Season 5, Episode 3: “I Can’t Decide Where To Live. Do Taxes, Housing, and Cost of Living Really Matter?”

Kitty 0:00 

I will choose an alternate banter to lead us in that doesn’t involve mouth sounds because I think, I’m not joking, I think people will get torches and show up in front of our houses. I think it’ll only be like 17 people, but that’s enough, isn’t it? 

Piggy 0:15 

Yes, they will be very vociferous with their outrage. 

Theme Song 0:19 

If you need some dough 
You don’t know where to go 
In this patriarchal capitalist hellscape 
 
Well here’s the ‘sitch 
We’re gonna help you, sis 
Because bitches get riches 
 
Bitches get riches 
Bitches get riches 
Bitches get riches 
And so can you 

Kitty 0:46 

I’m Kitty. 

Piggy 0:47 

And I’m Piggy. 

Kitty 0:48 

And we are the Bitches in Bitches Get Riches. 

Piggy 0:50 

We just learned about our nation’s strategic cheese reserve housed deep under the state of Missouri in a series of converted limestone caves. 

Kitty 0:58 

And mark my words, it will be ours. All 1.4 billion pounds of it! 

Piggy 1:06 

But our time on this planet is limited. 

Kitty 1:08 

So let’s get started. 

Piggy 1:09 

So today’s letter comes to us from a follower who prefers to remain anonymous, so we will be referring to them as Pickle for the duration of this episode. And Pickle writes, I just read your article about the issues living in tiny houses, and I loved it. Kitty said that her house was n times cheaper than the nearest metro area, and that made me wonder, did you choose where you wanted to live and then look for a house? Or did you base where you lived on the best housing option? I’d love to hear more about both Kitty and Piggy’s thought process on whether to live in city versus suburb versus town versus country.  

Kitty 1:41 

This is a really good question because I think of all the decisions that you can make about your life that will impact everything else that happens to you, it’s where you live and who you choose to live with. So this is a big one. 

Piggy 1:58 

Oh, yeah. I really like this because it is a throwback to our excellent article about living in tiny houses where you were basically like, actually tiny houses suck for most people. And they’re not even an option for me because as dedicated followers know, my husband is six foot eight. So tiny houses aren’t really built for giants. 

Kitty 2:17 

He kind of makes normal houses tiny houses. 

Piggy 2:20 

He does. He does. 

Kitty 2:21 

Okay. So tip number one, if you’re heterosexual, my condolences. I have unfortunately ended up married to a man, but luckily he’s five eight, so portable. So don’t date the tall ones. 

Piggy 2:35 

No! Marry a fun size person. 

Kitty 2:37 

Find you a short king. 

Piggy 2:39 

Find you a short king. 

Kitty 2:40 

Find you a petite soul. 

Piggy 2:41 

Travel size, if you will. 

Kitty 2:43 

And start there. [laughter] Our advice is so good. 

Piggy 2:47 

God, we are so good at this. We are crushing this. Yeah. So bitches out. That’s the episode in a nutshell. 

You and I went to college in a very high priced metro area. Spoiler alert, it was Boston. 

Kitty 3:00 

It was Boston, Massachusetts. 

Piggy 3:01 

With hometowns in rural areas. But why don’t you talk about what drove you to the burbs? 

Kitty 3:08 

I do live in the, I guess what a lot of people call the suburbs of Boston. For me, this process started with a deep interrogation of the kind of life that I wanted to lead. And what I wanted to do told me what my options were going to be. I’m a homebody. A lot of my hobbies are ones that you kind of need a base of operations to do. And so I really knew I would like to garden. I would like to have an outdoor space that belongs to me. I would love to have chickens. I would love to have more animals than I have right now. And I would like to have enough room that I could have someone come to my house and stay with us and be comfortable and not be sort of crammed into a weird studio or one bedroom situation where I felt like I couldn’t invite anyone to come and spend a very affordable weekend or week or month or year with me. So within that list of wants, it was very clear that what was right for me was a traditional home. And that’s not necessarily what’s right for everyone. 

In the personal finance space, we hear people all the time say, renting is throwing your money away. Renting is throwing your money down a well. From a certain perspective, that is true. But like, throwing your money at a brick and mortar single family ranch, if that is not the kind of lifestyle that you want, that’s actually throwing money away. So it’s traditional wisdom that’s like, it’s sort of true, but it’s like some people love to travel. Some people love to be digital nomads. Some people want to live their life in a state of preparedness for greater change. Some people have anxiety and they don’t want to deal with things like, I have an ice dam and I didn’t even know what that was. And now it’s on me to fix it. There’s a lot to be said for—there’s a lot of pros that should come from renting or living with family or other less traditional arrangements. But for me, I wanted a house. Yeah. 

