So many of you know I’m a very frugal guy for the most part. I believe my living expenses to be way lower than most people even those in my peer group. So low in fact, I was only spending roughly $25K a year when living in Mississippi and this included traveling and eating out. So as one can see my budget is never me just being a hermit. I often think I do more than most people who spend a boatload more than I do. I just have optimized my living expenses very well. Or at least I did before.
This brings me to my current situation living in San Diego. Oh yes, the beautiful city of San Diego and your “high cost of living” I so love. Well not just me as I know plenty of people who love this city and have actually moved back here spite the higher cost of living. As I am often told in a very persuasive way that it’s worth the extra cost’s to live in such a great city. So when I moved here I had to find a place to live. Yes, the great and fun task of looking at new places to live. While I enjoyed it for the first five minutes after that I wanted to cut my eyes out LOL.
My first idea was to simply rent a room out at someone else house. My main focus for this was to simply have a roof over my head and funnel the extra money I was saving into investing. Man, I had already calculated how much I was going to invest and how much my net worth could potentially grow. It was all very exciting stuff. Well, it was if you like to nerd out like I do with numbers. But as always life tends to throw you a curveball and I decided that I wanted my girlfriend at the time to move to San Diego and we live together. To my surprise, she was ok with the idea of us renting a room in a house as she was doing this in the Bay area. So the search continued. After days of her and I searching, we found nothing that wanted to rent out to a couple especially one with a dog. So there went that dream of renting a room and all my net worth calculations with it.
Next idea we will rent a cheap apartment and funnel the extra money to invest. We found places ranging from $1,300 to roughly $3,000 a month on the scale that fit the location and what we wanted. Now the lower end was a further drive with fewer luxuries offered. Basically, it was your bare-bones apartment with outdated appliances. Which in all honesty I was fine with when the search started. The higher-end was either downtown or near the beach with more trendy apartments with hip amenities. We made a list of about 10 places or so getting a good range of places and cost and went to see them in person. The more we looked the more I was ready to just settle on a place. Some of these places wanted $1,800 a month for a one-bedroom with no AC/Heat. The guy said don’t worry you can rent a window unit for cheap from us lol. Another place admitted there was no parking unless we paid a monthly parking fee. If not the only parking was on the street a few blocks away. I felt like we would never find a place that fit what we wanted and was what I thought to be a reasonable price. But then it happened we looked at a place in Chula Vista and I fell in love with the place. Well, let me just show you some pictures first.
A few of the amenities above is my beautiful pool, hot tub, grills, and gym. Besides this there is a bicycle repair room, dog washing room, business lounge which has two sound reduced rooms with whiteboards and tables, three nice table booths with big flat-screen TV’s with free cable and wifi, A full kitchen/ lounge to host big get-togethers with couches, chairs TV’s with free cable, wifi, pool table, shuffleboard, and arcade games, outdoor lounge on the second deck outside with couch and TV, covered parking, valet trash pick up outside my door, key fobs vs a metal key and finally they do some sort of free get together every month. I have seen yoga, painting and wine, a taco truck and beer truck so far. Mind you all of that stuff at the community get together is free. On top of all that the interior of the place is so nice and a W/D included with my place. The price varies depending on water use but typically right around $1,970 a month is what I pay.
Now I should have taken some of the insides for this post, yet my place is not organized currently enough to take great photos. Don’t worry it soon will be though. So, for now, I will post one picture of my place and one of the model.
I’m all about transparency with myself and my blog. So with that, It’s now just me in the apartment. I and my fiancé split ways as of now which was hard enough. It brought me to the hard decision do I keep this luxury apartment now that I can rent a bedroom out in a house again and literally save at least $1,000 a month if not more. Which I’m leaning to the more side by my calculations. It took me lots of thinking on my porch to decide what I was going to do. Mind you I’d have to break the lease and pay a fee and no matter what choice I make I can always change my mind in the future.
I decided I would keep the apartment for now. I really love this place and it’s about a 30 minute or less drive to work which I don’t mind at all most days. I love the amenities and the area. I have a beautiful mall across the street that does a farmer market every Tuesday. There is a yoga place in the mall that does free sessions on Tuesday and Saturday for military/vets. I have every store imaginable within a 5 min car ride. I bicycle to many of the stores to save gas, enjoy the ride and get a little workout in. Let me show you my pizza place across the street I ride my bicycle too. The pizza is bomb and less than $10 anything I want on it!
I learned a lot from this place. I learned it is ok to splurge on my place if it brings me value. This place for sure brings me value even though I could find a much cheaper place. Sometimes it’s not all about how much I can save/invest yet instead it’s about enjoying the journey and spending based on what I value while saving/investing for my future. Though I do think renting a bedroom would make for some cool articles. Yet for, now I’ll simply have to write about my experience in this “luxury” apartment. The best part is I’m still able to hit around a 45%-50% savings rate.