522: How to Get PAID to Live in an Affordable City & Fast-Track Financial Freedom

0:00Today, we're talking about a question that we know has been on a lot of your minds. How would my financial situation change if I moved from a high cost of living area to a medium or low cost of living area? What would the trade-offs be? Would they be worth it? Or would my social life and quality of life take too much of a hit? On today's episode, we bring in Alison Irby Vu to talk about her experience from moving from Washington, D.C. to Tulsa, Oklahoma. Alison made her move using the Tulsa Remote Program, which offers money to incentivize incentivize people to move to the city and help revitalize it.

0:37And while there's many programs like that out there, this episode is not to encourage you to specifically think about one of them, but more we want you to consider whether or not your city is holding you back financially and whether making a move like Allison's can help alleviate your financial stress and further you down the path to financial independence. Hello, hello, hello. My name is Mindy Jensen and I am flying solo today because Scott is out gallivanting around town. Just kidding. He's taking a well-deserved day off and will join me again soon. As always, I am here to make financial independence less scary, less just for somebody else, to introduce you to every money story because I truly believe financial freedom is attainable for everyone, no matter when or where you're starting.

1:25Without further ado, let's bring in Alison. Alison Erbevu, welcome to the BiggerPocketsMoney podcast. I am so excited to talk to you today. Thanks for having me. It's really great to be with you as well, Mindy. Allison, right around the beginning of the pandemic, we started to hear about people who were leaving big city life and moving to smaller towns. During that time, you hopped on board that bandwagon and you moved from Washington, D.C. to Tulsa, Oklahoma. Do you remember the moment you started really considering making the move? I do, actually. I was going on a walk with my son. We found this trail near our house.

2:03And while I was there, it was just the two of us. And I thought, I could do this anywhere. We were just in the middle of nature, just kind of exploring. and yeah it was just kind of why do I want to spend a crazy amount on rent to stay in a place where I work remotely so I'm working at home and then other than that I'm out in nature with my son every day and I thought we could really be exploring places that we normally wouldn't and the pandemic really opened up this way of thinking. It's something that I wanted to do. But being in that environment where it's like, it's just the two of us, we could do anything and go anywhere is when it really started to click for me.

2:50I love the idea that you can go anywhere. It seems like our jobs keep us really geographically cemented. But during the pandemic, everybody was working from home or most people were working from home. So being able to go someplace else is awesome. Let's backtrack a little bit. You grew up in DC. Can you tell us about your relationship with money growing up? Sure. So I will be very clear. I, as a native Washingtonian, you have to state clearly if you grow up in the suburbs of DC or in the city, it's a real thing. So I, my parents both grew up in DC proper, and then I lived both in DC and in Maryland in the suburbs of DC, but it's all still, you know, kind of one ecosystem.

3:40And I grew up with my mom, who's a single mom, who worked for the federal government her entire career, and provided a really solid, you know, stable life for me. I always felt like I had everything I needed. But it was very, it's a it's an area where you think a lot about who you're going to be, and what you're going to be and where you sit, you know, kind of politically and academically. Like I spent a lot of time thinking about kind of doing future planning. And that I think was sparked by my mom always insisting that I needed to go, you know, to the best universities and I needed to get a great government job, right?

4:30That's like in DC, you want to be a contractor or government worker. So that's kind of the direction that I thought growing up. The government benefits are unparalleled. My husband used to work for the VA hospital and just the amount of basically everything you get minus salary, of course, the salary is okay, but the benefits are huge. So I can see why your mom wanted you to have a government job. What did you settle on? What is your job? So I'd like to say I haven't settled. I try not to ever settle. That's a great answer. I do have the great pleasure of working in financial planning. I get to work every day with really amazing, amazing human beings who are just navigating getting financially liberated.

