texas has a lot of great things going for it. People that live here will cite more personal freedoms, no state income tax, and lots of jobs / opportunities. That’s all true!

However, there’s a lot of stuff that bothers us:

1. It used to be extremely affordable. Now it’s pretty comparable to most of the USA.

2. Insane heat that seems to last for 7+ months out of the year. We’ll clock 50+ days over 100 degrees this year with tons more in the high 90s. You do not live outside in Texas.

3. The lack of trees and nature. It’s flat and things struggle to grow due to the climate. Grass in most of Texas is actually a weed. It’s not soft. People put turf in their backyards now. Overall the nature here is pretty ugly and brown.

4. Horrible traffic! It’s not rare for it to take us 30 minutes to go 3 miles if there’s bad congestion. It’s 2+hrs to get across the metroplex.

5. Constant construction — the roads are always being widened, which means they're really narrowed until it's done. There’s work trucks throwing rocks everywhere. Driving in Texas is a constant battle and detour.

6. Crazy spring hail storms and wind. Here’s a not-so-fun fact: Dallas is a windier city than Chicago aka “The Windy City”. This year about 1/3rd of our neighborhood had to have their roof replaced from hail damage. The homes are all less than 4 years old!

7. Unsustainable population growth — this brings a slew of issues. Things are more expensive here. Homes are being thrown together, Inflation is not the same everywhere in the country. I’ve noticed food bills and drink bills being noticeably cheaper in other cities than a nice restaurant in DFW.

8. Lack of charm in buildings and homes. DFW isn’t very old, so there’s little character. Lots of strip malls and thrown together homes. There’s just not a lot of historic charm.

9. There’s a pride in being Texan that when taken too far is just off-putting. Texas acts like it’s shit don’t stink.

Deciding what's important to us

First and foremost, we decided we needed to get out of the suburbs. We wanted to be closer inside a city, but likely needed to be in a smaller city. We needed to be in a place that had better nature and more moderate temperatures throughout the year.

Jaimie and I had countless conversations about what we valued, what we wanted our days to look like, how we wanted to raise our kids, what we wanted to avoid, and what we would be wiling to sacrifice.

No city is perfect, but below is a list of things that mattered to us.

1. Trees!

Sometimes you forget how NOT seeing large trees and greenery daily affects you. We want to play outside with our kids and enjoy nature. The more trees the better.

2. Be able to spend time outside

After 5 years in the Texas suburbs, we realized this was taking its toll on us in a really negative way. For 6-7 months of the year, everyone just stays inside unless you’re in a pool. Being inside so much isn’t good for you.

3. Income tax & property tax

Not paying additional income tax was a big concern of mine. Your money goes so much further just by choosing where you live. I am already paying 37% tax on our income. I didn’t want to increase that to 50% by moving to a place like California or New York.

4. Beautiful homes

Having a beautiful home has always been important to us, so we needed to choose somewhere we liked the architecture. If you spend enough time looking at Zillow, you’ll notice home design is very different in various parts of the country. We wanted a city with an abundance of great design.

5. Family & Friends nearby?

This was admittedly a factor we knew we’d likely have to give up, at least initially. Moving would mean leaving family and making new friends. (side note: it turns out I know a lot of cool people in the cities we considered!)

6. Good Vibes

This may sound stupid, but hear me out. Some cities just have a good vibe and others are off-putting. We were very aware of how different cities made us feel. Every city whispers something. Cities like LA whisper that status and fame are important. Others feel like family values are cherished. And others feel like sports and beer are life.

A big part of this feeling is the industry and makeup of the population. Is it a banking city? Is it an agriculture city? Do families live there or only young people? Is there only a few big employers? This are the types of things that affect the culture of a city.

7. Airport

We love to travel so living somewhere with an international airport is important. Too small of an airport and travel becomes annoying multi-stop flights. If we could, we wanted the closest airport to have a lot of direct flights to places we frequented.

8. Restaurants

Some cities have great restaurants and others just have burgers, bar food, and fast food chains everywhere. We like to eat out at nice places and try to eat healthy, so a city's food scene was important to consider.

