Have you found a place to lay your roots? The place where you plan to call home for the next few decades?
If you’ve answered yes, I’m envious.
My husband and I are having troubling deciding where we should plant ourselves for the long haul. We’ve enjoyed our time in D.C. and even thought about staying here for a significant period of time. After all, it’s a thriving city with plenty of things to do and lots of job opportunity. Plus our friends and family LOVE visiting us.
But now as I’m entering my first tax season as a freelance writer it’s painful to see just how much of my hard earned income disappears into the government abyss where we live. And it’s likely we won’t be able to purchase a home in our area for many years. While we hope to lay roots in a city, it may be that D.C. just isn’t the one for us.
So I’ve taken to the internet in an attempt to research new locations that may be nice for us to settle down in and during my search a few things quickly became apparent about relocation.
No place is perfect.
I’ve had the pleasure of stumbling onto forums about relocating where people have polarizing views of the city or state that they’re reviewing. The arguments that occur throughout these forums are pretty comedic. It seems location benefits for some people are complete turn offs to others and vise versa.
Based on what I’ve seen around the web I’ve concluded that nowhere is perfect. And deciding the things that are deal breaks and deal makers for us personally is a more realistic way to make a decision. We can’t expect that a place will put a tick in every box and reading the ramblings of reviewers who absolutely hate or love the city may not be constructive.
Relocation surveys are useless.
When the forums provided no insight I tried surveys that ask questions to help you identify the best place for you to live. I became immediately skeptical when one survey questioned asked me about my favorite Beyonce song, especially when I don’t have one.
And then when at the end of a survey it spit out London, England I was thrilled. Yet still back at square one because if I’m complaining now about the cost of living in D.C. things could only get worse should we venture across the pond. Here again I found another comical yet useless dead end.
So how did you find your home?
The moves my husband and I have made in our past have been because of school or new job opportunities. We’ve never found ourselves in a situation where we wanted to venture somewhere new for a fresh start or a better standard of living e.i. purchasing a home. For this reason, I’m turning it over to you for some advice.
How did you choose the location you call home? If you’ve relocated to a new place to settle down, what is some advice you have? How did you navigate the details of relocation?
Taylor Gordon is a freelance blogger with a deal obsession and an aspiration to be financially free on an average salary while enjoying the good life.