5:25And I love it. That sounds like a I can work from anywhere job. So before you moved to Tulsa, you had documented your journey online of paying off a large sum of debt. I'd love to go off on a little bit of a tangent here and talk about that. How much debt did you have? How long did it take you to pay off? And how did you acquire that debt? What was that debt comprised of? Yeah, so I'll say I never thought I would work in personal finance at all. It was not something I was aspiring to. I got a lot of student loans, because I have two master's degrees and three bachelor's degrees. So I definitely love to learn and explore all of the opportunities that are out there.

6:17But that landed me in a lot of student loan debt. And it was really paralyzing for a really long time in ways that I didn't notice or fully understand. And I, eight years ago, almost, had a baby. And that changed everything. And knowing that I was going to have my son, I wanted to get into the best financial place that I could, knowing that the student loans weren't going anywhere super fast. There were other things I could take care of. And so I got lots of jobs. I worked a full-time job that I really enjoyed. I got a second job that was really wild. I got to listen to jail conversations and get paid to do it.

7:18um it was really cool though um i'm i speak spanish as well so i got to listen to spanish calls in spanish and then uh transcribe the calls um and i sold a bunch of stuff i read the marie condo book um uh around just like the idea of getting rid of things that don't serve you And so I paid off somewhere over$30 ,000 in debt. But yeah, it was just kind of working really hard knowing that the goal was to get at least credit card debt free before he arrived. He was coming and I needed to be ready. So I even shifted away from living in DC and moved back to Maryland, which changed things as well. We're speaking with Alison Irby Vu, who left her life in DC and got money to move to Tulsa, Oklahoma.

8:17You just heard Alison tell us about her financial situation before her move. Next up, you'll hear about how living in a smaller city changed her financial situation. But first, we're taking a quick ad break. Need fast, reliable funding for your next investment property? Join over 17 ,000 real estate investors nationwide who trust Kiavi for quick, flexible financing. Whether you're flipping houses or growing your rental portfolio, Kiavi offers high leverage loans and closings in as few as seven days, including fix and flip, new construction, and DSCR rental, all through an easy online platform that you can access 24-7.

8:53Get pre-qualified in minutes at kiavi.com slash biggerpockets and turn your next deal into reality. Terms and conditions apply. Visit kiavi.com for details. NMLS ID number 112-5207. My husband and I have multiple investment accounts across several different companies. Throw in vehicles, investment properties, and private equity holdings, and it can be difficult to get a good idea of our actual net worth. And frankly, between the kids, work, and just life in general, I don't have time to be logging into 47 different places. So I just didn't. Scott walked me through setting up my Monarch account, and suddenly everything was easy.

9:29It's all in one spot, so I can check in quickly. Just like everything else on Monarch, the dashboard is customizable, so I can see at a glance what's most important to me and dive deeper when I need to. Feel organized and confident in your finances with Monarch, an all-in-one personal finance tool that brings your entire financial life together in one clean interface on your laptop or your phone. And right now, just for our listeners, Monarch is offering 50 % off your first year with code pockets at monarch.com. Don't let financial opportunities slip through the cracks. Use code pockets at monarch.com in your browser for half off your first year.

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11:16Welcome back to the BiggerPocketsMoney podcast. Let's get back on topic and talk about Tulsa. You moved from Washington, D.C. to Tulsa, Oklahoma, and I have actually been to both of those cities. And Washington, DC is a little more big than Tulsa. Not that Tulsa is bad. Please don't email me that you think I'm doing Tulsa hate, but it's a big difference. Why Tulsa? Well, it was community. And honestly, I want to say it was New Year's Day, New Year's Eve, something like that, that I got an email from some travel blog, some, some, I don't, I don't even know which one it is, honestly, but I followed some bloggers and they posted about this opportunity to move to Tulsa for this experience of community and to make$10 ,000 doing it.

12:12And I thought, huh, I really want community. And I've lived in the DC area. If I didn't live internationally somewhere I lived in DC or the surrounding areas. And I know a lot of people, but I still felt like I wasn't in community with people. And that I felt that before the pandemic, but even more so during the pandemic. And so this opportunity to go to a new place where I didn't know people, but could be in an environment where people were seeking community, where other like-minded people and completely different people were seeking to build something. I just thought it would be really powerful to go and see what it was about, especially knowing it was only a year commitment.

