real talk: goodbye San Francisco, hello Phoenix

lifestyle

Jul 29

Written By

Thank you all so much for sharing in the excitement of our big move announcement! If you missed it, read last week's post here: surprise...we're moving!Before we begin with this in-depth post about our life for the past six months, we just want you all to know that we are grateful every single day that we are able to live our dreams and do what we do. We do not want our words below to come across as whiny or complaining at all, because we know we've been given so many amazing opportunities and have such a great life overall! But we are also human, and no one's life is perfect, especially when compared to what you see on social media. The purpose of this post is to keep it real with you and share with you why we are leaving San Francisco and moving to Arizona. Our followers mean so much to us and we know we wouldn't be able to do this without you. For that reason, we love sharing our life and being open and vulnerable with you.We decided to break up this post into two sections: her side and his side. We both have different reasons why we are excited to move and what brought us to this point. Enjoy!- Sarah & Robbie

Her Siderobbie and i couldn’t be more excited to be moving to Arizona and building a home! thank you all so so much for your love and support since we made the announcement last week. we’ve read every single one of your comments/DMs/emails and feel so loved. we can’t wait to share this journey with you!now that you know the big news, this blog post is to tell you the why of it all. we wanted to split it up because it’s been a long journey full of ups and downs, and we wanted to keep it real. so here it goes.first, a lot of people are probably wondering: why are you moving? after our announcement, we got a lot of messages saying it was a total shock that we are leaving San Francisco. “you guys love it there don’t you?!” well, i guess it all started at the end of last year when robbie and i decided 2018 was the year we were going to save to buy a house. we started casually looking at homes in the Bay Area, and quickly realized how insanely expensive it truly is. for me, i always knew SF wasn’t going to be our permanent home, but robbie really wanted to stay in the Bay Area longterm, and said he definitely wasn’t going to move out of California. so there's some quick background. now for the emotional aspect of all this…i’ve been feeling very, very burnt out over the past six months. honestly, i’ve felt burnt out since last year. i’ve told friends and family that i don’t feel like i’ve had an actual chance to relax since we went viral last year. life only seems to speed up and social media anxiety is real. ever since we went viral it’s been go-go-go, stress, anxiety, excitement, opportunities, travel, heartbreak, happiness, and everything in between. we got into this horrible routine of coming home from our insane travel schedule, trying to get some rest so we're not so exhausted, but then be burnt out from our own home because nothing is easy when you live in a major city. and then we would have to leave for another trip a few days later. not exactly a balanced lifestyle. and it started wearing on me big time. i felt trapped in this one bedroom apartment: too cooped up with too much to do and yet even the thought of going out was exhausting. i had no space for all my packages and clothes and no time to organize them all, so i just started letting it all pile up. we were both so busy working that the drive in traffic to go grocery shopping seemed impossible. we started eating lots of frozen food because it was all we had time to cook, which in turn made us feel like crap. we didn’t exercise because we are constantly traveling and working non-stop when we were home. i was crying every single day. robbie and i started fighting more. i started to dread photo shoots because driving one hour+ in traffic to three different locations back and forth across the city and trying to change into three outfits in the back of our MINI Cooper while trying to find parking was a literal nightmare. i started to hate my job, i would cry to robbie at night that i didn’t want to blog anymore. i wanted out. this lasted for months.plus, this may seem like a minor thing but let's be honest: the weather in SF definitely doesn't help any. i can only handle so many overcast, foggy, chilly, windy days before i start to crack haha. when people think of California weather, they're most definitely not thinking of San Francisco. this desert girl needs warmth and sunshine! it's hard to maintain a positive attitude when it's nothing but gray skies out your window. as for robbie, his breaking point finally came when we paid taxes this year. being successfully self-employed sounds cool until your state requires you to give away between 10-14% of your income {on top of working with my agency, donating to our church, etc., those percentages all add up very quickly.