My Journey to XL Country – and Making Bozeman Home

They call it the Last Best Place for a reason, so just let me just say how excited I am to be living in Bozeman, but actually getting here - that was an adventure! 

Let me start from the beginning, when I was offered the opportunity to re-locate to Bozeman and work at XL Country, I was certainly intrigued. I did all the things that you do: I got on Google, typed in Bozeman and clicked on images. I hadn't been to Bozeman in a while, but I'm familiar with Montana - more on that here, but wanted to see what's changed.

Wow! Beautiful scenery? Check!  

The next thing I did was go to Realtor.com and looked at homes.  

Double wow! Crazy expensive? Oh yeah!

I’m not going to lie to you, I was kind of in shock. So, I thought “well, home prices are high, that’s fine, I would just rent, that will be cheaper, right?” Uhhhh.   

So after I came to the conclusion that to live here, it was going to cost a little (a lot) more, then it became a search to find an apartment. I’m certainly not telling you anything you don’t know, but that’s not always an easy thing to do here in Bozeman. Once my wife and I visited the city and realized that yes, this is where we want to be, the search became serious!   

We would look every day. We were emailing, calling, messaging potential landlords - you name it! Some times we would hear back, sometimes we wouldn’t.

Finally, that special email came! The lease offer at the place that we wanted! Great news!  ...except it wouldn’t be ready until the end of August. What's a guy to do?

In my case, you live with your boss in the meantime while your wife and dogs are back in North Dakota.  

Yep, I’m living in the boss' basement. 

Don’t get me wrong, I’m very grateful to have a place to stay - especially in this housing market. So many people are struggling to find even temporary housing, so I will take what I can get.

It's not perfect, but there are a lot of positives. I’m living in one of the most beautiful places on the planet, I’m working on the greatest radio station in the state, and I’m getting to eat the boss' food at HIS house in the meantime! All and all, not too shabby!