Safeway Prices in Silicon Valley - updated

According to Google Analytics, the second most popular blog I have ever written is….. Safeway Prices in Silicon Valley - over a year ago!  Interesting what you bloggers out there like to read about, but obviously a subject of some importance to many of you.

I therefore decided to update these figures, not only because they are over a year old and this blog is, if nothing  else, on the cutting edge of what’s happening in Silicon Valley, but also I was interested to see how much the figures have changed, increased since the last time I wrote about this.  The surge in fuel prices is just one factor which will have caused a leap in food prices in any store in this area, or indeed across the nation.

Bear in mind that many of these prices are NOT the actual price I paid thanks to my handy dandy Safeway card which reduced this total bill by 22%.  Of course, I gear my shopping to those items which are “Buy one, get one free” or on sale, every little counts, so many of these items were purchased at a lesser price than the regular one quoted.

(This from purchases made 6/11/0

Groceries

Large jar Kraft Mayo            4.65

Small Safeway Macaroni Pasta  1.59

Large Bag Safeway Rotelle Pasta  3.18

Large bag Safeway Honey Nut Oats     3.49

Large box Kellogs Rice Pockets         4.15

Box Kellogs Rice Krispies   4.59

Box Post Cereal   5.29

Can Garbanzo beans            1.49

Can Safeway Black Beans  1.49

Smuckers Magic Shell Chocolate Sauce  2.99

Box Eating Right Yoghurt Snack Bars  3.29

Pack Safeway Napkins  3.39

Refrig/Frozen

Gallon 1% milk  4.59

Small yoghurt  .85

Lucerne Unsalted Butter  3.99

Box Popsicle IcePops 3.19

Deep Dish 9in frozen pie crust  3.69

General Merchandise

Bag Safeway Cotton Wool 3.09

Bottle Safeway Nail Polish Remover 1.69

Bottle Safeway Low Doseage Aspirin 4.99

Band Aids 5.89

Baked Goods

French Bread 1.99

Bag Tandoori Nan  2.19

Meat

5 lb 80% ground beef  13.68

Safeway Beef Franks 2.99

Tyson frozen Chicken Patties 8.49

Produce

Green Grapes 2.49/lb

Bananas .89/lb

Gala Apples 1.99/lb

Apricots 3.99/lb

Nectarines 1.99/lb

Strawberries 3.99/lb

Red Plums 2.99/lb

6 white corn 4.14

Red onions 1.49/lb

Red Bell Pepper .99/lb

Yellow Sweet Onion 1.69/lb

Tomatoes 2.49/lb

Happy Shopping!

I will be following this up with a Trader Joe’s list shortly so come back soon!

And of course you were wondering what my most popular blog is so far - it’s 2008’s Best Cities for Relocating Families. Check it out!

The real cost of relocation

So how much does it really cost to relocate? And is the cost worth the move - financially and emotionally?

Interesting figures, from Ruth Mantell’s article in today’s Wall Street Journal, have been submitted on this subject by Worldwide ERC, a relocation-services industry trade group, on the financial burden companies undertake who agree to bear the whole cost of a family’s relocation within the US:

$62,000 if you’re a homeowner

$16-18,000 if you’re renting

$10,300 for the average for shipping costs (2006 data)

But beware, even if the company agrees to give you full relocation benefits. There are many other hidden costs that you yourself will have to pay that you may not have thought of until it’s time to move.

If you’re coming from an international location, for example, you’ll probably sell all your electronic and electrical goods as they won’t work over here. You’re going to have to spend quite a bit of money when you get here on replacing the multitude of electrical gadgets that you didn’t know you had until you were forced to get rid of them! And what about all the little repairs and carpet cleaning you’re going to have to do before you put your house on the market - that’s out of your own pocket. And the yard - that really needs a quick professional touch to make the house look perfect, don’t you think?

