LCOL- who moved from this area and it was beneficial?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I actually moved from a hcol area to DC area.

Pros:
larger house, lcol (compared to where we came from). I was able to step back a lot, and we weren't always feeling stressed about saving.

Cons:
I didn't know anyone, and that meant I made no friends on my own by working remotely. All friends I made were through my kids, and parents of their friends. We aren't even that close. Everyone is busy working and raising kids.

I missed where I moved from a lot, but not the hcol.

In some ways, I regret it; in other ways, I don't.

So, you have to weigh the pros/cons, and what's more important to you.

For the record, DC *IS* a hcol of living area. There are only a few that are worse than here. So you moved here from some places in CA, NYC,Hawaii or....what's left?

Yes, it was one of those. We got double the house for the same price. I go back often (family), and the col is truly insane.

Had to CA, or maybe Hawaii it’s a nice lifestyle out there if you are rich and great weather

Yes, DC has much higher wages and half the cost of living compared to NYC (for us). Similar weather, so wash there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The tough thing is that if both of you are working it will be hard for both of you to advance in your careers in LCOL areas. If one of you wants to take a step back, fine. If not, make sure you move to another area that can support two professional careers. Remote workers are the ones first fired.

People don’t advance in their careers in LCOL areas?

How many policy analyst positions are you aware of in the Quad Cities of Illinois? In Wyoming? Let's not pretend job opportunities in DC specific fields are the same everywhere you go.

Not the same. But let’s also not pretend that every good federal gov job is DC specific.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The tough thing is that if both of you are working it will be hard for both of you to advance in your careers in LCOL areas. If one of you wants to take a step back, fine. If not, make sure you move to another area that can support two professional careers. Remote workers are the ones first fired.

Soft disagree.

My husband is a highly valued remote worker (specialized software engineer working for a federal IT contractor): he would make the same salary in DC, and his salary goes much further in our flyover state. DC is the only other place he’d be able to do his work.

I have been able to advance precipitously in my field (healthcare), because I’m talented - yes - and also because the talent pool is much smaller.

Things to consider. Also my husband has been fully remote since covid and his company just firmed up their next 5yr contract with remote terms intact.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I actually moved from a hcol area to DC area.

Pros:
larger house, lcol (compared to where we came from). I was able to step back a lot, and we weren't always feeling stressed about saving.

Cons:
I didn't know anyone, and that meant I made no friends on my own by working remotely. All friends I made were through my kids, and parents of their friends. We aren't even that close. Everyone is busy working and raising kids.

I missed where I moved from a lot, but not the hcol.

In some ways, I regret it; in other ways, I don't.

So, you have to weigh the pros/cons, and what's more important to you.

For the record, DC *IS* a hcol of living area. There are only a few that are worse than here. So you moved here from some places in CA, NYC,Hawaii or....what's left?

There are only 3 areas higher than dc.

San Francisco
NYC
Boston

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We moved to Charlotte from the DC area 10 years ago. Sold our 1100 sf row house for $520k and bought a 2700 sf house with 2-car garage on .5 acres for $620k. It’s now worth $1.2. We were/are 6 miles from city canter in both places, so pretty comparable.

My husband is a fed and I’ve been working remotely since 2007.

Def a win for us. I can’t really think of one area of our lives that didn’t improve. Medical care especially has been much better.

DC is a tough place to live if you’re not raking it in. We definitely were not.

Are you driving the the triangle for medical care? Duke, UNC and Wake Forest are the high quality medical options in NC. They may have affiliate offices in Charlotte, but the quality of the affiliates is not comparable to the locations in Chapel Hill and Durham. Medical care is better in DC compared to Charlotte unless you are referring to the RTP area.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think what people here miss is that not all lcol areas are the same. Things like medical resources, cultural amenities, and proximity to air travel, for example are very present in some former rust belt cities.

The sweeping generalizations here are ridiculous. There are medical resources, cultural amenities and proximity to air travel in LCOL areas in the South as well.

Shocking, I know.

It’s true that some small towns can be insular and it can be difficult to make friends, but that is not true everywhere. IME, it varies widely. We moved to an exurb of a small Southern city and live in a very welcoming, social neighborhood, and have not had any issue at all making friends.