9. Schools

The quality of our kid's education is important to us. To get that education, can they go to public school or do we have to do private? We knew some cities and neighborhoods would require us to send them exclusively to private school. Others had 10/10 public schools. It was something to consider during our search and the cost of living.

10. Traffic

I know traffic will always exist in city's, but how bad it can get in a city is very different in one vs another. Does going 10 miles take 1 hour during rush hour, or does it go from 10 minutes to 20 minutes? We wanted to be aware of how bad traffic was in each place we considered. The less the better.

11. Proximity to other places

In Texas if we want to go somewhere, we have to fly unless we're visiting Austin. However other places (particularly east & west coast cities) have a lot of great places to visit within driving distance. I loved the idea of being able to take short road trips to other cities, the mountains, or the ocean.

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...so with those values in mind, we decided to go on a hunt for a place that checked as many boxes as possible.

When you can live anywhere, how do you choose?

When we agreed we should consider leaving Texas, everywhere became an option.

Being able to choose from any city is a luxury, but it's also overwhelming. To help narrow things down, we setup some initial criteria.

1. No extremely harsh winters

2. No extremely high state income taxes.

I decided around 5-6% additional state income tax (on top of federal) was the max I wanted to deal with. Remember, I'm paying 0% state income tax in Texas. This removed places like California (13.3%), New York State (10.9%), and Hawaii (11%) to name a few. It’s hard to justify paying $200k-$500k more per year in taxes.

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I then spent a ton of time looking at Zillow and reading about the lifestyle and weather of various cities. From that we made a short list of places to consider.

Some of the many places we considered

• Raleigh, NC
• Charlotte, NC
• Nashville, TN
• Ladue, Missouri
• Kansas City
• Atlanta, Georgia
• Salt Lake City
• Multiple cities in Tennessee
• Multiple cities in Washington
• Multiple cities in Colorado
• Multiple cities in Florida

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The city scoring spreadsheet

With the above criteria in mind, we began visiting and scoring various cities based on the values we outlined. Some we ruled out very quickly based on quick research.

Jaimie and I are well traveled so we had been to a lot of the cities we considered.

Ultimately I got nerdy with it and started a scoring system in a spreadsheet. Staying and just moving closer into the city was always an option, so I kept 3 nearby cities in DFW we liked to score others against.

Here's a copy of my basic spreadsheet​

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We would rate each based on 15 things that were important to us. Each thing got a score of 1-10 (very bad to very good). For example: if property income taxes were 0% (you can't get better than that) we'd give that a 10. If there was a ton of traffic in that city, that category would get a 1. Everything was scored relative to the other cities.

Note: a more advanced way to do this would have been to give greater weight to things that are of more importance to you. For example, we value great nature way more than good shopping, but still want to consider both.

​Here's a copy of my basic spreadsheet​

Choosing Raleigh, North Carolina

The Nashville area and Raleigh were our top 2 contenders. Ultimately we decided on Raleigh, North Carolina!

Raleigh stole our hear from the beginning. It had most of what we were looking for and a charming vibe we couldn’t explain. We found ourselves missing it after visits.

There’s so much to love. There's tall trees everywhere! Aside from the city itself, it has great proximity to the beach and mountains. You can get to the mountains in ~3hrs and the beach in 2hrs. There’s even direct flights to Europe.

It just felt right.

I made a little video on Instagram showing off some of the reasons we chose Raleigh.

​View my instagram video here​

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...but where in Raleigh?

Once we decided on a city, deciding WHERE in that city to live is a whole additional journey.

To figure that out, we took many trips, viewed houses, neighborhoods, and stayed in different parts of the city. We generally drove around a ton to get a feel for everywhere.

We ended up purchasing ~1.5 acres in the north side of the city where we can get to most places in 10-15 minutes or less.

Today

We’re now in the thick of designing a custom home. We’ll be here in Texas until it’s ready next year. We're working with an amazing team of architects, interior designers, landscape designers, and one impressive builder.

I’ll be sharing more about the process designing the home soon. For now, here’s a sketch of the front elevation.

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Consider where you live

I’m so excited to change things up and optimize around the things we value. Our environment has a huge impact on how we feel day to day.

Is your environment right for you? Does it affect you positively or negatively? Are you doing what you say you value?

Maybe you should move somewhere else too. You only get one life. Live it well.

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