13:05What did we have to lose in the midst of a pandemic where all we're doing is sitting at home, doing art, and wandering around in nature? I love that. So you got$10 ,000 to move from Washington, D.C. to Tulsa, Oklahoma and live there for a year. Yes. I have moved cross country for not for free. It came out of my pocket. That's awesome. And like you said, it's a one year commitment. Are you still there? I'm still here. It will be three years and two weeks. Something else that you said, you said, in DC, I knew a lot of people, but I didn't feel community with them. And I think that's a really important distinction to make.

13:49Just because you know a lot of people doesn't mean that's your community. Community is the people that get what you're talking about, that understand where you're coming from, that you don't have to explain the concepts of the community, whatever the community is. And did you find community in Tulsa? I am still finding community. It's really, it's very cool. I would say just the idea that these are people who were willing to do this crazy thing I was willing to do. says a lot about us collectively in that there are people from all over the country, people who moved here from other countries, um, even that are seeking the same.

14:35And so it's really helpful to be around such openness. Um, I've met friends that I'll have forever people that feel like family. And if it hasn't done anything else, it's helped me to create a more clear sense of what I want community to feel like. I love that. I love that so much because your community doesn't have to be somebody else's community. You can create your own community. And I live in Longmont, Colorado, which is the kind of like Mecca for Fi. And I have community. And it is so awesome to be in a place where there are so many people just like you or similar to you. And you don't have to explain anything.

15:29You can get together and you don't have to worry about like small talk. You can, you just, if you have this in common, you have other things in common too. And it kind of gets over the hump of awkwardness when you meet somebody new within the community. So I'm so happy that you found your community within Tulsa. And that's really awesome. Can you paint us a picture of your financial situation around the time that you decided to move to Tulsa? Yeah, I was, I don't know. I was earning a little under six figures, which didn't feel like anything in DC. My rent had just increased and was going up again, all to not move and really do anything.

16:19Um, and I was really grateful that I had some time in the pandemic to pause childcare because childcare in DC is like$2 ,000 a month, um, on top of, uh, you know, rent that's at least$2 ,000 a month. Um, so that's kind of where I was, um, just kind of managing that. Um, And living pretty paycheck to paycheck. Getting, you know, having things paid off just meant, especially like becoming a mom and then not working five jobs to try to make the extra money. Just being more grounded and being at home meant that I had one job. And so pretty month to month, you know, just kind of keeping up with trying to keep up.

17:17I'll say that just trying to kind of keep up with everything going on around me and not feeling like there was much progress to be made. And that I moved to the suburbs of Maryland, D.C. suburbs, two weeks before my son was born and moved to this community. It was a super nice community. And I moved within that community to try to save money. I just kind of kept rotating through different housing options within the community. They'd have a deal. And so I'd move to a new building that they built. But I never felt like, I felt like, oh, I can keep moving to slightly larger units within this apartment community, but I can't buy a house here.

18:03Yeah, that is one of the trade-offs with these big cities, typically coastal cities, is that it is, they've got the nightlife, they've got the population, they've got all of these amazing things, but it comes with a trade-off and that is very expensive housing, expensive food, expensive transportation, expensive everything. Getting back to the Tulsa remote program specifically, what were the qualifications for being accepted into this program? That's a great question. You have to have a remote job that can cover your expenses. So I'm not sure what the income requirement is, but there is one for you to get into the program.

18:51You have to have an interview. You go through an interview process to share a bit about yourself and how you'll benefit the community and what your interests are. I'm not sure what all of the specifics are, but I knew that I had the income requirements met and met with folks and interviewed and they took me. Yay. And what is your housing situation? Did you get a place to rent? Is everybody in this program in kind of the same area? Or did you buy a house? Are you all spread out? So you're required. So this is one of the requirements is that you must live in within the Tulsa limits. So you can't move here and then say, oh, I actually want to buy a farm that's an hour away from Tulsa.

