2023: where will you move when your kids leave home?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:+1 on moving somewhere fun not far from an airport so adult kids & grandkids to visit. Buy a house with a couple extra bedrooms and a pool. Your adults kids will return, and you can celebrate holidays there.

My parents did this and are living their best life.

Sounds like hell if you don't have money to pay someone to maintain your yard and pool and clean bigger house. Especially in old age. I don't even want to live anywhere where I have to drive in old age TBH.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You people are really something else.

You move to the DC area because you have a single focus in your life – your high-powered career. You spend your entire life here focused on that, and when you do decide it’s time to fit some kids in you make damned sure they follow your single-minded footsteps and go off to the best bumper-sticker worthy college they can get into and off they go and never return. Then, once your all consuming career is over and your high achieving kids are long gone, you look around and tell yourself there is no community here and that this area is too transient for you to stick around.

Some of us haven’t structured our lives the way you did. So we do have a community here, and we have every reason to stick around.

+1

I discovered community in the DMV and revised my career to have more time and life balance. We will stay put in the DMV partly so kids can return and visit with friends at school breaks. I can’t imagine them wanting to visit if we live in a town with zero people they know…

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You people are really something else.

You move to the DC area because you have a single focus in your life – your high-powered career. You spend your entire life here focused on that, and when you do decide it’s time to fit some kids in you make damned sure they follow your single-minded footsteps and go off to the best bumper-sticker worthy college they can get into and off they go and never return. Then, once your all consuming career is over and your high achieving kids are long gone, you look around and tell yourself there is no community here and that this area is too transient for you to stick around.

Some of us haven’t structured our lives the way you did. So we do have a community here, and we have every reason to stick around.

+1

I discovered community in the DMV and revised my career to have more time and life balance. We will stay put in the DMV partly so kids can return and visit with friends at school breaks. I can’t imagine them wanting to visit if we live in a town with zero people they know…

Yep. Admittedly, we moved here decades ago for a so-called “high powered job” for one of us but we had had our kids young (not just when we could “fit them in”) and already had a couple of pre-schoolers when we got here.

We put the kids in public instead of private school, encouraged state colleges, and stayed in the same suburban neighborhood for decades, all of which solidified our local ties.

When we moved as empty nesters, it was just across the river into downtown DC. All of our kids and most of their friends (and friends’ parents) stayed in the area. It’s definitely home to many, many people.

I mean, if you’re gonna move here only for a job, have kids later in life, get a nanny, keep plugging away, then put the kids in private schools disconnected with the neighborhood where the graduate disperse themselves to colleges all over the country, how to you expect your family to put down roots here? When the career is over and the kids are gone, what’s left?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I dont get people who want to move away from friends and community they spent 18+ years building unless its totally unaffordable. When my kids are grown ill get to garden more, spend more time with the friends i made and enjoy my neighborhood more.

I know many people who want to leave the DMV area-it can be a cold transient area. Some people get lucky(like yourself) and land in a neighborhood that is warm and wonderful... but I have more friends looking to leave the DMV area than those wanting to stay. The interesting part is they all have beautiful homes but still feel meh about living here. The weather doesn't help-you're far from the beach. I don't get not getting it.

DMV does have a more transient feel than other places I’ve lived in. A lot of people transfer here for jobs and transfer out a few years later. Sometimes it feels like we’re the place you go to build your career so you can go back and compete in the place you want to be.

It's not what I observe, and I am not even from here. I see a lot of older retired people remaining in their homes and not selling, some upgrade to bigger homes, others downsize, some buy second homes or condos elsewhere and live in family homes part time, but apparently people aren't all fleeing away. I also see kids coming back to visit during college and even moving back in after graduation. This might be a new trend due to higher COL that keeps only climbing up. Kids "flying away" and easily building lives elsewhere isn't a guarantee, it's probably they want to come back and move into the house they grew up in until they get up on their feet, and they seek jobs in the local area, and reunite with their school friends. I am seeing this happening just as much as young people moving out of state forever, empty-nester parents selling family home and moving to the retirement "pastures".

Yes it took us 2 years to buy a home in our target neighborhood because there is so little inventory. People stay in their homes for decades. The ones that sell either are going into assisted living/ downsizing, died, or are moving into a bigger house in a same or adjacent neighborhood. It doesn't feel transient at all.

