Advice on moving away from the city but still commuting?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I would think very hard about a long commute. If your children are young then you have no idea about school mtgs, kids activities, and yes, even homework! I am pretty smart I think with a few degrees but my husband is stronger in some areas. For example, I had to keep one child up until 9pm for dad (long day at office not the commute but still) to do an advanced algebra problem that I could not figure out . You might be a long way from this point but you need to think about these things before a 30 yr mortgage.

I am from a very small town. lived in dc after grad school. Married and moved to Fairfax city area and boy does it feel small town. I work pt from home but the rest of the time I do a 4 mile loop to the schools, church, stores, gym, activites and see THE SAME PEOPLE everyhwhere - just like growing up. I even know the kids teachers as many live in the nearby neighborhoods ( just like my small town with a k-12 school). I probably have 8-10 people I could call at anytime to help me with an emergency.

So, my pint is, I do understand, but I think you can find a small town vibe of connectedness without moving so far. We almost bought in hay market when we were "astounded" by the beautiful homes friends. And colleagues were getting compared to what we paid "close in" but years later ....houses under water ( the ones far out tend to lose value first - at least according to wapo), divorces, and extremely high gas at times. We think we are far out in Fairfax! However, dh has been at pentagon, tyson's, Arlington, now sterling so this has proved an ideal location.

Hope this helps. Please think this through. Commuting is hell!

Who cares if you had to keep your kid up until 9 pm one night? Is this really supposed to sway someone from moving further out?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We debated moving for years due to the commuter issue since my husband and I both work in downtown DC. When we finally did it, it was because we found an ideal house with lots of land and horses nearby in a pretty rural setting. A huge change from DC, but also a big improvement in terms of comfort and freedom for my boys to just run around and play and enjoy being kids.

.....

I guess that this rambling post is just to say that I've now experienced both the city and a more rural place and I can say that people can and do survive moving out of DC. And no, I do not subsist on chain restaurants and walmart.

We live in upper mont county in the far flung suburbs and could not be happier. I know my kids are safe. The school is wonderful.
But then again we are not restaurant kind of people. I love to cook and make something totally new every weekend. So this is not really for everyone. Works great for us

[Anonymous]

OP, I moved from a very small town to DC, too. I was clueless about commuting and living near where you work. For the first year, I commuted from the MD suburbs to the VA suburbs - it was awful. The train took too long since there is no purple line, so I spent half my single life in my car. Thank goodness I didn't have kids then.
Then I moved to DC proper, and even though I was still commuting to the suburbs (and it took an hour on public transit or 30-50 minutes driving), I had OPTIONS. Of course, then we had a kid, and decided to move outside of the DC area entirely to be closer to family and DH's job.
Regardless, I think that what matters most are the people you spend your time with; yes it's nice to be able to host family rather than stick them in a hotel, but do you need to sacrifice your day to day quality time to do that? Is your own yard (and the work associated with it) that important, or are you ok with taking advantage of public parks that you never need to maintain?
We are a family of 4 living in a 1400 sq ft 2br apt and it is plenty of room for us. The complex has lots of green space and there are parks just a 2 minute drive away (or we can walk to athletic fields for a quick outing). Yes it's an adjustment from an area where you don't see your neighbors and everyone has a few acres and can do whatever they want with it, BUT, welcome to your new normal. Think about what is important to you - if you like to hike/be outdoors, there are plenty of parks or you can live in VA where it's closer to drive to shenandoah or west VA. But locking yourself into a situation dependent on long commute times and public transportation that will go awry in bad weather or utility outages or track work or who knows what - it's not all it's cracked up to be.