About Us

On February 19th, 2024, we announced to our friends that we were moving to San Diego, one of America’s most expensive cities. We had just resigned from our jobs in Ridgecrest, California, where we owned a house and had been prepared to live out our lives. But, alas, that was not to be.

So, how does one move to San Diego without a job? One of us had some retirement savings, and we would have the assets from the sale of our home; altogether about $300,000.

We researched a number of businesses for sale on bizbuysell.com, until we came across a listing for pool service route… as in cleaning swimming pools! We did our research and our due diligence, comparing it to other business types and we decided to go for it.

We invested our retirement and life savings on a pool route with our sights set on building a pool service empire in San Diego! If it works we should be able to live comfortably and maybe even retire in America’s Finest City; if it fails we could lose everything.

Welcome to the San Diego or Bust Company, where our business is to make it big, or go home. Join us to see if we make it, or if we go bust. The future is uncertain, but the outlook, today, is Sunny.

Who We Are

Fred and Ella are the principles of the San Diego or Bust Company, a California C-Corporation. Fred is a San Diego native and Ella is from Waco, Texas proving that people do, in fact, move from Texas to California! Fred and Ella are both retired archaeologists. Fred was a professor at Texas A&M University at Galveston for 20+ years before embarking on this journey.

Rocket is a retired working Kelpie. She herded sheep in Texas before joining San Diego or Bust Company as a pool service animal.

Sunny the SunBus is a formerly retired 1981 VW Vanagon, recently restored to a brilliant yellow. She is the inspiration for the name of their pool service company, SunBus!