We moved to North Carolina but are about to leave because the salaries aren't high enough and the diversity we value ended at the city limits

• Cielo De Jose and William Scott left California to live a more relaxed and affordable lifestyle.
• They opted to rent in Charlotte, North Carolina, because of the affordability and diversity.
• The state hasn't lived up to their expectations, so they've decided to return to California.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with spouses Cielo De Jose, 37, and William Scott, 50, about their experiences moving from Riverside, California, to Charlotte, North Carolina, in February 2022. The couple has decided to return to the West Coast. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

Will: There's a lot of stress and pressure in California. It's very crowded and also very expensive there — we felt like slaves to our lifestyle.

Cielo: We were working a lot of hours and didn't really get a chance to enjoy our lives.

The traffic is also bad. We lived in Riverside and I worked in Orange County 40 miles away. It would take me 1 ½ hours just to get to work, and then going back was even worse.

Four seasons and mild winters were a big reason for us to chose North Carolina

Will: We joke that California has three seasons: the hot season, the wind season, and the fire season. So actually seeing trees and leaves falling and seasonal changes has been really nice. It's been our favorite part.

Cielo: I haven't really experienced that in California. Charlotte is just gorgeous — I do like the nature here.

Will: We're in the northeast part of North Carolina. We're in this nice little bubble where the weather is pretty much always mild.

Charlotte is a very pretty city. It's got the college here, it's got a lot of business here — so a lot of opportunities — and it has four seasons.

On paper, it looked very good. It had everything we were looking for in a city.

We looked at the demographics and information on probably about 40 to 50 different cities right in this belt where the weather is about the same.

The demographics have a fairly even blend of a Black, Caucasian, Latino, and Asian, so Charlotte was very diverse when we came out here to visit.

My wife is Asian and I am Caucasian so I wanted to make sure that we didn't have any issues with racism.

North Carolina isn't as affordable as it seems

Cielo: We bought our house in California in 2018 for $432,000. We sold it when we left in January 2022 for $618,000. We decided to rent in North Carolina because when we were looking into housing, it was getting expensive. I thought we could probably get a house for maybe $300,000.

We wanted to make sure we were in the right place. We wanted to wait at least a year or a couple years and see what it's like to live here before we bought a house.

Will: Right now we pay $1,300 for a two-bedroom apartment.

The cost of living out here is not as low as it seems. The only things that are cheaper out here are the price of rent or real estate — which is quickly rising — and the price of gas. If you go out to a movie, or you buy clothes or groceries, or anything else, it's all exactly the same as California. So you're only saving a small amount of money. However, the incomes out here are 30% to 35% less.

Cielo: I'm a hospice nurse at one of the biggest hospitals in Charlotte.

I make over $100,000 in California, but here as a nurse in the same specialty, I'm going to be making about $70,000.

Will: I'm a driver for a medical courier company, and I also drive for Uber and DoorDash.

We thought we'd be saving money by moving to Charlotte, but in fact we're losing quite a bit because the income is so low out here. Rent and everything is rising too quickly and the salaries are not at pace with that.

We find the diversity to be lacking

Will: In the uptown area of Charlotte around NoDa and the trendy areas by the college, it seems very diverse and the people seem very friendly.

But as soon as you get outside of that, there becomes a very real, very noticeable racial divide. It becomes very Black and white.

That becomes very uncomfortable. We didn't notice it when we visited the first few times because we mainly stuck to the city and towards the college areas.

Everyone we spoke to says that that's an issue with the entire south, not just North Carolina.

We're finding that the experience of living in Charlotte is very different from how it looked on paper. There's quite a few things that we're not liking about Charlotte. So in truth, we're not going to stay here too much longer.

Cielo: We're going back to California.

Will: We love the four seasons and all that, but it's not worth the financial hit. We thought it would be more wholesome and less expensive, but we're finding the experience of living here to be quite the opposite.

Did you move to North Carolina recently? Tell us some of your reasons for moving. Email reporter Jordan Pandy at jpandy@insider.com to share your story.