moving back – After moving from California to El Paso, Texas in 2022 for a lower cost of living, Guadalupe Galindo-Nevarez says the savings didn’t outweigh the trade-offs—weather, taxes, and fewer activities for her daughter. Now she and her family are planning to return to
By the time winds hit El Paso hard enough to tear curtains off a pergola, Guadalupe Galindo-Nevarez knew the move wasn’t landing the way she’d hoped.
She moved from Natomas, a neighborhood in Sacramento, to El Paso in December 2022 with her husband and daughter. She and her husband bought a brand-new four-bedroom. three-bathroom home for $250. 000—an “incredible bargain” compared with California’s expensive housing market. Gas was as low as $2.34 per gallon before it started rising because of the Iran war. groceries and dining out were cheaper. and the lack of state income tax felt like a major win.
But the advantages, she says, came with trade-offs that have gradually outweighed the benefits. The family has decided to move back to California as soon as possible.
Galindo-Nevarez, 63, grew up in El Paso, then left for college in Sacramento and stayed there for 47 years. She says she started feeling homesick. wanted to be closer to family. and wanted her teenage daughter to grow up in a different environment. Texas also seemed to fit a specific goal: both she and her husband believed the state’s high school programs could help students earn their associate degree before graduating.
“When I told my family I was moving to El Paso, they were excited,” Galindo-Nevarez says. They told her, “Everything is so much cheaper and better here,” and, she adds, they were right—for a time.
There was beauty in El Paso, too: it sits along the border near Mexico and New Mexico, with what she describes as a unique blend of cultures. She says the people were kind and that she wishes more people understood El Paso’s culture and its “incredible, authentic Mexican food.”
Still, the adjustment became harder inside the household.
Her daughter, Galindo-Nevarez says, struggled from the beginning. When they first moved, her daughter immediately said, “I don’t like it.” She started school and made a couple of friends, but she felt like other people treated her like an outsider.
Now, she says her daughter is “very happy we’re going back to California.” Her daughter is interested in pursuing a degree in molecular biology and is hoping to get into UC Davis.
Her husband. meanwhile. was “over Texas within the first two weeks” of moving. with weather becoming one of the biggest shocks. In El Paso, she says, summers regularly get above 100 degrees, and winters can be harsh. Temperatures can dip to 18 degrees—colder than what they were used to in California. She also points to wind as an ongoing problem. She says they didn’t do enough research before moving, especially about the neighborhood where they bought their home. It’s a nice, brand-new neighborhood, she says, but there is open land behind them, making the wind feel stronger. Just last week, winds reached 41 mph and tore the curtains off their pergola. Dust storms are also common, especially in the spring.
Lifestyle trade-offs were harder to ignore as the family tried to settle into a routine. The family is sports-oriented and tries to do activities together. In California, Galindo-Nevarez says they would go to Monterey Bay, Los Angeles, Dodger games, and other baseball games. In El Paso, she says, there simply isn’t as much to do—especially for a 16-year-old. There are places to hike, but overall, she says the activities feel more limited than what they were used to.
As for the places she misses, she keeps naming them: San Francisco, Reno, Lake Tahoe, and Monterey Bay.
The financial math also shifted in ways she hadn’t fully anticipated. She says her husband worked for the State of California for 30 years, so the family has excellent insurance in California. She expects her medical treatments will be “a lot more affordable” there.
She also acknowledges that she expects a higher mortgage when they return to California. But she says property taxes in Texas turned out to be much higher than they expected, making the trade-off feel less comfortable than they had planned.
Right now, their return depends partly on timing. Galindo-Nevarez says she is looking into buying her oldest daughter’s home in Sacramento. Her daughter has been searching for a bigger home for her family for about eight months. and Galindo-Nevarez says their timeline depends on when she finds something.
Until that lines up, she and her family are still in the middle of the lesson they say they didn’t expect to learn so quickly.
They call it a learning lesson. If she ever moves again, Galindo-Nevarez says she will do more research. She points to the areas where, in her view, they should have looked more closely: the neighborhood, the weather, the medical benefits, and the overall lifestyle.
For now, the decision to go back is not a theory. It’s a plan they’re already working through—one that started with the promise of a cheaper life in Texas and ended with the family deciding that, for them, it wasn’t the right fit.
El Paso Texas Sacramento California cost of living housing prices property taxes state income tax weather medical insurance UC Davis molecular biology family relocation