} after that, let's just say robbie was much more passionate about moving out of California haha.we didn’t really know where to look next. back home to Vegas was an option but we wanted another new adventure together and not to move home just yet. a lot of people suggested Austin to us because it’s so poppin’ right now but Texas was never really a consideration because it's humid and further from family. then we got busy with life and didn’t have time to deal with the stress of moving so we put it on the backburner.then the month of April was the kick in the pants we needed. in April we had six trips back to back, with only a few days at home in total. we would never schedule ourselves like that on purpose but we had obligations and were blessed to have opportunities pop up that we just couldn’t say no to. we started off with a cross-country 24-hour trip to NYC for an important meeting, then went to Miami to visit my brother who had just had his new baby. from there we went to Coachella {never again lol} and while in Palm Springs we received heartbreaking news. robbie’s Grandpa Tripp had passed away, a great man who robbie is named after and was a very difficult loss for our Tripp fam. so from there we flew to Utah for 24-hours to attend the viewing and the funeral. after which we flew home to SF, got in at midnight, unpacked, repacked, went to sleep for a few hours, and then got up at 4am the next morning to fly to Dallas where i was speaking at the rewardStyle conference.finally, at the end of April, we went to Arizona for our close friend's wedding. this was obviously during a very stressful time and honestly we were both pretty down. we always try to stay positive on social media and not talk much about how hard it is to be self-employed because we feel very blessed to do what we do. but sometimes it can be very, very exhausting and situations can arise that threaten everything you’ve worked so hard to build.however, being in Arizona and being able to disconnect for a weekend was exactly what we needed. by the end of weekend we found ourselves driving around Scottsdale looking at a few home listings! and just like that the wheels were turning. when we decided we wanted to seriously look for a home in Arizona, we went through the pre-approval process to get a home loan and shortly after we were approved. {in another post, we will walk you through what that pre-approval process was like for us a first time home-buyers AND being self-employed.}we went to Arizona for four full days in May and house hunted in Scottsdale from morning until sundown. we were solely looking in Scottsdale because well, what’s not to love?! the shopping is incredible, it’s close to the Phoenix airport, and of course it’s a little bit boujee, which we love haha! however, the Scottsdale housing market proved to be very tricky in the fact that we were running into some of the same problems we faced in SF: old homes from the 1950’s-60’s with a facelift that were going for wayyy more than they are actually worth, simply because of the hot location. we thought about buying an old, dumpy home and completely remodeling it because robbie’s dad is a contractor, but realized we just don’t have that kind of time with our schedule. it was so stressful, and even more so when we had to fly back home with nothing we had fallen in love with. we went back to our one bedroom in SF and felt as stuck as ever.after another month of searching Zillow listings every night and seeing nothing exciting, we decided to expand our search outside of Scottsdale. a lot more options landed in our lap and we found a brand new community and loved the virtual tour online.so when we made our second house-hunting trip a few weeks ago, we went straight to that community first thing Monday morning, and… we fell in love!!! we put down the deposit later that day and then spent the rest of our trip relaxing in the sun.so i know everyone has been dying to know where we’re building specifically, so time to finally share:we are building our home in Phoenix and couldn't be more excited! next month we have our appointment to go and design all the features of our home, and i am so excited! our home is scheduled to be completed around March of 2019. we will be here in SF until the end of the year, at which time we will move closer to AZ so we can see the finishing touches on our home being completed.i am very much looking forward to a slower pace of life in Arizona: more room to live, less expensive, more options to shop, eat, and a place we own to call home and expand our family. and after living in SF for so long, i'm so excited to enjoy endless sunshine and desert heat.we want to share a lot of this process with you because it’s all so new to us! i haven’t done a lot of home decor on SRL, so i’m super excited to dive into a new extension of my style. if any talented AZ home designers are reading this or you have a friend that is, definitely shoot me an email!thank you all again for your love and support with this big announcement! on a related note, i think a large majority of our followers thought our announcement was that I am pregnant, which made us giggle. just so you know, Baby Tripp is something we both are super excited about for the near future! xx His SideWe're leaving San Francisco! And it looks like we're not the only ones. A recent study interviewed Bay Area residents and showed that 46%--nearly half--said they've considered moving because of the sky-high cost of living here that just keeps getting higher. Or how about this recent article that revealed that anyone making under $117,000 in San Francisco county is considered low-income. Yes, you read that correctly, if you make $100,000 a year in SF you are considered poor enough to qualify for low-income housing