The only warning I’d give is that you’re not the only one looking at a move, and desirable, walkable small towns across America are booming, and real estate prices in the prime areas are increasing commensurately. There are a bunch of houses being built on the fringes of our town that are affordable, so if you doesn’t know the area and are looking at Zillow, it can be a bit of a bait and switch. In our town, if you’re ok with living in a new cookie cutter subdivision, it can be relatively cheap, but if you want a property with a view and/or walkable to downtown, it’s going to be $1 million on up and there’s not much on the market. It’s still LCOL compared to prime real estate in NY/DC/SF etc, but it’s not the screaming bargain people think it’s going to be from a real estate perspective. On the other hand, everything is easier here and there’s almost no crime. Seeing what’s going on in the world, I do feel that we’re living in a bit of bubble, but that’s wonderful, as far as I’m concerned.

[Anonymous]

We did and it’s working very well for us. We moved to a wealthy town outside a midwestern city. Excellent schools, great medical care, and reasonable housing costs.

DH transferred to the fed job in the city and I was remote. Minimal salary adjustment. So glad we did it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think what people here miss is that not all lcol areas are the same. Things like medical resources, cultural amenities, and proximity to air travel, for example are very present in some former rust belt cities.

The sweeping generalizations here are ridiculous. There are medical resources, cultural amenities and proximity to air travel in LCOL areas in the South as well.

Shocking, I know.

It’s true that some small towns can be insular and it can be difficult to make friends, but that is not true everywhere. IME, it varies widely. We moved to an exurb of a small Southern city and live in a very welcoming, social neighborhood, and have not had any issue at all making friends.

The only warning I’d give is that you’re not the only one looking at a move, and desirable, walkable small towns across America are booming, and real estate prices in the prime areas are increasing commensurately. There are a bunch of houses being built on the fringes of our town that are affordable, so if you doesn’t know the area and are looking at Zillow, it can be a bit of a bait and switch. In our town, if you’re ok with living in a new cookie cutter subdivision, it can be relatively cheap, but if you want a property with a view and/or walkable to downtown, it’s going to be $1 million on up and there’s not much on the market. It’s still LCOL compared to prime real estate in NY/DC/SF etc, but it’s not the screaming bargain people think it’s going to be from a real estate perspective. On the other hand, everything is easier here and there’s almost no crime. Seeing what’s going on in the world, I do feel that we’re living in a bit of bubble, but that’s wonderful, as far as I’m concerned.

This. The mid-sized town we moved to is absolutely booming. Housing cost was okay for us but not super cheap. Still better than the DMV though.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think what people here miss is that not all lcol areas are the same. Things like medical resources, cultural amenities, and proximity to air travel, for example are very present in some former rust belt cities.

The sweeping generalizations here are ridiculous. There are medical resources, cultural amenities and proximity to air travel in LCOL areas in the South as well.

Shocking, I know.

It’s true that some small towns can be insular and it can be difficult to make friends, but that is not true everywhere. IME, it varies widely. We moved to an exurb of a small Southern city and live in a very welcoming, social neighborhood, and have not had any issue at all making friends.

The only warning I’d give is that you’re not the only one looking at a move, and desirable, walkable small towns across America are booming, and real estate prices in the prime areas are increasing commensurately. There are a bunch of houses being built on the fringes of our town that are affordable, so if you doesn’t know the area and are looking at Zillow, it can be a bit of a bait and switch. In our town, if you’re ok with living in a new cookie cutter subdivision, it can be relatively cheap, but if you want a property with a view and/or walkable to downtown, it’s going to be $1 million on up and there’s not much on the market. It’s still LCOL compared to prime real estate in NY/DC/SF etc, but it’s not the screaming bargain people think it’s going to be from a real estate perspective. On the other hand, everything is easier here and there’s almost no crime. Seeing what’s going on in the world, I do feel that we’re living in a bit of bubble, but that’s wonderful, as far as I’m concerned.

Same observations here re: the northern New England town we moved to a few years ago.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think what people here miss is that not all lcol areas are the same. Things like medical resources, cultural amenities, and proximity to air travel, for example are very present in some former rust belt cities.

The sweeping generalizations here are ridiculous. There are medical resources, cultural amenities and proximity to air travel in LCOL areas in the South as well.

Shocking, I know.

It’s true that some small towns can be insular and it can be difficult to make friends, but that is not true everywhere. IME, it varies widely. We moved to an exurb of a small Southern city and live in a very welcoming, social neighborhood, and have not had any issue at all making friends.