Many people relocating opt for the “cash up front” option. Instead of the company paying all the relocation costs, the individual accepts a check from the company in anticipation of finding just as effective a way to manage his relocation needs and keeping the extra cash for out-of-pocket expenses. But take care with this that the company doesn’t have conditions on that amount - ie certain third party contractors you have to use to ship your car, your belongings, even your family - where you could have found your own suppliers to do the same job for much cheaper. It happens. Get all the finer details about your relocation package before committing, making sure you get just what you’re getting.

And understand the real financial cost of taking a position in another part of the country - or world. Make sure the move for your career is worth it. Check out the taxes, state, federal and property, the costs of your temporary housing (will the company put you up for a certain time period - is it a justifiable time for you to find a home in that market? If not, negotiate). Are you going to have to pay more or less for your home than the one you currently own/rent - check out Zillow and Craigslist to find home values in your new location. How are the schools? Are you going to put your kids through public or private education? How far will you have to commute? Gas prices are ever soaring and eat up an increasing portion of the family budget now. Is it realistic to take public transport - and how much will it cost?

And make sure you know where you’re moving to. Take the whole family on a tour of the area before you commit to the new position. Spend as much time as you think necessary, not just a day, to show them all the advantages there will be to making a new home. Find a reputable relocation services company who will be able to show you around. It’s worth it to have someone answer all your questions and give you peace of mind. Bob Portale, president and chief executive for RELO Direct, a mobility-management company agrees. He says personal issues often weigh the most heavily on a family after relocation.

You may know this is the right move for your career, but you also need to know it’s the right move for your family’s life ahead.

Thoughts, experiences? Advice? Let’s help our relocating bloggers have the most stress-free move ever!!

2008’s Best Cities for Relocating Families

Worldwide ERC and Primacy Relocation announced on Thursday the findings of their fourth annual study which determines the best cities to move to for a successful relocation based on certain criteria for quality of life.  This year new categories were added :

” ……including recent job growth for 2007, percentage of nearby top-ranked colleges, average in-state tuition for four-year public colleges, percentage of population growth since 2000, amount of pediatricians per 100,000 population, and separate sales and income tax categories. Another new category is the green living index, which measures environmental incentives and policies, the availability of biofuel, wind power generation, and the amount of energy-efficient buildings.”

Interestingly, the metropolitan area of San Jose/Sunnyvale/Santa Clara which falls under the category of over 1,300,000 population (the largest of 3 categories), comes quite far down the chart at 40th, meaning that there are 39 cities more favorable to a successful relocation than Silicon Valley. Top of the list in order are Pittsburgh, Indianapolis/Carmel, Austin/Round Rock and Fort Worth/Arlington. So chances are, if you relocate to any of these places, you’ll stay put. Who’d have thought?

Now I don’t know about you, but I’ve been under the impression for a long while (pretty much all of the 12+ years I’ve lived here in Silicon Valley) that once you move here, you won’t want to leave either. But it seems that’s not always the case and I guess it can depend on how you move here.

Being in the relocation business, I’m constantly studying and re-evaluating what makes a successful relocation - it benefits our clients and the companies transferring them if the families we relocate here, stay here. But although I’m biased there is no doubt in my mind that using the expertise of a well-established relocation company considerably raises the odds of a successful relocation. Consider the issues that we take care of with your average relocation ( well documented on our website) :

Personal Profile Development (we find out all about you and your family before you visit)

Area orientation tour (we drive you round the communities which we think would best suit your living requirements and answer ALL your questions about living here)

Finding a home (rentals or purchase - we put you in touch with realty experts to find your perfect home)

School visits (kids need to see where they’re going to school, let’s go visit the principal and get a tour)

Banking, shopping, drivers license (we get you situated with all that paperwork)

Spousal assistance (your spouse wants to work as well or take an adult education class? - we help you find those opportunities)

Networking (finding your home from home - that truly is one of the key elements in relocation - getting involved with other families like yourself, making friends with the same interests - we help you connect)

Cross Cultural Training (coming from a different country and culture can be very daunting - we take you step by step through the integration process to help you feel comfortable and knowledgeable in your new community)

Ongoing Assistance (we stay in touch with you for the first six months after you’ve moved here so you’ll always have a friendly and helpful voice at the end of the phone)

Because we look after our clients with such a personalized service and don’t let go of them until we’re sure they’re well settled into their new community, our relocation success rate is veryhigh.

