I'm a remote worker who moved from a big metro to a small city. Here's how it went.

It's worth it, if you value an outdoors lifestyle over urban hipness.

It seemed no matter where we went, we ran into people who’d pulled the plug on a big city to move to a smaller one.

Hey reader,

Full disclosure — I get analytical on you this week. Today’s essay breaks down the numbers of moving from a major metropolitan area to a smaller city. Under the microscope are cost of a home per square foot, cost of groceries and common amenities, and walkability.

Also factoring in conveniences like outdoor access and airport access.

I’m a big fan of the Walkability Score — and this played a factor in deciding where to live.

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Community Shoutouts

• Thanks to Patrick for shouting out the “after-worker” term that debuted in last week’s newsletter — I’m quite proud of it myself.

• Cheers to the five new subscribers this past week — welcome! No matter where you are in your location independent journey, you’re sure to find inspiration here.

• A couple of you noted the difficulty in seeing hyperlinks in the text. I am looking into addressing that, but know this — there are hyperlinks to all sources, and to each news article linked at the bottom.

• Please feel free to hit “reply” and let me know your thoughts!

And now for the meat and potatoes . . .

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I'm a remote worker who moved from a big metro to a small city. Here's how it went.

Remote work has opened the door for tens of thousands of US workers to leave major metro areas like San Francisco or New York behind in favor of smaller, more affordable cities.

Some are drawn by the lower cost of living, others by outdoor access or lack of congestion and traffic. Think Bend, Oregon, instead of Portland; which offers a similar density of breweries and easier access to trails. Or Santa Barbara, California, instead of Los Angeles or San Francisco, where you’ll find beaches and farm-to-table food without the rush hour madness.

CBRE, a commercial real estate company, recently published a study noting outbound trends of knowledge workers from major metros to smaller cities. Results were striking — San Francisco lost 1 percent of its population in 2020, for example.

Leading this exodus are young professionals who can work remotely. If it makes no difference to your career, why pay for a New York studio when you could live in Stowe, Vermont, for less money and with trails right outside your door?

In May of 2019, my wife and I moved from Lakewood, a suburb of Denver, to the small town of Palisade (outside the city of Grand Junction, pop. 65,000), in western Colorado. It’s been a success — though not without hiccups. Here’s our story of remote-work-powered re-location.

It’s inspiring to be part of the movement

Capitol Peak, the most dangerous of Colorado’s 14ers — the Roaring Fork Valley is much easier to get to from Palisade than Denver

We’d been plotting the move for years. Somewhere around 2015, Alisha and I began embarking on weekend camping trips to every part of the state. The goal was to identify where we wanted to move to build home and raise a family.

We’d set up camp and spend a few days checking out the nearby trails, towns, brewpubs, and general vibe. We also checked into housing prices, coworking spots, and cafes.

What we wanted to gain vs. what we didn’t want to give up

One thing that knocked from the list several places we liked including Salida (pop. 6,000) and Alamosa (pop. 10,000) was the lack of a functional airport. Because we love to travel, we wanted an airport with top-tier regional service nearby.

The goals were two-fold. First, get out of the suburbs. We didn’t want to get sucked into the big city housing bubble or pay $3,000 per month to rent a place in one of Denver’s “cool” neighborhoods.

Second, we wanted easy outdoor access. This includes the ability to bike to trails from our driveway, and to not have to battle Interstate 70 traffic to go snowboarding.

Palisade won because of its excellent outdoor access, cute and cozy small-town vibe, and conveniences like ample dining and a functional airport right up the road in Grand Junction.

I recognize our privilege — being an educated knowledge worker who can command an upper-middle-class earning level while working on a laptop, something that remains largely unattainable in many industries and demographics.

The first thing we did after moving was to join a coworking space in Grand Junction. From our house, it was about a 20-minute drive or one-hour bike ride along the Colorado River.

It quickly became apparent that we weren’t alone. Nearly everyone we met at the coworking space had done the same thing. There was the couple who’d recently relocated from Denver, like us. And another from Golden, and a #vanlifer from Salida who’d passed through and fallen for the area.

A month after relocating, I was on a story assignment in British Columbia. One of the other writers on the trip had, incredibly, just bought a house in Palisade a five-minute bike ride from ours.

It seemed no matter where we went, we ran into people who’d pulled the plug on a big city to move to a smaller one.

This inspired us. We had community straight away, including people to go to happy hour with, on bike rides with, and do yoga with. Like us, they were bound only to their laptops and used that freedom to base themselves somewhere with seemingly endless trailheads to explore.

We all worked hard, played hard, and settled in.

Our cost of living decreased

Closing on a house necessitates at least one bottle of champagne. And at least one dog.

Living in Palisade has reduced our overall cost of living compared to living in Denver. To be clear, we live in a small house, love to cook at home, and aren’t much for physical belongings beyond outdoor gear. Our home is downtown and walkable to common necessities including a grocery store, post office, dining, and a brewery.

One could certainly buy a large, expensive house outside of town that requires excess commuting even for small errands, and find that their cost of living goes up compared to living in a metro city center.

But for us, it’s helped to maintain a manageable financial output even with the arrival of our baby girl, Olivia.

To break this down as far as possible, let’s look at the value for the money when it comes to real estate and expenses. I bought a roughly 800-square-foot condo in suburban Denver in February, 2014, for $128,000. That’s about $160 per square foot.