+1 it was more transient in my 20s-early 30s as people were figuring out their lives. But, living in Arlington, I still know most of the families I got to know when my 1st kid started elementary school and he's now in college. Some moved away for a while (foreign service) but are now back. Also all but one family in a playgroup I joined when DS was a baby still live here and I see a couple of those friends regularly. A couple of my friends even grew up in Arlington. I like it here and DS wants to live in DC after college, although my younger child doesn't. So, I expect at least the first phase of empty nest/retirement will be here, but maybe in a different house.

I can’t speak for other areas, but I grew up in Arlington and now have young kids and a huge number of people I grew up with are now back raising kids here. Some moved away, of course. But many of us moved away for a time and then came back. And my experience as a child in Arlington was not families being transient at all except as you mentioned sometimes some foreign service moves for a couple years. Otherwise I knew most of the same kids through school.

If you want to live near at least one of your kids later, being in this area seems to make that more likely.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:+1 on moving somewhere fun not far from an airport so adult kids & grandkids to visit. Buy a house with a couple extra bedrooms and a pool. Your adults kids will return, and you can celebrate holidays there.

My parents did this and are living their best life.

+1 although best if this place is actually close to at least one of your kids.

My two siblings and I all moved away from the city where we grew up. My parents kept our childhood home until my older sister and I had both settled in different areas and had our first babies. Then they picked the area of those that they preferred, moved to a 1-level 3-bdrm house in a lake/golf community with a lot of recreation amenities and had a great 15+ years there. They were very involved with my sister's family, the rest of us were happy to visit there including me bringing my kids for a couple weeks every summer. And my sister was there to help when health became a problem. Dad died two years ago and now Mom lives with my sister.

I would be happy to follow the same model.

+1 very similar situation here, though I am an only child. In ways I didn’t even realize at the time, I so appreciate that my parents kept my childhood home through college and turbulent 20s. Even when I got married in my late 20s, holidays were still at their home until I started having babies and then I largely took over.

Opposite with my in-laws, which was very really hard. They moved several times after their kids graduated, settling in a very rural area that takes one connecting flight and then a drive to get to. Other than Christmas, they expected their kids to spend holidays solo/with friends with only very occasional visits occurring during college and after. We didn’t have any issues until we had kids, when they seemed to expect a switch would be flipped and somehow an entirely different relationship would become established. It was really difficult on everyone, I think, with lots of hurt feelings on all sides.

[Anonymous]

Not moving away from our DMV suburban neighborhood. Plan to age in place at our home. It is affordable to us because we bought it at the bottom of the market. Great interest rate too. My kids are welcome to live with us rent free for as long as they want to save money. It is a perfectly sized home 3200 sqft. And a perfectly sized yard.

It is a central place, lots of places to see and things to do, convenient, diverse. There is no reason to leave this place.

[Anonymous]

My owners downsized in 2017 and I over paid by a lot as wife wanted house. Seemed good.

Except they only had a 500k mortgage.

Selling my house in 2017 cost then 100k by all said and done. Realtor fees, repairs moving closing new place.

Then the Dow sized home too small and sold and moved again. Downsize home sale cost them between moving again another 100k.

If in 2017 just prepaid 500k mortgage 200k and stayed put they be about done with mortgage in 2023 and less headaches

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You people are really something else.

You move to the DC area because you have a single focus in your life – your high-powered career. You spend your entire life here focused on that, and when you do decide it’s time to fit some kids in you make damned sure they follow your single-minded footsteps and go off to the best bumper-sticker worthy college they can get into and off they go and never return. Then, once your all consuming career is over and your high achieving kids are long gone, you look around and tell yourself there is no community here and that this area is too transient for you to stick around.

Some of us haven’t structured our lives the way you did. So we do have a community here, and we have every reason to stick around.

+1

I discovered community in the DMV and revised my career to have more time and life balance. We will stay put in the DMV partly so kids can return and visit with friends at school breaks. I can’t imagine them wanting to visit if we live in a town with zero people they know…

Yep. Admittedly, we moved here decades ago for a so-called “high powered job” for one of us but we had had our kids young (not just when we could “fit them in”) and already had a couple of pre-schoolers when we got here.

We put the kids in public instead of private school, encouraged state colleges, and stayed in the same suburban neighborhood for decades, all of which solidified our local ties.

