Matt Watson and his wife were enjoying their vacation in 2022 when they received a call from a neighbor telling them the house they had moved into five months earlier was on fire. By the time they made it home to their neighborhood outside of Boston, they discovered their new home—and everything in it—had completely burned down.
So began a nearly two-and-a-half year process to rebuild. That process ended just last week when Watson, who is the founder and CEO of budgeting app Origin, and his family moved into their new home. As he’s watched news of the wildfires in California destroying thousands of homes in the past week, Watson has reflected on what we wished he knew and done differently in the aftermath of his own family’s devastation. After sharing some advice on X, elaborated on his experience with Fortune.
“Life is going to go on, and you need to not lose three years of your life because a bad thing happened,” Watson says. “You will get through it.”
He says affected families should take at least a month to “do nothing” aside from getting their bearings: Find a temporary place to live, figure out kids’ schooling, get into a routine. Once that happens, then you will be better placed to make larger decisions.
“That’s the most important thing, because that is what you’re going to be doing for the next three years,” he says. “You want to make sure that that’s comfortable, that that works for your kids, it works for your family.”
He then suggests finding a public adjuster who can help you through the insurance process. A public adjuster is an insurance expert who helps people negotiate with their insurance company, and they are typically paid a percentage of the claim. Not everyone uses a public adjuster, but Watson says it was invaluable, because both he and his wife work full time.
The adjuster will be able to figure out what you’re entitled to, negotiate with your insurer, and advise you on when to take the deal. He found his via word of mouth from another neighbor’s whose burned down; those in LA may be able to do something similar, or check local Facebook or other neighborhood groups for recommendations.
Throughout all of this, be prepared to wait, Watson says. The insurance process is a negotiation. It can take months and months to come to an agreement with your insurer; he was still negotiating 18 months after the fire.
“The insurance carrier doesn’t want to go and hand out money that they don’t need to,” he says. “The public adjuster, they sit down the carrier and they work through the details of what it will cost to rebuild.”
In fact, count on every aspect of the process to take more time than you’re initially anticipating.
“When you first hear the number from the insurance company, you feel sick,” he says. Then the negotiations start. And “one of the tactics that insurance companies employ is just simply waiting. And that is the hardest part, because you just don’t know when it’s going to get done.”
To rebuild or buy a new home
Now nearly three years after the fire, Watson says he wishes he and his wife had chosen to take the insurance money and buy a new home, rather than rebuild the old one. He came to this conclusion after thinking of the time and effort they’ve had to put into a rebuilding process that, with two young children and full time jobs, has been incredibly demanding.
He suggests that those with young children in particular think long and hard before deciding to rebuild. Between permits, selecting an architect, actually building the house, and so on, the process will take much longer than you may think. Buying a new home, on the other hand, could be easier.
“My wife and I both are founders of companies, and I think we had a little bit of fire in the belly, [to] build back better,” he says. “But I just don’t think we understood the scope of the endeavor in front of us. Building a house, it just takes a lot of time, and there’s a lot of decisions and there’s a lot of negotiation.”
Another alternative: Buy or rent a temporary home, and live there while your home in being rebuilt. If it’s possible for your family’s situation, you could use the time to “explore” another city or state—especially as housing is already scarce in a city like Los Angeles. Again, a public adjuster can help negotiate with your insurance company to get you more money upfront to enable you to put a down payment on a house or move cities. And that’s better than 18 months or longer in a too-small apartment.
Watson wishes he at least took that approach, because be and his family moved five times over the past 30 months, bouncing from rental to rental. It added stress to an already stressful time.
“It’s very tiring, it’s a grind,” he says. “I realized, the house doesn’t matter as much as I thought. Time is the most valuable thing.”
Watson and Origin are offering everyone affected by the LA fires a free year subscription to the personal finance management app.