19:43So there is an expectation of participation in community. Um, and so there are lots of ways to do it. There are folks who live in apartments downtown. There are people who live in single family homes, uh, out in more of a suburbia kind of suburban feel. Um, I, when I first moved here, I rented a house and that's something that was really important to me. I love the apartment community we were in. But with the pandemic, I knew that I needed to be able to get outside easily and quickly and have room to run for both of us. And so I was able to find a cute home to rent with a ginormous backyard. I thought, we'll see how the first year goes.

20:29And then I can make some decisions about buying a home. And six months in, I bought a home. That's awesome. So yeah, so now we live just about a 10 to 12 minute walk to downtown, bordering a historic neighborhood here in a brand new single family home. Were there any stipends for moving or housing or anything like that? So they provide a reimbursement for visiting. um there is when i joined the program the ten thousand dollars you they give you the ten thousand dollars over the course of the year that you live here um unless you purchase a home so if you purchase a home and you can share the deed that you have in fact purchased it they will give you the remaining amount of the ten thousand dollars um because then it shows that you are in fact, sticking around.

21:29So that is an incentive. And they also, we use Slack to connect, and they share lots of resources and things like that with the community. But other than that, there's no, I mean, it's a huge incentive to know that if you make it here, and it feels right, that you could get that money a lot sooner. So that's really helpful than waiting that entire year to just get a small chunk every month. Either way is actually great because now I experienced both. I experienced the monthly allocation of the funds as well as the larger sum. And it was really helpful for me that once I bought the house, that all the extra stuff, wanting to buy new furniture for the patio or wanting to get the kitchen just right, I had extra money to navigate that.

22:22How much would you estimate your entire move cost you from Washington, D.C. to Tulsa? I want to say about$6 ,000. And that's paying for pods or those types of things to ship. What factors did you take into consideration before the move? January 1st of 2021, my son and I got in my car and we drove. from the DC area to Tulsa because I wanted to feel what it was like to be here, not just read things. For me, it was important to see what the political climate felt like, the warmth of people or the lack thereof. Very importantly, I wanted to know that there was a Trader Joe's. And I know that sounds really silly, but it actually was something that was on my list.

23:21I wanted to know that there were museums and cultural things to explore. And that even if the diversity didn't look like the diversity where I'm from, which I knew it couldn't, that it would feel welcoming and an open enough place for us to share our diversity and to explore others and other cultures. I don't think that it's fair to compare Washington, D.C. diversity to other places. It is not fair. And I wouldn't dare because I've traveled this country pretty extensively. And there's nowhere that I've ever been that is the same level of diverse, socioeconomically diverse, culturally, ethnically, like we we've got it all in the DC area.

24:11So I had zero expectation of that. But there is a great deal of diversity here. And there's a huge Native population here. There are just people from different backgrounds that live here. And I wanted to make sure that we could at least experience that. cowboy culture I'd never spent any time indulging in. So just something different that we could continue learning about other people and learning about ourselves through the experience. So what's your favorite part about Tulsa? The life that I want to give my son where he has friends he can run around with in the neighborhood and we don't have to, everything doesn't have to be a scheduled play date.

24:56He gets to have a little bit of the freedoms that I had being an 80s, 90s kid, kind of free range roaming around. It's really important for me. And I know that we're able to travel the state and the world in a way that we couldn't do as freely if we stayed where we were. You know, my son is super active in sports. Sports are expensive. These kids, why are these kids so expensive? But sports, sports are, you know, it costs a lot. And to keep up with all of that, I think the pace here, it's so much slower that I can get everywhere and anywhere within 15 minutes. It's huge. It just gives me time back to be present to my son in a way that living in the DC area, you just don't get.

