A boomer who moved from California to Tennessee said the slower pace of life and lower cost of living are big pluses
- A boomer recently moved from San Diego to Murfreesboro, Tennessee, for a lower cost of living.
- The business owner said he's hunting for homes that cost half as much as those in San Diego.
Bob Giramma, 63, was done with San Diego and was looking for a quieter, cheaper place to live. After contemplating a few locations, he settled on a city with just over a tenth of San Diego's population: Murfreesboro, Tennessee.
Murfreesboro, a city in the center of the state a one-hour drive from Nashville, may not have all the skyscrapers and tech headquarters of San Diego. But Giramma said his move, which he made three months ago, has surpassed his expectations.He said he's found a vibrant business community in Tennessee with a slower pace of life and a lower cost of living that's allowed him to live easier with less stress."We weren't tied to any community, so we looked for a place that was more aligned with the forward path for us," Giramma told Insider. "California was not aligned with that. Tennessee is."More than 22,500 former Californians moved to Tennessee between 2021 and 2022, according to US Census migration data released in October. Nearly 818,000 people left California for other states between 2021 and 2022, compared to the about 475,800 who moved in.Many like Giramma moved away to escape crowds and high prices for everything from housing to gas— and have found greener pastures elsewhere.
Deciding on Tennessee
The former California resident of 19 years owns several retail businesses and worked as a corporate engineer until leaving his job in 2018. With his kids grown up and moved out, he began planning to move away from San Diego because he can do his work from anywhere with WiFi.
San Diego, which Giramma called the "finest urban area of California," had become much more expensive and crowded because the city had not built much new affordable housing. He also said the city's politics also pushed him toward moving.
"We started thinking about moving a half dozen years ago, reading articles here and there and making a list of usual suspects," Giramma said. "People moving to Tennessee, Texas, Idaho, Nevada, North and South Carolina all came up quite a bit."
After going down their list of states to check out, the couple first decided to check out Tennessee. After spending a few days there, they decided not to visit any other states and settled on the middle of Tennessee.Giramma, who said he's semi-retired, operates a UPS Store in California and an independent convenience store in the Boston suburbs. He also works on projects with real-estate investors in the accessory-dwelling-unit space.Ultimately, he said, the burden of running his business was "really heavy" in California due to high prices, taxes, and regulations, while Tennessee is "one of the smoothest places to do business" because it has no state income tax, and he said filing paperwork and doing other administrative tasks is easier."To me, it's not even all those cultural, social issues that people like to fight about," Giramma said. "It's just the burdens of running a business and living became intolerable in California. It is helping that we're getting a lower cost of living, closer to family, and it's just a more pleasant place."Lower prices and 'good middle-class' living
Giramma and his wife, neither of whom lived in the Southeast prior to the move, are renting an apartment in Murfreesboro but are house hunting in Franklin, a city about 30 miles to the west of Murfreesboro.
Average home prices in Franklin are much more expensive than those in Murfreesboro and are just slightly under those in San Diego at about $856,000, according to Zillow estimates. But Giramma said he and his wife have met several other former Californians there and that the change of pace and quality-of-life improvements over San Diego remain attractive pluses to Giramma.
"There's stuff going on all the time, it's very family-oriented so people do a lot in the community," he said. "It's a lower-stress place. At this point in life, I just need a pleasant place to live where we can do business stuff and enjoy ourselves."
Still, he's found that groceries have been about the same price in both states. But other costs, such as renewal for his car registration, electricity, and other utilities are much cheaper in Tennessee.He's also had to sacrifice the consistently warm weather in San Diego for the warmer summers and colder winters of Tennessee. Despite the lack of beaches, he said Tennessee still has lots of nature and activities for all four seasons and a wide variety of cuisines.
All in all, he said his area of Tennessee is a "good middle-class place to live" where most people he's met are down to earth and very friendly, as opposed to California, which he said is being "hollowed out in the middle."
"You don't see ostentatious wealth and you don't see abject poverty," Giramma said. "A lot of people are in the middle, and in terms of diversity, my neighbors are of every race, ethnicity, and national origin."Have you recently moved to a new state? How does it compare? Reach out to this reporter at nsheidlower@insider.com.