What's your "make me move" price?

[ua_guy]

My husband has a job offer on the table, but the company is located in another state and would require us to move. This opportunity found him, and we currently have two stable jobs and we're on a good financial trajectory, and we love where we live. He's being asked to take an executive role and build out operations for an emerging company. As I understand, he'd be working with some brilliant minds in the tech industry, and this may be a rare opportunity.

What would the terms of the offer need to be?

Double your existing salary? Just a job title or experience? Stock options? Worth how much?

We've been agonizing over this offer for weeks, and we've already made a decision, but I'm not sure it's the right one. Anyone care to share their experience?

[Fishindude77]

You mention you have stable jobs, but don't mention if you LIKE those jobs. You don't mention if you have children either. Those would be a big factors in the decision.

If happy with your present jobs and love your present location, wouldn't it make more sense to stay where you are at and try to maximize your earning potential where you are at? Otherwise you are going from a known situation into an unknown situation. You will also be starting over making friends, getting to know your community, starting the housing thing all over again.

I'm not a fan of the "job jumping" trend many young professionals seem to be on.

[ua_guy]

You mention you have stable jobs, but don't mention if you LIKE those jobs. You don't mention if you have children either. Those would be a big factors in the decision.

If happy with your present jobs and love your present location, wouldn't it make more sense to stay where you are at and try to maximize your earning potential where you are at? Otherwise you are going from a known situation into an unknown situation. You will also be starting over making friends, getting to know your community, starting the housing thing all over again.

I'm not a fan of the "job jumping" trend many young professionals seem to be on.

The point is, I think everyone has a "make me move" price. Money. At what point do people no longer care about living in their favorite place, or being absolutely happy with a job, or pull their kids out of the community to go live somewhere else, for work?

But to answer your questions, it's just us, no children, we're not in love with our jobs, but we do love our home and the area. We turned down the offer, at least temporarily.

One of our calculations--depending on what the stock options turned out to be worth inside of about 3 years--was being able to soft-retire by 40. That would mean having a paid off home and probably never necessitating two full-time careers ever again, although we would continue to work and save for true retirement. But we'd take a lot of risk to get there, and if it didn't work out, we'd look at being only slightly ahead of where we are today. We decided the risk wasn't worth it. Or is it?

[phantom]

My husband and I had this conversation a couple of weeks ago. He's been looking for a new job and was approached by a recruiter about a job in another city. It was for a company where he thought it would be really great to work. But, when we adjusted the potential new salary for cost of living, it actually turned out to be LESS than he currently makes, so we quickly ruled it out.

Before we knew the salary range, I was having a hard time imagining an offer that they could make that would make me comfortable with moving. We just had our first child, and it's hard to imagine a good reason to pull her away from her extended family. Enough money might make up for the loss of free baby sitting, but there are a lot of other advantages to having family close by that more money wouldn't make up for.

Before I'd even consider moving to another city, the new job would have to do the following things:
1. Provide my husband an opportunity to do something awesome at work that he's very unlikely to get to do without moving.
2. Provide my husband with a healthy amount of time off so I wouldn't be all alone in a new city too much.
3. Take us to an area that I could find some reason to get excited about.
3. Provide us with enough extra income for me to comfortably quit working (which is a goal for us even if we're not moving).
4. If moving to a higher cost of living area, provide enough extra income to make up for suddenly having a lot less equity in our house (percentage-wise). (I'm honestly not sure how I'd define this, but we currently have about 60% equity in our house, and if we were suddenly going to have closer to 30% in a comparable house, I'd want more money to quickly fix that.
5. Provide enough extra income for a few trips a year to visit family.

[avil_saver36]

For the specific situation listed in this question, I would take that offer.

For example, I work in tech and Facebook and Google are a couple of companies which can make me move at ANY OFFER. Other possibility is that a startup, or an exciting company of the like offers me a managerial/executive role to grow the company - yes, that should be taken without question because the potential windfall could be in the millions.

Always take the "rare career prospects". By definition, they are rare. Without taking a risk, and without sacrificing the established comfort zone, you don't get the riches in life.

You don't even have kids. That's an unparalleled flexibility. In this situation, you should not need weeks to figure it out.

It wasn't completely clear if you have stock vesting in the current company. If those vestings are not at least in the 6 figures, I would just forget about it. From what you described "build operations for an emerging company" - this can potentially turn out to be seriously lucrative. In the best case, this company pans out and you walk away with millions. In the worst case, the spouse has experience in doing this from ground up and almost anyone will hire him/her for that experience.

That's my take based on very limited information. It can change if there are more significant details that I have missed.

