Hellobee Boards

We are a bit opposite! We’re southern expats living in the west coast and Covid has really made us realize we don’t want to be here forever! The biggest thing we are missing is proximity to family but we are also dreaming about lower cost of living.

So in reality we are making plans to move back to the Raleigh area in the next few years but we’re also day dreaming about moving to the mountains. We spent almost 6 months in the Virginia mountains this year and it was awesome. Beautiful scenery, lovely walks every day, enough internet to work remote, and 4ish hour drive to family. It was great but I don’t know if we’d like the isolation as much if it were permanent. We are also day dreaming a bit about Hawai’i because I think that would be the perfect place during all this, but it’s not going to really happen for us!

@foodiebee: ooh me!! We talk about it all the time now, but dh works in travel so he really needs to find a new job before we can decide about moving - too much uncertainty in the industry right now and who knows how flexible a future job would be or where it would be located if not fully virtual.

We live in TX (over 6 years now) and I have never gotten used to the weather - sounds silly but it really gets me down to live in a hot place with no fall and soooooo much blazing summer. I grew up in Michigan and dh is from Ohio - we each have one remaining parent and would ideally like to be closer (but not too close probably to keep drama low). We just stayed at my mom’s for 3 weeks while virtual schooling and it was so refreshing to have cool weather and beautiful leaves and apple picking and all the things we can’t have here.

But we don’t really know where we would move. We now live about 45 minutes from my brother - dh is an only so our kids’ only cousins - and leaving that would be sad and harder for my mom to manage visits. Our hearts are in New England where we both lived in the past, but not close to any family and high COL in the areas we love. However culturally we love it. So I always feel like Midwest seems most likely, but who knows. I know it would be hard to get used to some things again, like all the coats/boots/etc for kids all winter, plowing the driveway, etc. Wherever we go schools are a question - even if we stay in our current metro area, I’d like to move to a forever home with better schools - I’ve been really disappointed on that front the last couple years (even pre covid).

We ideally want to move before our oldest is in middle school (she’s in 3rd grade) so I guess we’ll have to figure it out!!

@bhbee: New England is great but so expensive. We’re in VT and the COL is ridiculous compared to the local economic opportunity. And now with so many people moving in because of how well VT has handled covid and remote work it’s getting a lot worse.

I think about moving all the time, but my husband hates hot weather and all of our family is on the east coast. So idk where else we would live. I just started a permanently remote job and work in an area where I could be remote for the rest of my career and have been fantasizing about DH quitting his job and living a nomadic life for a little while. I do worry about what that would mean for DD, but she’s little still, so we could probably do a year on the road and she’d be fine.

@karenbme: Ha Vermont is my fantasy! I live in pretty much the most expensive city in the US so I feel like at least it will better than that. But really, it’s our dream to have a beautiful farm house, be able to explore the outdoors, and have a slightly simpler life. Am I totally delusional?

We live in a big city on the west coast and basically all our family is on the east coast. We’ve always toyed with moving to be closer but COVID has made it more appealing. I just miss them so much. We love where we live in many ways but it’s expensive and so far away. We lived in NYC before but it just doesn’t appeal to us now. VT or upstate NY are high on our lists since we love the outdoors but we’ll see. We don’t know anyone there even though we’d be driving distance from family and friends. And my husband says I like city life more than I let myself believe!

@JJ2626: Sticker prices are def cheaper than the west coast, but there’s very little housing stock esp if you want four bedrooms and it can be hard to build/add on to existing which means price are sky high in the more desirable areas. Right now VT is also experiencing a lot of in migration due to Covid, which means everything is at an even higher premium. Housing prices are better further from Burlington, but if you’re looking for on site work other than farming or service sector outside Chittenden or Addison counties, good luck. Even in Chittenden County it can be really hard to build a career and a lot of people leave in their late twenties or early thirties because there aren’t opportunities to take the next step.

I think a big old farmhouse is everyone’s fantasy (at least in VT) but you need to look hard and/or pay 1M+ if you want something that’s renovated and within an hour of civilization. I have a friend who is trying to live the dream and to swing it they started running the house as a b&b on top of two full time jobs. They’re doing well, but the key to living the dream here is really family money or a high paying remote job. 🤷‍♀️

@JJ2626: haha I'm guessing we are neighbors. We have been renting for a few years and started looking to buy a house right around when the pandemic hit, thinking it would be a great opportunity. Boy were we wrong! We finally threw in the towel after realizing we can't get a 3BR house with a small backyard in our neighborhood for under $2M. INSANITY. So we are changing course and moving to a smaller city in a more rural county. My job is pretty much remote but we have a small office nearby our target area and my husband works for a big tech company and so it's inevitable he'll be given the green light to work remote fulltime. This pandemic has definitely made us reconsider how important our home is and how we want more space, nicer backyard, a pool, etc. Reality is we're going to be homebound a lot more so time to change course.

@foodiebee: I'm also really curious about what of the migration sticks. I expect that with a lot of people going permanent remote, a good proportion of what we've seen here will be permanent because the limitation for people who leave and/or never come is economic and if you significantly reduce that barrier we've got the same upside with a lot less downside. There are always going to be people who want to live in cities, but people who've felt stuck in the city for economic reasons might be less stuck and the upside of living in a city is severely diminished when eating/drinking out or going to the theater/museum is dangerous. Granted the danger will diminish, but I don't think the perception of long term risk is ever going to fully go back to what it was before especially for those of us with lower risk tolerance.

@Littlebit7: Me disliking a car is 100% why we're in a village. If it were up to DH we'd be off on 40 acres in the country, but village life is the best of both worlds--walkable to restaurants/shops/school/grocery store but still close to the country/hiking/snowboarding. I actually held out on even buying a car for three years after we moved here from Chicago and did fine, until I got frostbite (which was -10 temperature related more than the fact that I was walking). I could see the same if you moved to somewhere like Aspen or Vail in CO or any of the adorable towns on the CA coast. But if you want to be in the city, you want to be in the city

@codeitall: Sounds like you need to come live over here in Europe!

Traverse City MI is my dream locale. It’s actually fairly liberal (I looked up polling place data from 2016 to make sure Clinton won there). Spring sucks but the other 3 seasons are amazing. Affordable cost of living. If my DH is allowed to work remote forever, I would push hard to move there (from north shore of Chicago).

@bhbee: haha yes I think TC proper was like 65 Clinton but the more rural areas were more Trump. Obvi would update with 2020 data... assuming Biden wins. If Trump wins again, I seriously want to leave for Canada or New Zealand... though don’t know how we would get visas

@karenbme: excellent question about work visas. I worked remotely for a US company when DH was studying in Paris for about 8 months. That was in 2012 though. I was told I could do that for a year but longer I would need to do something more official with setting up a local office. I imagine it's country-specific and things have also probably loosened up a bit due to covid.

DH and I are pretty set on New Zelandia if Trump wins. That’s one of the only places we can go practice medicine and not have to repeat residency training. We also do t speak any of the same foreign languages, so that also limits us as a couple.

I want to be near water!