Piggy 5:14 

Yeah. I don’t blame you. And I do want to say, between the home you grew up with, with your parents or whoever was taking care of you as a child, and the adult home that you stay in long-term, there is an intermediary time when you are living either in college housing and then a shared apartment where you are not going to be in the perfect ideal spot. And that’s okay. In fact, it’s more than okay. That time that I spent living in shared housing with my peers before my husband and I bought our house, that time was when I realized what I wanted. That time trying stuff out, experimenting. You need to A, live within your means, but also try different stuff out, move around. Do not be afraid to leave your hometown or go somewhere you’ve never been. 

That’s actually what my husband and I did. After college in Boston, moved out to Colorado with a group of other young folks who worked for the same company as my husband. And one of them was a little bit older and she had money set aside for a down payment on a house. So she bought a house in Colorado and was just like, hey, if you guys want to try this out, I’ll rent bedrooms to you for dirt cheap and we can all just pile into this house and try to start our careers in Colorado. And that’s literally what we did. There were seven people and two dogs in this house. We had very little privacy. We had very little personal space, but it was great because we realized, hmm, here we are living in the suburbs of Denver. We don’t really like the burbs. We prefer to live in the middle of the city where there’s a little more action, but we do like living in Colorado because we are the outdoorsy crunchy granola types. But yeah, we didn’t buy a house for another eight, nine years after that. But that experience of living in our little hippie commune with our friends really gave us the flexibility and the savings to figure that out for ourselves. 

Kitty 7:20 

I have always been someone who has a drive to pick up and go somewhere brand new every ten years. I get an itch inside of me where I want to go. So after finishing school in Boston, my plan was to go somewhere else. And I had a town picked out based on the research that I had done in terms of like, here’s the kind of lifestyle I want to lead. Here is the job that I think I could realistically get and what its salary is. And here are places where I could get those jobs that would kind of all feed into this general lifestyle and budget that I have in mind. And I went there and visited for like a week and just kicked around on my own. And I realized this would be an amazing town to retire in, but it is not the right place to be in my 20s. There are just not enough people who are my age. And I think in the long term, I would end up feeling fairly lonely. I then started seeing this guy. 

Piggy 8:28 

Wait a minute. 

Kitty 8:30 

And so my husband, he’s an introvert. He spent a lot of his formative years feeling fairly lonely, fairly depressed. Hey guys, if you’re depressed, get your thyroid checked. It might just be your thyroid. It was just his thyroid! 

Piggy 8:46 

Who knew? 

Kitty 8:47 

My poor little boy. 

Piggy 8:49 

Wow. The wonders of medical science. Yes. 

Kitty 8:50 

So he had experienced a lot of loneliness and he had finally made this powerful group of friends in the Boston area. And when I talked to him about maybe going somewhere else and saying, I feel like I struck out on my first choice, so I’m open. If we’re going to be together, we could go anywhere. We could go anywhere together. And he felt very strongly that he wanted to stay in Boston. And I know that it was because he was worried that I made friends once, why would I walk away from this? Why would I leave? I finally found my people. And if I leave, I will never find my people again because they’re here. And my perspective as someone who had picked up and moved before, was that if you’ve made friends once in your life, you are a person who can make friends again. It might take a little bit more effort to get started, but if you could do something once, that means you can do it again. But he did not feel ready. And I was like, you know what? I actually like you. You bring more positives. You bring me closer to the lifestyle that I wanted than the idea of picking up and going somewhere else. So I will stay in the Boston area. And that is why my cost of living is so high! 

Piggy 10:12 

God damn it! I was really lucky in that I moved out here with a group of people, like besides my partner. We had a whole passel of young people our age and then was able to meet more young people our age. Not everyone makes friends easily. I don’t want to diminish the idea of moving somewhere for community or staying somewhere for community or going nearby for community. But I also want to challenge people. Whether you want to live in the city, the country, wherever, there are all kinds of people everywhere. And I often have found that the people who are tiny blue dots in a sea of red or people who are creative free thinkers in a sea of whether it’s–  

Kitty 10:58 

Episcopal churches, you can say it. 