[disneysteve]

Really, really tough question. I'm not sure how to answer that. I think it would really come down to a family conversation when I had an offer in my hand. The biggest complicating factor right now is my daughter is in college about 45 minutes from home so that's the main thing holding us to where we are. I would not easily agree to move any distance from here until she's done school - but for a price, maybe I would. What would that price be? I'm not really sure. Double my salary? I sure as hell would be seriously considering that. That would allow me to retire many years early (assuming the cost of living is comparable). We could afford to fly back and forth to visit DD in school and get her home. And pay for college in cash. That would be extremely tempting.

[LivingAlmostLarge]

Absolutely nothing. We just moved from a job and to no job and to a new city with no income coming in. So the real issue is lifestyle.

[snafu]

I've a totally different viewpoint. I don't see money as the most significant factor. The excitement of working with the best in the field and taking on new challenges would make it imperative to go unless it harmed family values. DH was 'seconded' [loaned-out] to a foreign [USA] university and jumped at the opportunity even though it meant our lives were turned inside-out. Years later he was loaned to a university in Thailand and we went in spite of having to reluctantly send DSs to a private, residential school with the issue of guardianship.

I never saw money as an issue. I rented the house and nearly stroked out when the renter called and explained she accidentally drover her car into the side of the house! [It all got fixed with the help of my neighbour acting as rental agent]. If you can maintain your income swell, if not you may need some adjustments to keep costs in line. Usually there is more money and it's gravy. The new experiences took up all the time and I hardly had time to spend.

[MonkeyMama]

I would not move for anything. Being close to our family is our #1 priority. We also love where we live.

That said, if it's been an agonizing decision, why not just go for it? What's the worst that happens? You change your mind and move back? I guess I've watched so many people over the years move and change their mind. Doesn't seem like a particularly permanent decision to move and take a job elsewhere. Sometimes you never know until you try.

P.S. In our 20s we did almost move out of state when we could sell our house for a fortune. We just didn't act quick enough and the market fell quickly. But we figured we would have infinite funds for travel. In the years since my spouse and dad have had some major health problems and I just thank goodness we never moved. It would have been awful to live so far away when we needed our family's support the most, or when they needed us. Even if we could have afforded all the travel, there still would have been all that travel to deal with.

[ua_guy]

I would not move for anything. Being close to our family is our #1 priority. We also love where we live.

That is kind of where we're at. I don't know if we're being stupid, though. We're looking at a net increase of about 120k/year through regular salary alone, another net 100k in the first year from a payout for unvested stock options, plus a stock grant that could be worth a few million dollars inside of about 4 years. This assumes I stay neutral in my income, which wouldn't be hard to do. It could also mean I get to restart my career without the burden of covering expenses. I'm definitely not in love with what I do for work.

It means selling our home on acreage to go rent some overpriced dump in Silicon Valley. Leaving the vicinity of both our families. It's hard to imagine renting again, we both hate warm temperatures, and we both hate state income taxes.

We've already said no.

But it's been keeping us up at night. The offer still stands. And I can't say we haven't both been really thinking about what happens if the payout is good. It means we can kinda be free to do as we please starting at age 40, as long as we stick to a frugal lifestyle.

[MonkeyMama]

We've already said no.

But it's been keeping us up at night. The offer still stands. And I can't say we haven't both been really thinking about what happens if the payout is good. It means we can kinda be free to do as we please starting at age 40, as long as we stick to a frugal lifestyle.

It sounds like one of those very difficult life choices. Could you view as a more short-term decision and then have a Plan B if it doesn't work out? Maybe just move until you achieve financial independence? (I don't know how old you are nor how long that would be, though you mentioned age 40. Maybe it would be reasonable for 5 years but not something you want to do for 10+ years).

I particularly wanted to chime in though because I am from silicon valley and admittedly it was in my youth and when more entry level last I lived/worked there, but I saw so many people move from other states and overwhelmingly most people ended up only staying a short time. The repeated comment was, "I never really believed it would be *this* expensive." So I am guessing maybe it sounds better than it would be. That said, you either love it or hate it. For everyone we know that lives there, there is nowhere else they would rather live. Most recently we had a cousin move from Virginia Beach and he just LOVES it. IT's not warm so much as "perfect weather year round".

[bjl584]

tough question.

I think it's more than just money. If I were happy with where I lived and on solid financial ground, then would having more money really make me happy? Not sure. It would definitely be a gamble moving away to an unfamiliar place hoping that you'll be happy when you get there.

[avil_saver36]

That is kind of where we're at. I don't know if we're being stupid, though. We're looking at a net increase of about 120k/year through regular salary alone, another net 100k in the first year from a payout for unvested stock options, plus a stock grant that could be worth a few million dollars inside of about 4 years. This assumes I stay neutral in my income, which wouldn't be hard to do. It could also mean I get to restart my career without the burden of covering expenses. I'm definitely not in love with what I do for work.