And I do know, that not getting the relocation service treatment when I moved here with my family in 1995, made it much harder and took much longer for me to feel happy in my new home.

How about you?  Have you relocated to where you are now?  Did you use a relocation service?  Or did you have to settle here, find a home and schools, friends and community, by yourself?  What made the relocation successful or not, for you?

I’d love to hear your stories.

The Challenges of Relocation

I’ve helped a lot of people move to Silicon Valley during the 10 years I’ve been running California Concierges, my relocation company.  Some were easier than others, some were more fun than others, but all presented their own set of challenges and I don’t imagine for one second that when the phone rings tomorrow morning, the pending relocation I take on will be totally straightforward.

But that’s what makes this business so fun.  No two families, individuals or couples are the same, come from the same place or are looking for the same ideals when they decide to leave their home and move to Silicon Valley.

Sure, I have a database (and photographs) of all the appartments that will take dogs or cats, or will only take small dogs, or are next to a cycle path or are so grim I would never recommend anyone to stay.  Yes, I know where all the local skateparks are for those kids who are skeptical about moving here with their skateboard, I know all about the local soccer, lacrosse, baseball, basketball leagues.  I know about the fitness centres, where they are and which ones to avoid.  I can give you a rundown on my preferred grocery stores, hairdressers and of course restaurants of most ethnicities.  I can tell you which pre-school groups to join to meet people and have park playdates.

After all these years and all these clients, you’d think that I’d know it all by now.  And sometimes I think I do - until the phone rings and someone wants to move here but just isn’t sure about where to moor his boat….

Yes, my job is fun, it’s challenging, it’s hard work and I wouldn’t swap it for the world.  If you’re moving here and have a challenging question you need answering in order for your relocation to go smoothly, check out my website - you may find the answer there - or send me an email: tlawrence@WeRelocate.com.

I look forward to helping you.

A Trip down Memory Lane

I’ve been away from blogland for a couple of weeks in the UK, checking on relatives, family and friends in England and Wales.

So apologies for the lack of writing, but I’m back and ready to blog again!  I did take my handy dandy notebook with me just to jot down ideas for my blog which should have been much more forthcoming than they were, given that I write about what to expect when you relocate to Silicon Valley from abroad.  Maybe it was because of the lack of time I had, dashing from home to home along the motorways (freeways in American) and country roads - I get very car sick if I even look down for a second - and how rude would it have been to take out my notebook just as Great Aunt Ursula wanted to tell me again about her last visit to the doctor.

Anyway, I did come up with a few things which I remembered were distinctly English and not Californian which I don’t think I’d blogged about before :

Ice : copious quantities fill the American glass, while 2 or 3 are dropped into the English one.  I noticed straight away on British Airways that a few cubes of ice were floating on the surface of my Diet Coke, just how I like it - enough to keep it cold but not too much that it totally outweighs the amount of drink!

Glass, not plastic : while waiting at Heathrow Airport to take my connection to Leeds, I had time to grab a drink - yet another Diet Coke……OK I like the stuff - and was surprised to find that I was handed a glass, not a plastic container which I what I have been used to at cafes in California - with the prerequisite three cubes of ice.

Watercress fields - I’d forgotten that the village where I used to live has watercress fields and I was sure I hadn’t come across any in my travels around the States.  I could be wrong, but I imagine this is an indiginous UK plant.

History - So much of my trip took me round stone villages, narrow roads, gorgeous old pubs with low beams where you had to duck to walk around, hilly streets running through ancient towns, stone walls separating small fields - I couldn’t help but notice the general “smallness” of everything compared to Silicon Valley.  History is truly what you don’t find here in California, be wary you don’t take that for granted; it is something I sorely miss over here.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s great to be back - the sun is shining and the sky is blue - but there will always be a space for good old England in my heart.

Have ball, will travel

I’m very excited to let any Brits out there who may be reading my blog - and a very good idea that would be if you’re relocating to the US - that I have discovered racquetball!