25:48My time is worth so much. And time together is so important to me. So having that is worth everything. Time back to be present with your son. That is, I cannot highlight that enough. I cannot underline that and circle it and point arrows to it because that is so, so important. What is the point of having a kid if you're not going to spend any time with them, if you can't spend any time with them because you're always in the car commuting to your job and not able to be present with them? I mean, when I worked in Chicago, I lived in several cities around the Chicago area and the commute is just awful.

26:32And I didn't have kids at the time, but you wake up at five o 'clock in the morning to get to work by eight. You are back home at the crack of seven, and then you go to bed and do it all over again. A hundred percent. And I shared earlier that my mom provided so much for me and so much stability and financial safety and all of that. But she also worked in Washington, DC, and we lived in the DC suburbs and she had to leave before I was even out the door for school. She didn't come home until it was time for her to make dinner. And I knew that I wanted something different. I get to drop my son off at school every morning.

27:15I pick him up from school every day. We get to go on nature walks around our neighborhood after dinner. There's time for play. Um, there's just, you know, even to be able to participate as a homeroom parent and leave work after a call, jump off a call and run to his class, help out, and then come back and, you know, jump back in and have that still take, you know, under an hour or two, that's the amount of time it would take just to get to work, you know? So there just is so much flexibility in that. And there's just also room to create what's next. Right. And I think that's a big draw for a lot of folks in Tulsa Remote.

27:56There are a lot of creatives here. There are a lot of people who are just looking to launch into their next thing who aren't fixed on there being one narrative. This is my job. I've chosen this one thing. These are the various things I'm exploring, and there's room here to think about it and to actually build. And there's a lot of reception. There's a lot of really receptive people and businesses here. If you have an idea and you want to start something, there are only 20 different incubators you can engage in and be a part in and growing whatever that next thing is for you. We're going on a quick break.

28:39You've heard Allison talk all about the positives that came from her move from D.C. to Tulsa. When we're back, Allison will discuss some of the drawbacks. Need fast, reliable funding for your next investment property? Join over 17 ,000 real estate investors nationwide who trust Kiavi for quick, flexible financing. Whether you're flipping houses or growing your rental portfolio, Kiavi offers high leverage loans and closings in as few as seven days, including fix and flip, new construction, and DSCR rental, all through an easy online platform that you can access 24-7. Get pre-qualified in minutes at kiavi.com slash biggerpockets and turn your next deal into reality.

29:18Terms and conditions apply. Visit kiavi.com for details. NMLS ID number 112-5207. My husband and I have multiple investment accounts across several different companies. Throw in vehicles, investment properties, and private equity holdings, and it can be difficult to get a good idea of our actual net worth. And frankly, between the kids, work, and just life in general, I don't have time to be logging into 47 different places. So I just didn't. Scott walked me through setting up my Monarch account and suddenly everything was easy. It's all in one spot so I can check in quickly. Just like everything else on Monarch, the dashboard is customizable so I can see at a glance what's most important to me and dive deeper when I need to.

29:59Feel organized and confident in your finances with Monarch, an all-in-one personal finance tool that brings your entire financial life together in one clean interface on your laptop or your phone. And right now, just for our listeners, Monarch is offering 50 % off your first year with code pockets at monarch.com. Don't let financial opportunities slip through the cracks. Use code pockets at monarch.com in your browser for half off your first year. That's 50 % off your first year at monarch.com with the code pockets. I love math, said no one ever. Nobody starts a business thinking, you know what would make this more fun?

30:34Calculating quarterly estimated taxes. But somehow every small business owner ends up doing it. Your dreams of creating, selling, and growing get replaced by late nights chasing receipts, juggling invoices, and wondering if that bad sushi lunch with Scott counts as a write-off. Change all that with Found. Found is a business banking platform built to take the pain out of managing money. It automatically tracks expenses, organizes invoices, and even preps you for tax season without you doing the heavy lifting. You can set aside money for business goals, control spending with virtual cards, and find tax write-offs you didn't even know existed.