When we moved as empty nesters, it was just across the river into downtown DC. All of our kids and most of their friends (and friends’ parents) stayed in the area. It’s definitely home to many, many people.

I mean, if you’re gonna move here only for a job, have kids later in life, get a nanny, keep plugging away, then put the kids in private schools disconnected with the neighborhood where the graduate disperse themselves to colleges all over the country, how to you expect your family to put down roots here? When the career is over and the kids are gone, what’s left?

Many of my friends and family are friends with people from all over the US and the world - they prefer to not have a tiny bubble.

[Anonymous]

It’s odd that people are saying that your kids won’t visit you if their friends don’t live nearby. Your kids must not like you that much if that’s the case.

If you live somewhere interesting, your kids will want to visit you even more. That’s why when we retire we want to move somewhere like the Upper West Side or Upper East Side or Manhattan, where it’s walkable and safe. New York is not only much safer, but would be a great draw for the kids as well because of all the cultural amenities. Hardly any 20-30 year old is saying no to visiting their parents in the big city.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It’s odd that people are saying that your kids won’t visit you if their friends don’t live nearby. Your kids must not like you that much if that’s the case.

If you live somewhere interesting, your kids will want to visit you even more. That’s why when we retire we want to move somewhere like the Upper West Side or Upper East Side or Manhattan, where it’s walkable and safe. New York is not only much safer, but would be a great draw for the kids as well because of all the cultural amenities. Hardly any 20-30 year old is saying no to visiting their parents in the big city.

One of the PP who wrote on this. I think you’re misreading the prior posts. From what I saw, the posts have been focused on the parent/child relationship (and the importance of still creating “home” even after high school graduation), nothing to do with the adult child’s friends. Seems like staying put in a childhood home for a spell can be helpful in keeping that home base feeling for at least a bit, but most posts just stressed the importance of being easy to get to, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s odd that people are saying that your kids won’t visit you if their friends don’t live nearby. Your kids must not like you that much if that’s the case.

If you live somewhere interesting, your kids will want to visit you even more. That’s why when we retire we want to move somewhere like the Upper West Side or Upper East Side or Manhattan, where it’s walkable and safe. New York is not only much safer, but would be a great draw for the kids as well because of all the cultural amenities. Hardly any 20-30 year old is saying no to visiting their parents in the big city.

One of the PP who wrote on this. I think you’re misreading the prior posts. From what I saw, the posts have been focused on the parent/child relationship (and the importance of still creating “home” even after high school graduation), nothing to do with the adult child’s friends. Seems like staying put in a childhood home for a spell can be helpful in keeping that home base feeling for at least a bit, but most posts just stressed the importance of being easy to get to, etc.

Edited to say: Oh. Just saw the poster who said she couldn’t imagine her kids visiting if their friends weren’t around. That does strike me as odd.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You people are really something else.

You move to the DC area because you have a single focus in your life – your high-powered career. You spend your entire life here focused on that, and when you do decide it’s time to fit some kids in you make damned sure they follow your single-minded footsteps and go off to the best bumper-sticker worthy college they can get into and off they go and never return. Then, once your all consuming career is over and your high achieving kids are long gone, you look around and tell yourself there is no community here and that this area is too transient for you to stick around.

Some of us haven’t structured our lives the way you did. So we do have a community here, and we have every reason to stick around.

+1

I discovered community in the DMV and revised my career to have more time and life balance. We will stay put in the DMV partly so kids can return and visit with friends at school breaks. I can’t imagine them wanting to visit if we live in a town with zero people they know…

Yep. Admittedly, we moved here decades ago for a so-called “high powered job” for one of us but we had had our kids young (not just when we could “fit them in”) and already had a couple of pre-schoolers when we got here.

We put the kids in public instead of private school, encouraged state colleges, and stayed in the same suburban neighborhood for decades, all of which solidified our local ties.

When we moved as empty nesters, it was just across the river into downtown DC. All of our kids and most of their friends (and friends’ parents) stayed in the area. It’s definitely home to many, many people.

I mean, if you’re gonna move here only for a job, have kids later in life, get a nanny, keep plugging away, then put the kids in private schools disconnected with the neighborhood where the graduate disperse themselves to colleges all over the country, how to you expect your family to put down roots here? When the career is over and the kids are gone, what’s left?

