A California couple who packed up their things and headed to Texas to avoid collapsing under the liberal state’s high cost of living can’t wait to leave the Lonesome State behind and return home.
Dannielle Price, 47, and her ex-husband, Eiman Monam, 45, are counting down the days until they can leave Tyler, Texas, where they moved in May.
“We definitely don’t plan on staying in Texas,” Price said. Business information“We just want to move back home to California once our lease ends in May of next year.
This is Price’s second time living in Texas, and her experience there hasn’t been any better than the first time she moved there in 2021.
Her cost of living issues haven’t gone away like she thought they would and she’s struggling to find full-time work.
“I haven’t gotten many job interviews here in Tyler,” she said. “It seems like a lot of the jobs are part-time. Plus, I went from making almost $18 an hour in California to $11 here.”
Dannielle Price, 47, and her ex-husband, Eiman Monam, 45, are counting down the days until they can leave Tyler, Texas, where they moved in May. (pictured: Riverside, California, where they are originally from)
“We definitely don’t plan on staying in Texas,” Price said. The couple has been living in Tyler after moving to the state earlier this year. They moved for a lower cost of living, but have struggled to find work and pay their bills.
Price and Monam, who are married but separated, moved their family from Riverside, California, to Henderson, Texas, to briefly live with her parents earlier this year. But after some tensions between Monam and her father, they moved to Tyler.
Although the mother of three struggled when she first moved to Texas in June 2021, she couldn’t afford to have four people living in a one-bedroom apartment in California and said she and her daughter were “constantly working to pay the bills.”
“So I started talking about moving to Texas again because I was dreaming of affordable houses and apartments, thinking life there might be a little easier for all of us,” she told Business Insider.
Monam agreed, as she was currently facing homelessness and liked the “opportunity to live in an affordable place, save money, and permanently resolve my long-term housing issues.”
“But that’s not what we got,” he said. “We thought everything was going to be cheaper here in Texas than it has been.”
Unlike in California, they were responsible for paying “all our utilities” and quickly fell behind on bills. Price is on the verge of losing his car, despite working two jobs.
She is currently unemployed while her husband works as a receptionist in a hotel.
In 2021, Price made her first move to Texas after beginning to feel the weight of rising costs in 2019.
Money became her “main stressor” and affected her ability to “really live my life.”
Although both she and Monam worked (he was working two jobs at the time), they both struggled to make ends meet. So Price picked up her daughters and left. Monam and her son were unable to follow.
Price’s mother lived in Henderson, where she found “the houses were very cheap and huge.”
“Everything was very cheap,” he said. “My goal was to be able to buy my own house one day.”
Although they were initially “blown away by the beautiful nature” Texas had to offer and both she and her daughter found full-time work, her oldest daughter “started to get depressed,” so they packed their bags and returned to Riverside in the fall of 2021.
The family is eager to leave Texas (pictured) and enjoy all the comforts of California, even though they know their pockets will suffer the consequences. “It’s home”
When they returned, they hoped Monam had found an apartment for the family to live in, but she had fallen victim to homelessness.
“So we stayed with her mother on and off for a few months,” she said. “But that was difficult too, and my youngest daughter and I ended up in a shelter.”
In the spring of 2022, Price was able to get his old job and apartment back in Riverside and they remained there for two years before the most recent move to Texas.
Now, they are willing to trade Texas for all the amenities of California, even if they know their wallets will suffer.
“We’re excited to get back, but we’re also worried. We want to make sure we have enough money to start over,” Price said. “But we’d rather deal with the high cost of living and enjoy the convenience.”
‘It’s home.’