I used to play squash (see left) in London before I relocated to Silicon Valley with my family and loved the game : the speed, the adrenalin, the workout, the fun! Once we had moved here, and I asked around to find some courts, I was mostly given blank stares and realised it just wasn’t a west coast game. True, there were courts at a few select clubs, but I was very unwilling to join one of those at some expense just to play a few games of squash every week. Then came kids and before you could shake a ball at a racquet, the thought of playing that game again was totally taken over by a) getting as much sleep as possible and b) getting as much sleep as possible….

Fast forward to last year when I joined 24 Hour Fitness to get back in shape, and discovered racquetball courts for the taking. One of my friends already played there, we hit a ball around a few times and now it’s one of the things I most look forward to during the week. With a few differences, the size of the ball and racquet, the boundaries, for example, the game is very similar and it’s SO much fun.

squash racquet ball AND racquetball racquet and ball

It’s obviously still an unusual sport here in Silicon Valley - I can count the number of women on one hand i know who play the game, but still, I drag them to the courts on a weekly basis and hit that darn ball around!

Nevertheless I do wonder if there is any “rivalry” between squash players and raquetball players out here, whether you can be a die-hard of either sport and not cross the line.

Do squash players look down on racquetball players or vice versa? Is one just a copy of the other? Who started the game first anyway? If you have the answers to these mind-boggling questions, please comment below!

After all, we do think that the sport WE play is the best, yes?

They WILL grow up!

I recently read a blog from a local Silicon Valley realtor about how schools in Sunnyvale affect house prices. Interesting article, nothing earth shattering, as we do know that the higher the API scores of a school, the higher the house prices are likely to be. Whether we believe this to be fair or right and what we classify as a “good school” is for another discussion. And if you need some help knowing what to look for in a school, look here.

What I want to point out is how short-sighted we can be when it comes to buying a home in an area based on the “quality” of the local elementary school. What about the middle and high school?

Your kids may be pre-schoolers or not yet even born but they will grow older - hard to believe, but true! Mine were 5, 3 and 20 weeks till birth when we moved here from the UK, and now my oldest is 18, a senior in high school. When we looked at houses way back, we found one we loved, the price was OK, didn’t know anything about the area and we didn’t look past the local elementary school, and even then with just a cursory glance at the building and a meeting with the Kindergarten teacher - lovely lady. So we bought our house and left the schools in the lap of the gods.

But we were just lucky, I guess. We ended up in a school district which we’re very happy with and have never thought about moving. However, the same story isn’t true for some of my friends. When their kids got to 8th grade, they had to move house, as they weren’t happy with the local high school. One family I know, even moved house during her daughter’s elementary school years and then moved again during middle school to avoid the local high school!

Moving home just because of the school can be avoided if they’d been advised to look at all 3 schools before they bought. It’s an expensive affair to move house, what with realtor fees, likely increased property taxes etc.

So my advice to you if you’re relocating to Silicon Valley and have school age children is :

Information is power - look ahead and stay put!

Why is our grass so important?

As baseball season rolls around again, I think back to a couple of years ago when it rained… and rained….and rained! Opening Day was postponed, every practice was cancelled until FINALLY the sun came out and we could start the baseball season - about a month late. My son was playing soccer then as well, and it was a similar story.

I remember telling my sister in the UK about this at the time, and she just laughed and said that if they postponed every soccer, cricket and rugby practice and game over there every time it rained, they would never get through the season!

I wonder why we take such enormous pride in keeping our fields perfectly green, with no brown mud showing at the expense of forfeiting or postponing our kids’ baseball and soccer games. Is it because we’ve spent so much of our taxpayers’ money watering the darn grass, that there’s no way we going to have kids running all over it and muddying it up? Or is it because we take such pleasure in seeing our green parks dotted throughout our Silicon Valley suburbs that we absolutely refuse to let that scene by spoilt by children’s games when it rains?

