Accounting for a Detoured Economist

Well I finally have some free time and thought that there is no better use of free time then to write inane posts on a blog read by a small niche of the small niche of accountants that read blogs to begin with. Hi. My wife, daughter, and I had enough of the San Francisco Bay Area and its $800,000 fixer-0upper starter houses and decided that if we ever wanted a house we had better move to an area in the US that we could afford to buy a starter house.

The search was difficult because we had soo many requirements for a place we would consider moving. After living in Ithaca, New York for a while we knew we didn’t want to live anywhere that had snow for more then a few weeks a year, which cut out more then half of the country. The demographics had to be right, we prefer living in tech savvy towns with educated population demographics, low crime and good schools. Furthermore, salary scales had to be very similar to the Bay Area and housing had to be at least half of the price. With those criteria in mind we narrowed our choices to Raleigh, North Carolina and Austin, Texas…both places I had considered attending graduate school a few years ago.

Since the wife didn’t want to live in Texas North Carolina became the sole entry on the list. So a couple of months ago we flew out so that I could test the job market and we could get a feel for the city. The trip was a raging success. With three job offers in four interviews the job situation looked promising. We decided that living in a suburb of Raleigh (Cary, NC) would be desirable and found a house in one day…made an offer, and as of the end of June we have become proud North Carolinians.

The last box was unpacked yesterday and I can now commute to work without the help of a GPS device so posting will become a bit more regular. I hope all is well with you. TTYL.

My family is moving to the Raleigh area of North Carolina from the San Francisco Bay Area. I have accepted a job as a senior auditor in Raleigh and we are in the final stages of buying a house (inspection, closing escrow, etc.). Needless to say life is traveling at a speed faster than is comfortable for anything but a short period of time.

We are moving to North Carolina due to the substantial increase in quality of life and standard of living we could achieve from the move. An entry level single family home in a half-way decent neighborhood in the bay area hovers around $650,000 while a comparable home in Raleigh is less then $200,000. All the while I actually received an increase in salary to move! Needless to say my wife and I jumped at the chance…Laura’s parents, who currently live a few miles away, are going to need a few months to accept the decision…apparently taking a grandchild thousands of miles away can be a traumatic experience.

We will be driving across country on June 20th and will sign the purchase paperwork on June 27th. So don’t expect many posts for the next month. With packing and all the extraneous chores that come from a cross-country move I anticipate very little free-time to blog, or relax.

I have noticed that many of the audit blogs have been really slow lately. This would be an optimal opportunity for an up and coming blogger to collect readers with demand far exceeding supply. If you want some readers, email me at csilvey@gmail.com and I will post a link and your RSS feed.

Just got back from North Carolina where I had a number of job interviews, my wife and I have made an offer on a house, and we spent some time on the coast. At work we are also at the height of interim work and I have a final in cost accounting on Thursday, so its easy to see why production at Accounting for a Detoured Economist has been low lately. Talk at ya soon.