The only warning I’d give is that you’re not the only one looking at a move, and desirable, walkable small towns across America are booming, and real estate prices in the prime areas are increasing commensurately. There are a bunch of houses being built on the fringes of our town that are affordable, so if you doesn’t know the area and are looking at Zillow, it can be a bit of a bait and switch. In our town, if you’re ok with living in a new cookie cutter subdivision, it can be relatively cheap, but if you want a property with a view and/or walkable to downtown, it’s going to be $1 million on up and there’s not much on the market. It’s still LCOL compared to prime real estate in NY/DC/SF etc, but it’s not the screaming bargain people think it’s going to be from a real estate perspective. On the other hand, everything is easier here and there’s almost no crime. Seeing what’s going on in the world, I do feel that we’re living in a bit of bubble, but that’s wonderful, as far as I’m concerned.

Same observations here re: the northern New England town we moved to a few years ago.

A 4,300 sq ft house (tiny lot, but walkable to downtown) in our small town just sold for $2.3 million. Less per square foot than "high cost" areas, but still not cheap, and more than twice what we paid pre-Covid.

Upside is that we have more restaurants/coffee shops/etc, but the town is starting to have problems keeping up with infrastructure needs (traffic, water, sewer, etc).

[Anonymous]

There is plenty of cutting edge medical research coming out of the south and many doctors prefer to live away from urban centers as their incomes also go further.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I actually moved from a hcol area to DC area.

Pros:
larger house, lcol (compared to where we came from). I was able to step back a lot, and we weren't always feeling stressed about saving.

Cons:
I didn't know anyone, and that meant I made no friends on my own by working remotely. All friends I made were through my kids, and parents of their friends. We aren't even that close. Everyone is busy working and raising kids.

I missed where I moved from a lot, but not the hcol.

In some ways, I regret it; in other ways, I don't.

So, you have to weigh the pros/cons, and what's more important to you.

For the record, DC *IS* a hcol of living area. There are only a few that are worse than here. So you moved here from some places in CA, NYC,Hawaii or....what's left?

There are only 3 areas higher than dc.

San Francisco
NYC
Boston

All my relatives in Hawaii would disagree with that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The salary has to be a misprint. The DMV cannot be so egregiously underpaid for feds.

The federal locality pay is not actually tied to COL, but to comparable salaries in each locality. Some places are highly underpaid (like western resort towns), but Houston has similar pay to DC because of the oil industry.

[Anonymous]

We moved out of DC a little over 5 years ago and it has mostly worked well for us. We are not Feds, but have careers where we can find jobs in any city.

Pros: We sold our house and got a much bigger house with a yard and plenty of room for the kids for a lower price. Work truly is 9-5 and we have friends and neighbors who I still have no idea what they do for work, i.e., it's not the focus like it was in DC.

Cons: It takes time to make friends b/cs it seems as though everyone already knows everyone and has lived there for a long time. It took us a few years to feel like we fit in. There is not as much to do and things close at 8:00 - 9:00 at night so you can't run to the store at 10:30 for ice cream or go out for a late dinner/drinks after the kids are settled in for the night.

One thing I would do differently is that I wish we had kept our house so that we had the option to come back if the move wasn't as great as we had hoped. Not to mention our house has gone up a few hundred thousand since we left, ugh!

Is keeping the house an option for you? Perhaps pulling out equity now that you could use for a downpayment in a different location and then putting in renters to pay your mortgage? Good luck with your decision!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The tough thing is that if both of you are working it will be hard for both of you to advance in your careers in LCOL areas. If one of you wants to take a step back, fine. If not, make sure you move to another area that can support two professional careers. Remote workers are the ones first fired.

People don’t advance in their careers in LCOL areas?

How many policy analyst positions are you aware of in the Quad Cities of Illinois? In Wyoming? Let's not pretend job opportunities in DC specific fields are the same everywhere you go.

Not the same. But let’s also not pretend that every good federal gov job is DC specific.

There are some fed jobs where you HAVE to leave DC to advance (e.g. national park superintendencies). The problem is that once you take one role in e.g. the Ozarks, you either have to stay there until you retire, or move every few years. There are definitely paths outside DC but they're very difficult to follow without uprooting frequently. So there are serious tradeoffs.

Also LCOL is only one aspect of a place. There's everything else, like density, climate, schools, demographics, distance from family, etc etc etc. If I were moving across the country, house size would not be my deciding factor.

OTOH, some of us weighing these kind of moves aren't that concerned with advancing as far as possible. OP wants to get OUT of the rat race. I have a remote GS-13, which is high for my agency but low for DCUM, and unless remote work gets canceled and I have to start adding in 4 hours a day on the train, I see absolutely no reason to advance further in my career. Fed jobs have ceilings so when you have it good, don't ruin that.