Moving to Seattle with kids

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Renton is not Seattle. At all. West Seattle is nice. Traffic is awful. You need to be fairly close. It’s seriously a disaster. If you live in Bellevue it could easily take you 1.5 hours.

Sry I meant if you live in Seattle. My in laws live in maple valley - no to that- and it takes SO long from there, which is near Kent. I’m always blown away by how bad traffic has gotten in the area in general. I grew up there and went to college and grad school at Uw and many friends are still there. They all live in Bellevue or Mercer island or Madison park.

Your friends are rich. OP can buy a teardown on Mercer Island or a 2-bedroom condo, and maybe an apartment in Madison Park.

Seattle is huge north to south and Kent is vast from west to East. Plenty of areas that used to be a reasonable commute from will take 90 minutes in bad summer traffic, but that's normal now in many parts of the country.

There are plenty of places where people live in Seattle proper or other places that are perfectly reasonable commutes to Renton. Don't be discouraged, OP.

I don’t think it’s “normal” now for a commute to take 90 minutes!

I think PP meant that you can have a "normal" commute that takes 90 minutes 1 day/week when everything goes wrong- they specifically said "bad summer traffic". Our infrastructure in this country hasn't grown to match the pace of population growth. I don't know anyone that doesn't experience unpredictable commutes. My parents live in a small city in the midwest that's grown quickly, and I'm always shocked by drives that used to be an easy 15 minutes are now 45 minutes in stop-and-go traffic.

[Anonymous]

Hi OP!

While the Seattle area is overwhelmingly progressive/leftist, the direction the public schools are taking is regressive:

https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/1196741.page

I would not put my kids into a Seattle public school today. This is especially true for anyone expecting their children to attend college / university.

Budget for private school if you go through with your plan to move.