Piggy 11:01 

Yeah. Thanks. I was going to be like Bible Belt weirdos. Yeah, like you can find and build your own community anywhere. So don’t be afraid to try somewhere. And also that leads me into my next point that you brought up, which is cost of living. Because, and wouldn’t you know it, the places, I’ll just say it again, the fucking Bible Belt. It generally has a lower cost of living. We have relatives in Oklahoma who have a house 10 times the size of ours for half the cost. And that’s because no one wants to live in fucking Oklahoma. But I would say don’t discount those areas that have a low cost of living. Again, you can find something to love about just about anywhere. And you might find living there like, hey, having this lower cost of living and creating my tiny community of weirdo creative progressive people, that really means a lot more to me than living in New York City and literally chopping off an arm and/or a leg every time you have to pay rent. 

Kitty 12:12 

I like that idea. I will say, if you have this idea that I’m going to go to the place that has the climate that I want or the cost of living that I want, or something that’s pretty fixed, and you’re like, I believe in myself. I can make the social stuff work. Rent. Go rent and give yourself a time frame of like, I need to feel like I have five close friends within a year. Otherwise, I need to bounce and try somewhere else. Don’t just go pick up and buy somewhere because that is a huge investment. And that is going to set the next several years of your life. And trying before you buy is like, even if renting is technically less advantageous or the timing would be better if, oh rates are favorable now and they might be like, no, just it is always better to know that you are going to enjoy the place that you live. 

Piggy 3:15 

As in romantic relationships, so in your place of living: try before you buy. (13:26 – 13:32) Try living with someone. 

Kitty 13:27 

We’re not doing that married at first sight, TLC. You can keep it. 

Piggy 13:31 

You can fucking keep it. No 90 day fiancés for us. But actually that reminds me, the world is large and life is long. So you really can try before you buy a lot. If you’ve ever been like, I wonder what it would be like to live in a foreign country? Pick one and go. 

Kitty 13:49 

Yeah. It’s going to be so much easier to do that when you are in your teens, in your 20s. Once you are in your 30s, 40s, 50s, you will probably have to deal with stuff like aging parents. 

Piggy 14:02 

Joint pain. 

Kitty 14:03 

You will probably end up with friends and partners who need assistance. You may end up having children. You may adopt animals. And then you know what? 

Piggy 14:12 

You’re kind of stuck. 

Kitty 14:13 

Now it’s like logistically too difficult. And that window might not open up again for you until like retirement age. 

Piggy 14:19 

Yeah. Nothing ties you to a place more than owning 5 to 10 chickens. So don’t make that mistake. [laughter] As we have. 

Kitty 14:31 

My ball and chain. 

Piggy 14:32 

My clucking little ball and—balls and chain. 

Kitty 14:37 

It’s a question of like, what kind of lifestyle do you lead? Pickle mentioned that they— 

Piggy 14:44 

I forgot we were calling them Pickle. 

Kitty 14:46 

I’ve never forgotten. Pickle mentioned that they enjoyed our article on tiny homes. So that was based on an experience where my husband and I, who are like fairly minimalist and are like nice, compact, petite, short people, and we live together very easily—we live up each other’s butts and we like it that way—we thought, oh, we’re like perfect people to try this out. And it was just for a month. And that month was truly like the most miserable—it is the only time in our…we’ve been together for I think like 15 years and married for 10 or 11? I don’t remember. But that is the only time in our relationship where we like got snippy and mean toward each other, like in a petty way. And it was because, I didn’t have the language to talk about this at the time, but it was because living in a tiny house exacerbated all of the negative symptoms of my ADHD and all of the negative symptoms of his as yet undiagnosed social anxiety. So I was getting incredibly frustrated by the constant distraction of having to move things and clean things and bumping into things. And it was so aggravating. And he was picking up on my aggravation and was like, I guess I should fall all over myself to try to make you happy, which just like made me more annoyed because I was like, I wish I could will myself into being in a good mood for you because I see your effort and I can’t do that. So I was getting mad at myself. And now everyone is mad and very upset. So it’s just, there are things that you think you can survive. And what we learned is that actually, you know what’s better than having a tiny house? 

We can’t do a tiny house, but you know what we can do? We can do a one bathroom. We were able to afford our home because it’s a one bathroom. And for most people, that is a deal breaker. And we were like, for us, we’re peeing with the door open. We don’t mind! We don’t care. Come on in. I’ll sit on the toilet, spread my legs. You aim right on through into the hole. We can pee together. It’ll be great! You have to know. You have to figure out what can I tolerate? 

