It’s official: We are moving to Texas! We’ve had this idea prayerfully on our minds for a little over a year, and now we feel the time is right. There are a whole host of reasons for making this big decision and we feel that the benefits of a move overwhelmingly outweigh the reasons for staying in Ohio. After looking for a long time at buying a house, we found the perfect house to build instead. Building a house means we won’t be moving for a few more months but our patience will be rewarded with a wonderful new home.

We had been looking to buy a house for quite some time. A lot of internet searches on potential homes was agonizing work and searching from Ohio for a house in Texas proved to be more challenging than I originally thought. It is one thing to look at a house on a computer screen; it’s another to see it in person, along with its school system, the street it’s on, the neighborhood, and so forth. We knew we wanted to be close to the airport and also close to my sister and her husband. We also wanted to be near their wonderful church, Bent Tree. We would fly down and look at 8-10 homes at a time, take lots of notes, and hope the houses wouldn’t run together in our minds afterward.

In the end, we saw a lot of wonderful homes, but they were either not in the area we wanted, or were too expensive for what we wanted to afford. Eight months ago, I walked into a model home for David Weekley Builders, and met Kelli, a sales representative. We talked about what good homes they build and the benefits of living closer in to the city. I personally trusted David Weekley because Katie and Scott built one and love their house. I should have signed a deal with Kelli that weekend because the house prices climb every few months, and she’s the one we eventually inked a deal with. Laura and I were debating buying or building a more affordable home farther north of the Metroplex. Homes are cheaper 25 minutes north of where we eventually decided to build, but the commute to shopping, family, and the airport can take its toll over the years with an extra hour round trip added to the travel time. Essentially, the homes farther out are cheaper for a reason.

The David Weekley home we are building is in a planned community called Castle Hills North, the Northern section of Castle Hills, located in Lewisville, Texas. It’s twenty minutes to DFW and thirty minutes to Dallas Love. It is also near all the modern amenities of shopping and entertainment. I grew up in Arlington, 45 minutes to the South, and always liked that area, but when Katie built in Castle Hills, my eyes were opened to how old and run down “my” part of Arlington had become. Neighborhoods that were safe and new back in the early 80’s weren’t so much anymore. With me being a long-haul pilot, we needed a neighborhood that Laura and the kids would feel safe in for years to come.

We didn’t want to make this move and then plan on moving again soon, so we built for the future. The Weidman floor plan, as it is known, has five bedrooms, a study, family room, a retreat area for the kids to play, a home theater, and a master bath and kitchen to die for, all in 3,200 square feet. If we have more kids, we can fill the house, and if we aren’t blessed with more children, we can always find ways to fill the space. The lot size is just under a quarter-acre, so Gus and Kiley will have plenty of room to romp when they aren’t down at the park a few minutes walk away. We are really stoked about this house and excited about the new digs we will be living in.

We’ve sacrificed for quite a while in our 1,300 square foot home in Groveport. We don’t have cable or satellite, we use MagicJack for our home phone, we have used furniture purchased for a steal from Laura’s family, we drive one car, we buy thrift store clothing, and we use Mint.com to watch every penny that goes out the door. I could (and should) write an entire blog post on how we save money and live like no one else, so that one day, we can truly live like no one else. If that sentence sounds familiar, it is because we have Dave Ramsey to thank for the blessings of our savings. Therefore, we won’t have to sell our current house to move into the Weidman in Texas, and that is a huge relief to not worry about. I have lots of small projects I want to finish before we put 537 Cherry Street on the market.

The decision to move was so clear to us, it was like we were slapped in the face. Some of the reasons for moving include an easier commute to work. I was able to secure a base swap eight months out of the year from New York to Los Angeles. Getting to LAX is a lot easier than to JFK because the weather is better in SoCal, and the Cathay trips tend to be (for now) better than the trips out of JFK. Also, getting to LAX will be far easier from Dallas than Columbus. (I’m typing this right now on a Southwest flight from Columbus to LA via Denver, and the flight is already delayed, causing me heart ache and stress I don’t need.)

Also, the tax benefits are much greater in Texas than the over-taxed residents of Ohio. I won’t weary you with details, but after running the numbers, I will pay 25% less non-federal taxes in Texas than I currently do in Ohio, and I’m gaining nearly 2,000 square feet of home! We want to start buying rental properties, and Texas, not Ohio, is the place to do that. The faster we can own 10-15 properties, the sooner I don’t have to work away from home, and away from my family.

I’m hopeful that someday, even if the rental properties don’t pay like we want them to, I might find a good corporate pilot position at a company headquartered in Dallas so that I can continue to fly, but not be gone so much. Time will tell.

Moving to the Dallas suburbs will also bring me closer to my family, as we’ve been near Laura’s family for a while now. It will be nice to be close to them, in a good church like Bent Tree, closer to the beach, and closer to Katie’s lake house for wake boarding fun. There are some other reasons for moving that we will not share here on the blog, but just know that we are excited and looking forward to starting our new family in our new house in Texas!

As it stands right now, we don’t have a lot of pictures of the new house, but you can click the picture above to be taken to our photo album that we will update as the house progresses through the building process. See you soon, from Texas!