It means selling our home on acreage to go rent some overpriced dump in Silicon Valley. Leaving the vicinity of both our families. It's hard to imagine renting again, we both hate warm temperatures, and we both hate state income taxes.

We've already said no.

But it's been keeping us up at night. The offer still stands. And I can't say we haven't both been really thinking about what happens if the payout is good. It means we can kinda be free to do as we please starting at age 40, as long as we stick to a frugal lifestyle.

In my honest opinion, this could come back to haunt you at a later point in life if things do quite as well as you plan.

Having a lot of money can help you cover any mistake in life. Not having "enough" is the problem.

In my own family, there is a person who was a super successful executive. He quit the workforce in the mid 30s to move close to "family". He bought a great house on cash. He had tremendous savings. He started his own business, and started enjoying life. Everything seemed fantastic for him. That was almost 10 years ago.

10 years down the line, the business hasn't panned out. It's not drowning him, but the thin margins have meant he didn't make much from it. He spent some of his savings initially, but realized that money was not going to last forever. By that time, he was out of the workforce for some 5 years and he couldn't get back in at a similar position. A couple of years down the road, his wife finally had to start working to keep the bills up to date and afford some luxuries he thought would be easy to afford. Unfortunately, he has become a different person now - more cynical, more judgmental, critical of others and his own family.

Because life always has uncertainties, you should try to maximize your compensation when you always have a chance. For the kind of numbers you have thrown out there, it would be a no brainer for almost anyone - I say "almost" because you are obviously an exception.

Why do you think the Silicon Valley is a dump and renting is terrible? I would give anything if I could live an upper middle class lifestyle in the Valley (unfortunately, that's just not gonna happen at my current income levels). It's a beautiful and vibrant place and it's anything but "warm".

Just my perspective. I won't post on this topic again. I don't want to add to your confusion - just fully understand that should chips fall the way in terms of payout and should someone else collect the riches, don't become a different person. Nothing's wrong in being content in what you have - the key is to really understand if you are made that way. If your decision is keeping you awake at night, you are obviously thinking about the payout and you should evaluate if you can be content.

[ua_guy]

In my honest opinion, this could come back to haunt you at a later point in life if things do quite as well as you plan.

Having a lot of money can help you cover any mistake in life. Not having "enough" is the problem.

In my own family, there is a person who was a super successful executive. He quit the workforce in the mid 30s to move close to "family". He bought a great house on cash. He had tremendous savings. He started his own business, and started enjoying life. Everything seemed fantastic for him. That was almost 10 years ago.

10 years down the line, the business hasn't panned out. It's not drowning him, but the thin margins have meant he didn't make much from it. He spent some of his savings initially, but realized that money was not going to last forever. By that time, he was out of the workforce for some 5 years and he couldn't get back in at a similar position. A couple of years down the road, his wife finally had to start working to keep the bills up to date and afford some luxuries he thought would be easy to afford. Unfortunately, he has become a different person now - more cynical, more judgmental, critical of others and his own family.

Because life always has uncertainties, you should try to maximize your compensation when you always have a chance. For the kind of numbers you have thrown out there, it would be a no brainer for almost anyone - I say "almost" because you are obviously an exception.

Why do you think the Silicon Valley is a dump and renting is terrible? I would give anything if I could live an upper middle class lifestyle in the Valley (unfortunately, that's just not gonna happen at my current income levels). It's a beautiful and vibrant place and it's anything but "warm".

Just my perspective. I won't post on this topic again. I don't want to add to your confusion - just fully understand that should chips fall the way in terms of payout and should someone else collect the riches, don't become a different person. Nothing's wrong in being content in what you have - the key is to really understand if you are made that way. If your decision is keeping you awake at night, you are obviously thinking about the payout and you should evaluate if you can be content.

To clarify, I don't think Silicon Valley is a dump. Northern California is absolutely beautiful. But the cost of living there is exceptionally high, SV being a crucible for housing prices. For the same spend, we're looking at a much lower quality of living than what we enjoy today, and having to rent. But on the weather front, it's warmer than where we are today It's all subjective.

You make a good point, and yes, I do see both sides of it. Nothing is guaranteed. By turning down the offer, I do wonder if this will be a decision that will come back to haunt us. Likewise, if we took the offer, I'd be nervous about planning the "thereafter" and how to manage a lifestyle of being financially independent, even if minimally so--or maybe not! We could be looking at having to move, and starting all over again.

[BudgetPronto]

Absolutely nothing. We just moved from a job and to no job and to a new city with no income coming in. So the real issue is lifestyle.

Brilliantly said, LivingAlmostLarge.