There are so many amazing reasons to live in San Diego. Beautiful beaches, a incredible climate, friendly people. San Diego really does live up to the hype and is an amazing place to live. It wasn’t easy but I came up with 3 reasons you should not move to San Diego. I’ve spent my entire adult life here. There are so many reasons I love living here, it was tough to come up with any reasons I would want to move or not live here. That being said, I did the unthinkable and came up with a few.

Cost of Living in San Diego

Reason number 1 might be an obvious one but it’s going to be the Cost of Living. We are going to go deep on this but before we do, I wanted to point out quickly that San Diego does rank lower on the cost of living scale than several of the other major California cities such as Los Angeles and San Francisco. There’s a premium associated living in this amazing location but it’s not the most expensive. This is where it gets even more interesting. In terms of quality of life rankings, San Diego blows Los Angeles and San Francisco out of the water, out of the solar system for that matter. People in San Diego are happy, at least most of us. Specifically on the rankings I was looking at, San Diego is currently sitting happily at #6 as far as the entire country in quality of life ratings. There isn’t another west coast city even in the top 10, not even top 15!

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Looking a little closer, you will find we pay pretty close in most cases to what the rest of the state and country pay for utilities, food and groceries, we pay less for healthcare, gas (well sort of). Gas is insanely expensive here. $4.59 a gallon last time I checked or at least the time of this writing.

What really drives up the cost of living though is housing and San Diego Real Estate. The median home in San Diego right now is selling for $750,000. If you include condos and town homes, that figure drops to around $660,000. Still… $660,000 thousand dollars! And that figure is an increasing figure at the moment, not declining.

The Weather can be Unpredictable

Reason number 2 is going to be the weather. You’re probably thinking that I must be crazy. If you don’t live here, you probably think we have sunshine 365 days a year. That’s what you hear and see. If you do live here, you know what I mean. We have phenomenal weather, some of the best on the world but we do get rain  (on average about 12 inches a year), don’t catch yourself our driving on the roads when that happens because I can tell you, we don’t know how to drive in the rain. On average, we get about 266 days of sunshine a year. That crushes the us average which is at about 205 days a year but still we get our cloudy and rainy days.

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Here is another weather related fact. Think of those amazing beach and ocean views you want and probably think of when you think of San Diego, La Jolla, Mission Beach, Encinitas, Point Loma, Carlsbad. All of these communities get an overcast system almost every day starting in May and sometimes lasting into July. We call it June Gloom. It’s a thing. Many visitors plan amazing beach days only to find its cold and cloudy for the majority of the day. It burns off most of the time but usually not until late in the afternoon. Personally I like it. I keeps the beaches less crowded and less people (obstacles) in the water for me to dodge when I am out surfing.

All in, our weather is amazing but just don’t expect sunshine every single day. You can’t wear shorts and flip flops every day. I’m proof, I have a pair of pants stored away somewhere just in case.

Public Transportation Stinks

And reason number 3 you might not want to move here is the public transportation system stinks. I mean stinks as in its virtually not existent. Just about everyone has a car or drives a car. San Diego is extremely spread out and owning a car is usually a must. There are a few locations and neighborhoods that the trolley services and might be feasible to use for communing but it doesn’t work for most of us. There is a also a commuter train (the coaster or sprinter) that runs north and south. Once again, most of us commute in our own car though which leads to some pretty serious rush hour traffic. Nothing like Los Angeles or Orange County traffic but still enough to be annoying. My advice is to plan alternate times to drive or routes around the major traffic jams or get a good audiobook and do some self-development while staring at those brake lights. All in, if you don’t like public transportation and you like cars or trucks, this is the place for you.

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So those are the 3 reason I could think of that someone would not want to move to San Diego. That being said, come on, there are so many places, we have free will to live anywhere, I guarantee you San Diego is one of the best.