Many of my friends and family are friends with people from all over the US and the world - they prefer to not have a tiny bubble.

Such a typical elitist and defensive response. You can both live here and be settled here and have your family here and be “friends with people from all over the US and the world.” You just see the local folks more often. And the reality is, from a human nature standpoint, “absence makes the heart grow fonder” is less of a real thing than “out of sight out of mind.”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You people are really something else.

You move to the DC area because you have a single focus in your life – your high-powered career. You spend your entire life here focused on that, and when you do decide it’s time to fit some kids in you make damned sure they follow your single-minded footsteps and go off to the best bumper-sticker worthy college they can get into and off they go and never return. Then, once your all consuming career is over and your high achieving kids are long gone, you look around and tell yourself there is no community here and that this area is too transient for you to stick around.

Some of us haven’t structured our lives the way you did. So we do have a community here, and we have every reason to stick around.

+1

I discovered community in the DMV and revised my career to have more time and life balance. We will stay put in the DMV partly so kids can return and visit with friends at school breaks. I can’t imagine them wanting to visit if we live in a town with zero people they know…

Yep. Admittedly, we moved here decades ago for a so-called “high powered job” for one of us but we had had our kids young (not just when we could “fit them in”) and already had a couple of pre-schoolers when we got here.

We put the kids in public instead of private school, encouraged state colleges, and stayed in the same suburban neighborhood for decades, all of which solidified our local ties.

When we moved as empty nesters, it was just across the river into downtown DC. All of our kids and most of their friends (and friends’ parents) stayed in the area. It’s definitely home to many, many people.

I mean, if you’re gonna move here only for a job, have kids later in life, get a nanny, keep plugging away, then put the kids in private schools disconnected with the neighborhood where the graduate disperse themselves to colleges all over the country, how to you expect your family to put down roots here? When the career is over and the kids are gone, what’s left?

Many of my friends and family are friends with people from all over the US and the world - they prefer to not have a tiny bubble.

Such a typical elitist and defensive response. You can both live here and be settled here and have your family here and be “friends with people from all over the US and the world.” You just see the local folks more often. And the reality is, from a human nature standpoint, “absence makes the heart grow fonder” is less of a real thing than “out of sight out of mind.”

I’d like to resettle my family somewhere besides DC once I stop working though. I live here, like a lot of people, because my pay and benefits are much more than somewhere like New York City, where someone with a bunch of Fed jobs on their CV could only afford a duplex in some far out place in Queens or Staten Island. After DCs are out of school and we have a bunch of money in our generous Fed funded retirement account we can afford to downsize to much nicer places in Manhattan.

Our friends will be more than happy to visit us a couple times a year in the greatest city in the world. There’s a big difference in moving away to rural Tennessee and moving to a nicer, close city like NYC if you’re concerned about seeing friends and family. We’ll be our kids’ and our friend’s Manhattan Airbnb.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You people are really something else.

You move to the DC area because you have a single focus in your life – your high-powered career. You spend your entire life here focused on that, and when you do decide it’s time to fit some kids in you make damned sure they follow your single-minded footsteps and go off to the best bumper-sticker worthy college they can get into and off they go and never return. Then, once your all consuming career is over and your high achieving kids are long gone, you look around and tell yourself there is no community here and that this area is too transient for you to stick around.

Some of us haven’t structured our lives the way you did. So we do have a community here, and we have every reason to stick around.

Great explanation of what’s going on here. Anecdotal, but my neighbor who complains all the time about how our neighborhood doesn’t have a community feel works a big law job and is at their second home most weekends. You need to participate to build community.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I dont get people who want to move away from friends and community they spent 18+ years building unless its totally unaffordable. When my kids are grown ill get to garden more, spend more time with the friends i made and enjoy my neighborhood more.

That community broke down after our kids went to college. Some friendships apparently were based on common children’s activities and when those were gone, the relationships fizzled. Some divorces caused a decline- the women, who I was closest to, moved away. I lost two lifelong friendships to diabetes in the past few years. One got it when we were in HS together and the other got at 50 (Type 1). I miss them both. Others have already moved to retirement areas. The neighborhood has flipped over and they’re little left of what we thought we were building.

There really isn’t much of a community left.

Ill add that our children are not interested in staying in the area either. Plus, after a hot week like this one, I long to return north.