Piggy 17:08 

And what I figured out living in my hippie commune when I first moved out here is that I am very picky about roommates. And the one person who I am a great roommate with is my husband. 

We have not discussed taxes. And that is very intentional on my part, because I grew up with a father who was just like, never move to Tax-achusetts or Cali…fornia…chusetts. 

Kitty 17:36 

Cali—Taxi—Taxifornia! 

Piggy 17:42 

Taxifornia! Wow. It’s so great to see the creative process in work. Anyway, my dad’s a libertarian. Who knew? But I have found that taxes, as we have said before, are merely the membership fee for membership in society. And moving from Boston to Denver, the cost of living did go down quite a bit for me in 2009 because nobody had really discovered Denver yet. Now, Denver’s really caught up to Massachusetts. And we have, I would say, middle of the road taxes. I could move to Wyoming and pay a lot less in taxes and probably still have most of the same climate and outdoorsy-ness and lifestyle, except there’s no giant cities in Wyoming. But I won’t do that because I like the things I get from taxes more than I like having that extra money. I like that I can go to very nicely manicured parks, that I have dog parks and play areas for my dog. I have roads and public transit. I have bike lanes. I’ve got bike lanes! I have city-sponsored summer concert series. I have a great public library. Listen, I could go on. And clearly, I would, because I like the things that I pay for with my taxes.  

Kitty 19:08 

Absolutely. 

Piggy 19:10 

Some people in the personal finance space will go on and on about— 

Kitty 19:13 

[fake coughing] White male libertarians. 

Piggy 19:15 

What? What? 

Kitty 19:16 

[more fake coughing] Who mostly live in Vermont and Colorado. 

Piggy 19:18 

Bros. Bros. 

Kitty 19:20 

Sorry. I have contempt for others in my throat. No, this is so extreme for me. I completely agree. Actually, this year, my state of Taxachusetts, they have a ballot measure this year that basically says, would you like us to lower your tax rate across the board by 1% this year? And I plan to vote against that. I would like for my schools to be funded. I love the amenities that I get from living in my state. The amenities that I have here are so, so well worth the small amount of property taxes and sales taxes that I pay for it. Things like keeping our roads clean, keeping our water supply clean, but also things that you only get to discover when you’re living there. Like they stock all of our local ponds with rainbow trout. And that’s great because it makes me feel like an accomplished fisherman when in fact I am not. They have great programs at our library where there are libraries of things and there are museum passes so that people from low-income households can afford to take their kids to a science museum for a day. There are programs where if an animal is what’s holding you back from leaving an abusive partner, there are state-partnered agencies that will help foster your dog or cat for a short term so that you can go out and find somewhere safe to live and then get reunited later. Someone—a robot comes, a little robot Zamboni comes and clears the snow out of my sidewalks. 

Piggy 21:12 

What? 

Kitty 21:13 

I would pay all of my property taxes just for the delight of that. 

Piggy 21:18 

Well, that has not made its way to the Wild West yet. 

Kitty 21:21 

It is really something. I completely agree with you. I think that it’s a question of what amenities you have. The role of taxes is so, so vastly overstated in the personal finance space. And Libertarians, your time is over. You had your cute moment in the early aughts, but we’re done with all that now. 

Piggy 21:43 

The time of the orc has begun. I don’t know if anyone’s looked at their tax return recently, whether or not you got one. But the federal tax is so much more than the state tax, and the county tax, and the city tax, depending on where you live. And so I think this state by state, Taxachusetts, Taxifornia nonsense, I think it’s very silly because if you are talking about getting more of an ROI or a bang for your buck, you should be working on reducing your federal tax burden, not your state tax burden. 

Kitty 22:19 

How many multimillionaires and billionaires swore up and down, if Mamdani is elected, we will flee the state in droves, and they’re all still living there because they like living in New York, and there is no place that is like New York except for New York, and so they’re full of shit. 

Piggy 22:36 

Yeah, they are full of shit. 

Kitty 22:37 

Amenities are usually like—amenities, climate, community. Those are things that for different people are going to be really tough like, make or break things, and you may find that you live somewhere for a year or for 10 years or for 30 years, and then you’re ready to pick up and find something else with all of the newfound knowledge about yourself that you gleaned along the way. 

Piggy 23:02 

Abso-fucking-lutely. 

Kitty 23:04 

Let’s see. Is there anything critical that we haven’t touched on yet? 

Piggy 23:09 

I can think of a big one. Abortion is no longer illegal in all 50 states in the Union, and definitely not illegal in every country in the world. 

