- Tiffany Baker and her husband have lived and traveled all over the world with their three children.
- But they moved back to Terre Haute, Indiana, a city of about 60,000 an hour from Indianapolis.
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Tiffany Baker, 37, and her husband Mark, 38, about the decision they made to move their family of five back to their hometown of Terre Haute, Indiana. They currently run an investment firm that buys distressed or rundown buildings in order to renovate them and rent them out to tenants. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Mark: My wife and our three daughters have traveled all over the world.
Tiffany was formerly an accountant for the Department of Defense, and I was a contractor for an international banking program.
Our jobs allowed us to live in places like Naples, Italy and Tokyo, Japan.
Tiffany: We love living overseas and traveling to experience new places, but nothing beats living in Terre Haute, Indiana.
Living in Japan put us on the right track financially
Mark: In 2012, My wife and I moved to Naples from Indianapolis. After three years in Europe, we moved back to the states and settled in Denver, Colorado. In 2017, we relocated to Tokyo with our children.
Tiffany: We were in Japan as Department of Defense employees and contractors so the US government paid for all of our housing costs and living expenses.
We were able to capitalize on that and build a portfolio of rental homes. At the time, we had three rental properties in Indianapolis.
Having our expenses paid for allowed us to save up and invest in assets and to get to the position where we were eventually able to quit our jobs and start our own business. We needed to figure out how to become a full-time family, and we did that through real estate.
We were ready for a new chapter closer to loved ones
Mark: By 2018, we were already figuring out how to get away from the rat race — it was our goal to make work optional.
That year, bad news put us on the fast track. In July, my sister called to let me know that my dad had taken his own life. It rocked our world.
I was on the complete opposite side of the world — 6,000 miles away — and had to spend the next 48 hours trying to get a flight home as quickly as possible.
Tiffany: Losing Mark's dad made us reevaluate living so far from home. His sudden death woke us up and made us brave enough to take the chance on ourselves and our family.
By April 2019, we had quit our jobs and were on a plane moving back to the States for good.
In order for us to quit our jobs, we took out a home equity line of credit on one of our homes for $80,000 and saved up $20,000 cash. We had also invested in our traditional retirement accounts and had about 250,000 between the both of us.
Our Indiana hometown has our hearts
Mark: We considered moving back to Indianapolis or Denver, but those places have such a high cost of living. When you quit your big-kid job, affordability is something you definitely consider.
We chose to relocate to Terre Haute, where our story started. It's where we both grew up, went to school, and met in high school. Even more, our entire family is here.
In 2019, my wife and I purchased a home in the neighborhood I grew up in with my parents. It's a two-story, four-bedroom, three-bathroom house that was built in 1890. We got it for just $80,000.
Tiffany: My out-of-state friends just can't believe how much we paid for the home. It's just unfathomable to people living in bigger cities that you can purchase this much real estate for such low costs.
The move back to our hometown makes us feel like we hacked life. We've truly learned how to live big by investing small. I don't need $1 million to feel like a millionaire here.
The town has a lot of really awesome parks, and there are a bunch of things to do. We like to support local businesses and restaurants. In fact, we've gotten really close with the town's brewery owners and hosted a beer festival last year.
We live in a paid-off home and started a real estate investment company in 2019 called 3 Sisters Investments. Our goal is to make Terre Haute an even better, more beautiful place to raise our family.Living in Terre Haute allows us to use our money and time to do whatever we want, whenever we want.
We can travel anywhere on the planet. This new freedom makes us feel richer than ever.