projects. Sometimes living here is like living in an alternate reality haha.When we moved to San Francisco, I was sure this was it for us. I planned to stay in the Bay Area forever. I even wrote an article for HuffPost titled "Why You Can't Afford NOT To Live in San Francisco." It was my call to entrepreneurs and creators, explaining that this is where things happen, a hub of innovation and creativity, the perfect place to make your dreams a reality. I’ve always loved living in California, it was where all my dreams were focused growing up, and I always said I would never leave the Golden State. San Francisco was the city of my dreams and that’s why we moved here. The people, the energy, the culture, the diversity, the history, it is all my vibe. I love the street art in the Mission, running along the Marina and underneath the Golden Gate Bridge, playing basketball at Dolores Park, meetings at worldwide headquarters in Silicon Valley, eating at the most unique restaurants downtown, the day trips to Napa, going to Warriors games in Oakland, etc. San Francisco is such an eclectic, thriving city with a personality that is all its own. I loved it from the moment we met years ago. We have been living that dream for the last couple years, but this past year our lifestyle has definitely changed and a strange little thing called “city life” started creeping in more noticeably. Living here started to become exhausting. For example, one day I spent two hours driving in traffic to four different gas stations just to try and find one that had a working air pump to fill up our car's flat tire. City life.One weekend Sarah and I wanted to go visit Sausalito, a cute little bayside town on the other side of the bridge that resembles a quaint Italian village. It’s only 11 miles away from our apartment, but it took an hour and a half to get there from across the city. By the time we arrived, we were irritable and starving, so we ate the first crappy burger we could find and had a mediocre time. City life.When we need to go shopping at Nordstrom for Sarah to exchange sizes from her last order or buy things for our next trip, we have no other option than to drive all the way downtown and pay $12 each time for the parking garage because there’s no parking downtown. City life.When we’ve been working for 8 hours straight glued to our laptops because we have a campaign deadline and all I want in life is some quick Chick-Fil-A to refuel, our options are: 1) Drive an hour across the Bay Bridge to Chick-Fil-A because it’s the only one near the city 2) Order Postmates delivery where you pay an arm and a leg for them to deliver to you, so those $5 nuggets just became $20 nuggets. 3) Starve and then settle for a bowl of cereal. City life.See where I’m going with this? I hope we don't sound whiny, because these are just the realities of city life that anyone who lives in a major city goes through. And even with these frustrations, I was fine. I still loved San Francisco with all my heart and never wanted to leave. I even viewed it as a badge of honor, that only tough and ambitious people could handle living in the city. I don’t get bothered easily, and I knew the pros far outweighed the cons. But I could tell it was really weighing on my sweet Sarah.I could tell it was affecting her happiness and so it affected mine too. There were a lot of days where we would stay at home working on our laptops all day long, from the moment we get up to the moment we went to bed, and wouldn't even try leaving the house because it was just too damn exhausting. We both dreaded drives to the grocery store because the nearest Target is 20 minutes away and have you ever tried working a 10 hour day and then carrying bags of groceries through a parking garage, five sets of doors, and up a flight of stairs to your apartment? Not fun.But like I said, I was dealing with it. Until…Tax season.Yep, when Uncle Sam came around and reached into our pockets after a highly successful year of hustling our asses off, I was done. If I told you how much money we paid in taxes this past April, you would choke. I won't get into specifics but just to put it into perspective, we ended up paying what some people make in salary for an entire year, all because of the California tax bracket we fell into. Not cool. Not worth it. I'm out. I can hustle elsewhere.For an entrepreneurial minded guy like me who has always had two goals: 1) Make my wife the happiest woman in the world and 2) Chase my dreams of building a successful life for my family for generations, it became a no-brainer that living in San Francisco was no longer the right option for my goals. We had officially outgrown it. After seeing what our rent money could do when taken to the great state of Arizona in terms of buying a house, it became even more attractive to leave.So here we are. I feel completely at peace and ready to move on to this next chapter in our lives. I have nothing but fond memories of our time in San Francisco and moving here will always remain the best decision we ever made. We came, we saw, we conquered. That's how I feel. We moved to SF with a dream and we’re leaving with this awesome reality we created here. We made it happen. We hustled and grew our platforms and made connections and built our business to where it is today. And now it’s time to move on and truly enjoy the good life.Arizona, we out here.