Kitty 23:17 

What? This is brand new information to me. 

Piggy 23:18 

What? What’s happening? 

Kitty 23:19 

[through gritted teeth] Thank goodness that I like and subscribe to bitchesgetriches.com. 

Piggy 23:22 

Yaaaaay. Like and subscribe for more hot takes. 

Kitty 23:27 

Yeah. No, this is actually very critical. I would never, no matter the cost savings, I would never ever, ever live in a state that did not actively protect my right to an abortion because raising a child is a multi-million dollar process, and I’ll be damned if anyone will force me to spend my one wild and precious life doing something that I don’t feel called to do. It is also completely strategically logical while you are a younger person, if you are deliberately not planning a family, or if you are deliberately planning a family, go and live in an expensive, nice-ass blue state with great amenities, and then maybe when you’re older and it’s less of a top priority, like that’s not ideal, but you will have that option, and when you get to that point, you can make that determination. But I think in my experience, the number one reason that people move, who like their homes, and like their communities, and like the state and town that they live in, is because they want better amenities. They want a better school for their kids is usually the number one. 

Piggy 24:41 

Yeah. No, I think healthcare, and there’s probably something outside of our personal understanding because our experiences are not universal, so I’m sure there is some healthcare consideration or some amenity that we are not thinking of that is very important to someone. 

Kitty 24:59 

Yeah. Actually, I can talk a little bit on this. So I have an autoimmune disease. 

Piggy 25:05 

What? 

Kitty 25:06 

Which one is it? [pointed pause] 

Piggy 25:08 

Oh, nooo! It could be any of them. 

Kitty 25:10 

They don’t know yet, but they’re like, you’ve definitely got at least one. So we are in the process of determining that. But there are so many people who commute in to see doctors in Massachusetts from as far as an eight hour drive. We have an amazing healthcare system in this state, and it is a destination. So either as you get older and you might have more healthcare costs, living somewhere that has a good hospital system is totally recommended. If you are lucky enough to have great health and you don’t need a lot of healthcare services, especially if your needs are pretty basic, like if you have a rare blood clotting disorder, you’re going to want to live near a major city center where you can actually access those kinds of specialists. If you’re not, then especially while you’re younger, you can afford to live somewhere that might not have a fantastic healthcare infrastructure and plan to move later on in life.  

Piggy 26:18 

Absolutely. Yeah, my in-laws just did this. They moved from rural bumfuck New Hampshire to the suburbs on the front range of Colorado. They’re about 40 minutes away from us, but they’re closer to a good hospital than they are to me and my husband, which is great because they are septuagenarians. And I like knowing that in the event of an emergency, they can get to a hospital even faster than we can get to them. And that’s where they’re retiring. And I think that’s lovely. 

Kitty 26:46 

It all comes down to what is the life that you want? What is the feeling that you want to have when you come to your home? How much time do you want to spend in your home? How important is the vibe, the design, the amenities, the climate, the community, the people that you have nearby? It all depends on what is important to you personally. I think everybody can be happy wherever they are, grow where you’re planted and all that garbage, but it is so much easier to be happy and fulfilled if you live somewhere that doesn’t feel like you’re starting each day sort of already in a hole and you’re having to make your own fun, make your own community, scrounge up your own work. All of those things just minimize the amount of fun that you can have. 

Piggy 27:49 

Yeah. Life’s about having fun, so try stuff out. 

Kitty 27:52 

Yeah. I love that. Are you good with that? 

Piggy 27:54 

I am good with that. 

Kitty 27:57 

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Piggy 28:28 

Is there anything else they should know? 

Kitty 28:30 

Yes. I’m going to Iceland soon and our stats tell me that we have like 9 Icelandic listeners. So if you live there, send me a DM so I can pepper you with questions about where to get the best hot dogs or whatever. And if you don’t, I’ll just have fun hunting you for sport.  

Piggy 28:50 

[laughter] Well, good to know, I guess. 

Kitty 28:54 

You know you’re a small time celebrity when you stalk your own fans. I want to know, where are you? 

Piggy 29:00 

Hey, fans. Where are you? You’re the real celebrity. 

Kitty 29:05 

Do you think that I’m funny and smart? I want to sit down and get coffee with you so you can tell me. 

Piggy 29:10 

Tell me more about how funny and smart I am. Bitches out? 

Kitty 29:13 

Bitches out. 

Piggy 29:14 

Whee!