What is it like to live in the Midwest?

[Anonymous]

Super broad question I know, if you have lived in both the Midwest and DC/NOVA can you compare the two pros and cons for those of you who have only lived in both big cities like NYC and/or Cities like DC and then the midwest as well. Please tell us your experiences. Thank you!

[Anonymous]

Are you talking a big city, like Minneapolis, or living in some small town Iowa?

[Anonymous]

Boring

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Are you talking a big city, like Minneapolis, or living in some small town Iowa?

There is not some huge difference between being in suburbs of say Minneapolis/Detroit/Indianapolis vs much of NoVa. Other than much less traffic and cheaper houses.

[Anonymous]

Instead of being bores about their jobs people are bores about their mountain biking or college sports teams.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Are you talking a big city, like Minneapolis, or living in some small town Iowa?

There is not some huge difference between being in suburbs of say Minneapolis/Detroit/Indianapolis vs much of NoVa. Other than much less traffic and cheaper houses.

Yup. If you live in the suburbs of any city they're all about the same. Midwest suburbs may be more segregated than NoVa, depending on where in NoVa you're looking.

[Anonymous]

Pros - just about everything is easier. Grocery stores are bigger and well stocked (and cheaper). Housing is (generally) more plentiful and newer. Traffic is easier. Things are generally less expensive - property taxes, kid activities, car insurance, etc.

Cons - job markets are much smaller. Can be harder to find your social scene if it's a more insular city. The weather is more extreme.

We miss the midwest and would love to go back, but our jobs are here.

[Anonymous]

I'm from a small town in the upper midwest.
Pros:
Low COL
safe
no traffic

Cons:
limited job market
people can be really nosy
little diversity

[Anonymous]

I think the culture values teamwork, working hard, and conformity more than the east coast, which has more of a selfish, star-system culture. This actually is an advantage for midwestern kids who get socialized to midwestern values and then move east as adults to work in large organizations.

[Anonymous]

Grew up in Maryland, college in Virginia, then lived in DC. Now have been in Michigan for 15 years, outside of Detroit (just giving my bio first, lol)

Pros -
No one cares who I work for, and mostly what I do. I HATED that about DC
The COL difference is fantastic. I make the same as to what I would on the east coast and many things are half the price. Not just housing, but daycare, youth sports, activities in general.
I am still on east coast time, despite being so far west, it's a great benefit in terms of daylight hours (might sound strange, but matters!)
Love living by fresh water lakes, I hate jellyfish and weird sea creatures
I have easy access to a large international airport, every concert and sporting event I could ever want. One of the top art museums in the world. A lot of grant money and federal funding going into the city.

Cons -
Most people where I live also grew up here, I am an outsider and it's considered very strange to vacation in places other than Northern Michigan. Even after 15 years I haven't really connected well with a lot of people.
Roads aren't good, they are trying, but it's going to take a lot
Sometimes getting basic things done can be hard because of limited options - but this could also be true in a lot of places

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Pros - just about everything is easier. Grocery stores are bigger and well stocked (and cheaper). Housing is (generally) more plentiful and newer. Traffic is easier. Things are generally less expensive - property taxes, kid activities, car insurance, etc.

Cons - job markets are much smaller. Can be harder to find your social scene if it's a more insular city. The weather is more extreme.

We miss the midwest and would love to go back, but our jobs are here.

This is fairly accurate to the Detroit area where I live now. I was a North Bethesda dweller. The whole area is less intellectual. The vibe is "it's better to be nice than smart". If platitudes like that annoy you, don't move here. Children are less aggressively pushed here (in academics, sports parents are the same everywhere). It's a great suburban lifestyle for normies. I tell people I left the DMV because I couldn't afford the lifestyle I wanted. Here I can afford it with a much lower HHI that's still 90th %ile plus.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think the culture values teamwork, working hard, and conformity more than the east coast, which has more of a selfish, star-system culture. This actually is an advantage for midwestern kids who get socialized to midwestern values and then move east as adults to work in large organizations.

PP. Agree 100%. I met lots of those kids on East Coast and moved to Midwest for grad school myself because of it. I plan to send my kids East after college if they are so inclined. Valuing conformity has some downsides including the risk of catastrophic mass stupidity. It's hard to have frank conversations at work because people are always getting their wittle feelings hurt because nobody's given them a piece of realistic feedback ever.

[Anonymous]

Grew up in Michigan, spent my early adulthood in Chicago. Have now lived in NoVA and worked in DC for 20ish years.

The Midwest in a nutshell for me:

People are much friendlier
It's cold (in MI and Chicago, anyway).
Far less obvious social striving
Far less striving with respect to income (the way folks talk about money here in the DMV would be considered extremely rude where I'm from)
People can be frumpy
The Protestant work ethic is in full force, and you can rely on people
Food/taste is bland, outside of the cities at least (I never had Thai, Indian, or even falafel until I moved from MI to Chicago as a young adult)
Creative types are respected
But on the flipside to that, most people are relatively unsophisticated
Pace is reasonable
The pressure to conform can be intense (especially outside of the large cities)
Commuting isn't as bad (well, if you are in Chi, it can be bad, but still not like the hell that is the Beltway)
Much, much lower COL
The architecture is better. Housing, whether it be SFH or apartments, is much more charming
If you reference Heraclitus or Henri Bergson, people will stare at you blankly, and then aggressively, and then call you pretentious behind your back


DMV:
Very solid job market
The opportunity to make a lot of money
The opportunity to advance to national-level policy work in certain professions
Access to the Smithsonians
People are, generally, more highly educated here
Pace feels frenzied much of the time
Commuting is horrific
It's sooooo expensive to live here
Feels very white bread to me
I guess people are quite frumpy here, too
If you reference Heraclitus or Henri Bergson, people will pretend to know what you are talking about, and then call you pretentious behind your back (or maybe to your face, if they feel like they can get away with it)

[Anonymous]

Too cold in winter, too hot in summer, too flat always.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Pros - just about everything is easier. Grocery stores are bigger and well stocked (and cheaper). Housing is (generally) more plentiful and newer. Traffic is easier. Things are generally less expensive - property taxes, kid activities, car insurance, etc.

Cons - job markets are much smaller. Can be harder to find your social scene if it's a more insular city. The weather is more extreme.

We miss the midwest and would love to go back, but our jobs are here.

This is fairly accurate to the Detroit area where I live now. I was a North Bethesda dweller. The whole area is less intellectual. The vibe is "it's better to be nice than smart". If platitudes like that annoy you, don't move here. Children are less aggressively pushed here (in academics, sports parents are the same everywhere). It's a great suburban lifestyle for normies. I tell people I left the DMV because I couldn't afford the lifestyle I wanted. Here I can afford it with a much lower HHI that's still 90th %ile plus.

I posted above about being in the Detroit area, I wish we could be friends!