Either way, it seems a shame to me, and I have a wry smile on my face when I envision my nieces and nephews over there in Yorkshire, running around on the muddy fields, not caring a jot that it’s slippery and muddy. Who knows, maybe they actually prefer it that way!

Does anyone know why we are so protective of our green grass?  Is this just another quirk of Silicon Valley life, or do I file this under “American traditions?”

Buyers? No cellars!

Photo Credit : Dancer01

If you’re moving to Silicon Valley, be warned - 99% of the homes here do not have cellars - or attics! So, if, like me, you are used to plenty of storage above and below your house, you will be disappointed when you arrive with your truck/ship load of goods. Where to store them? No cellars here!

Relocating to Silicon Valley 12 years ago, we brought everything we owned from our three-storey London house, except for the electrical appliances which of course wouldn’t work without those bulky non-heat resistant transformers.  A garage sale took care of those.

So, the revelation that the sum total of our storage space in our new home consisted of a closet in each bedroom and one in the hall, left us totally in the dark as to where to put everything. “Not to worry,”  remarked my very handy husband who proceeded to turn the garage into, not only a place to keep a car - good idea - but also everything else that didn’t fit into our 3 bedroom ranch-style home, building shelves along the walls and rafters in the ceiling - and we still had boxes full of STUFF left over!

The question we kept asking ourselves as we opened the boxes was “Why did we bring this?” So I just wanted to warn any of you thinking of bringing those large unused things - DON’T!!

How many boxes do you still have unopened in your garage? And what, for heaven’s sake, is in them?

Pass the salt, I mean ketchup, please

Photo Credit : Paha_L

Musing about the British pub in an earlier blog got me wondering if the pub is the only facet of our social lives which is different here in the US than in the UK.

One tradition I remember finding different when I first moved here was the assumption we would bring the kids along when invited to dinner at friends’ houses. In London, we got a babysitter and we went out without them.

Growing up in the UK, the DP (Dinner Party) was part of my social culture. As a kid, I vividly remember helping my parents prepare for guests, cooking in the kitchen, hoovering the floor, laying the table, maybe passing out some peanuts and vol-au-vents after they’d arrived, but then hiding upstairs with my sister and listening to the sounds of tinkling glasses and adult laughter, until one of my parents, usually my Mum, remembered about us and sent us to bed.

I carried on the tradition before and after I got married and even AK (after kids) for the first few years in London. Having friends over to dinner required them to get babysitters so we could have “adult” conversation without any annoying interruptions from the little people. After relocating to Silicon Valley, I noticed things were different. Families invited us - and I mean “us” as in the whole family - the kids came too - and we just hoped and assumed they would mingle with the other kids and leave us alone. We soon joined this new tradition and the DP became a very unusual and almost eccentric phenomenum.

So why this difference in social happenings? I have come up with the following suggestions:

Are we more “into” our kids? Do we see them as just an extension of us and we want them around?

Do we have a greater need to reinforce family values? Do we think there’s work go be done here and we’re trying to safeguard that sense of family?

Do we feel that our weekly lives in Silicon Valley are so separate from each other’s? Our kids have back-to-back after-school schedules, the parents have jobs that keep them out of the home for too long, so do our weekends need to be spent together with our kids as much as possible?

Is it financial? After all, why pay a babysitter when the kids can come along too? Babysitters are expensive (I know, I have two teenage daughters!)

Is it because of the great weather with which we are blessed leading into much more outdoor entertaining? Hence the BBQ - kids can eat that stuff too, just throw a few hot dogs on the grill for them.

Are Americans just more laid-back, and happy to do the mingling thing with everyone, including kids? Who needs the formality of sitting around a dining room table, talking the weather and current affairs?

Does it come down to a class thing in the UK, which doesn’t exist here in the same way, where DP’s are the middle classes’ inherited form of “Nanny’s taking care of the kids, let the adults enjoy each other’s company?”

I haven’t quite decided what the reason is for the whole family entertaining thing over here versus the “parents without kids” choice over there. Maybe it’s a little of everything, maybe it’s changed in the UK too, with more outings enjoyed by the whole family.

What do you do? Do you entertain with or without kids? And why?