The condo had two bedrooms, one bathroom, and a small balcony. It was cute and because we were on the top level, it even had elevated ceilings. In May, 2019, I sold the condo for $235,000. The appreciation upped the cost per square foot to about $293 for the buyer.

At that same time, we closed on a 1,200-square-foot house in Palisade for $295,000. That’s about $245.8 per square foot. A nice decrease from the sale value of the condo. Compared to what we paid in Denver it was more, but here we have a large yard and an epic patio where we can enjoy happy hour as the sun sets over Mt. Garfield right in front of us.

To me, this drastically boosts the value proposition of the house. And within three years it’s gained over $100,000 in value.

Add to that the fact that this house was stripped to the studs and completely remodeled. When we first saw it, there was little other than the beams to go by. We put a lot of faith in the couple flipping our house, but they did a great job — including new copper plumbing, a brand new furnace and water heater, and fresh trimmings in the kitchen and restrooms.

Boom — more value for the buck.

If you were to rent, the savings would be more immediate. Rent Cafe puts the average Denver rent price for an 841 square-foot, two-bedroom apartment at $1,821. In Palisade, that cost is $852 and in Grand Junction, it’s $1,035.

Best Places notes the cost of groceries and other shoppables as being slightly cheaper in Grand Junction (our nearest “city”) than in Denver. I’ve found this to be true, though not significantly so. We save $3-5 per weeks’ run of groceries. Prices for other common items like gas, beer, and a cup of coffee are comparable (and in some cases, slightly cheaper) to what they are in Denver.

Some urban conveniences were sacrificed

The “fast” rating is being very generous. Denver’s average is 102 mbps download.

The most frustrating aspect has been the slow speed of WiFi at home. Major cities offer rapid WiFi speeds in residential areas, while rural parts of the United States are largely lacking (let’s go, Elon!)

Our CenturyLink service averages 32 mbps download, 4.88 mbps upload. This is tough for recording podcasts — I tend to go to the coworking space to record, simply because I don’t trust our WiFi to not have a lag.

It’s also proven tough to come by certain things we need. For example, my laptop crapped out a few weeks ago, so I headed to Best Buy in Grand Junction. You’d think that any Best Buy, anywhere, would have Macbook Pros in stock or at least be able to get one in within a day or two — but the quickest they could guarantee one was a few days later.

Not going to cut it for a remote worker, and I ended up heading to Denver to pick up a laptop.

Inconveniences like this are not common, but do happen from time to time.

Diversity is also lacking. Every one of my immediate neighbors is white. Nearly everyone I’ve met in Palisade and western Colorado is white, and while there are exceptions, this certainly isn’t the type of place where you’re going to find a melting pot of cultures.

There are the outdoorsy types, who tend to skew younger and more progressive. Some work remotely (there are a few coworking spaces in Grand Junction), and some moved here as a result of “opportunity zone” tax credits for entrepreneurs and small business owners.

There is also a strong contingent of older, conservative-leaning folks who aren’t exactly stoked about the increasing numbers of remote workers and visitors they see as driving up costs and ruining the old-time character of the town.

I can’t blame them for this, as it is at least partly true — and from that angle, I am part of the problem. I feel self-conscious about this at times, like when I give out my phone number with a Denver area code. Overall, though, people have been largely welcoming and friendly.

The real win is the lifestyle

The view of Palisade from one of my regular “after-workers” up on the Bookcliffs.

Despite the inconveniences, the overall trade-off has been more than worth it, in our opinion. The walkability of our house saves us even more money because everything — literally everything — we need is either a walk or bike ride away.

The grocery store, post office, brewery, coffee shop, and restaurants of Palisade are all within a few blocks of our house. A daycare center is right up the road, and when our daughter hits school age, we can walk her to the local elementary.

When we do drive into Grand Junction for dinner or to visit a natural foods store, traffic is non-existent, even at 5:00 in the afternoon.

Plus, I can hop on my bike, depart from my driveway, and be on the Palisade Rim Trail or the gravel rides around Horse Mountain in just a few minutes.

Any who’ve ever dealt with I-70 ski traffic leaving Denver on a Saturday morning can attest to how frustrating it is to have to wake up at 5 am to get first chair. Out here, those days are a fading memory rather than a constant nightmare.

Powderhorn Mountain Resort, the local ski hill, is 30 minutes from my house. Aspen, Vail, and Telluride are two hours or less. And the backcountry splitboard touring on the Grand Mesa is consistently good, and just 30 minutes away.

Don’t get me wrong — I’m not one of those anti-city, “mountain types.” I love Denver (it’s my hometown, after all), and enjoy visiting vibrant cities the world over. But when it comes to where my wife and I want to base ourselves, and where we want to raise our daughter, the peace of mind of a small town with easy outdoor access is the win.

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Mountain Remote News

• I mentioned Powderhorn Mountain Resort above. Its also pioneered the tiny homes at ski resorts movement.

• Conservationists in Chile are creating their own glaciers to fight warming and preserve habitat.

• Big companies hoping for a full return to the office are fighting a ‘dead’ battle.

• A great take from Outside on the disgruntled ski-town local — Being a local doesn’t mean you can be a jerk.

See ya next week!