If anyone is still checking, we signed a lease that will have our DD at Oakridge Elementary. We are fairly confident we'll be moving before she goes to middle school, so we weren't too concerned with the middle school. Hopefully we made the right decision.

Should anyone still care, after another visit this past weekend, we've decided to live at the Gramercy in Crystal City/Pentagon City for at least the first year, probably two, we're there. Lease starts in Mid-June.

There's one that posts here. If you're still around, could you PM me?

Anonymous wrote:
Yes,you will find that most houses and townhouses here have a basement. I moved to the DC area, Bethesda to be exact, from Jacksonville about 15 years ago. I grew up in Jacksonville. All family is still there. What part of town are you coming from?

If you are planning to send kids to public school here, I encourage you to focus on a school search and then find a place to live based on the school cluster.

We're on the Westside, in Argyle.

We do plan on public schools, hopefully. DD is in gifted and we'd like that to continue. I'm a graduate of Stanton's IB Program and hope to find something that will replicate the experience I had in school.

I've read Haycock-Longfellow-McLean is a good pyramid/cluster and am now focusing on getting us somewhere that allows us to get in there.

Alright, y'all. We're headed to Tysons,VA this weekend and want to visit a few places.

Now, this may be a silly question to y'all, but we have a high water table and no basements here. So, that being said, does this listing mean that there are two stories above ground and one basement, making for three floors?

https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/2106-Glenn-Spring-Ct_Falls-Church_VA_22043_M67782-19472

Anonymous wrote:Are OP and Garbage Can Lady different posters?

Yes. Yes, we are.

Anonymous wrote:OP, I don’t know if you’re even checking this anymore, but I would recommend N. Arlington like a few others have. Great schools, nice communities, very close to DC. Here’s a place in my neighborhood.

https://hotpads.com/4635-20th-pl-n-arlington-va-22207-swqw6w/pad?propertyTypes=house

Still checking in every so often.

Thank you!

We're actually headed up there this weekend to check out a few neighborhoods. We'll definitely see if we can get in here.

Anonymous wrote:No. No ya'll. It sounds so cheesy and fake.

You haven't heard me say it! It's so truly genuine excitement ... usually.

Anonymous wrote:

Not to pile on with the negativity but please don’t use hub/hubs/hub’s once you move up here.

Hahaha! Duly noted.

Can I still say, "Y'all?"

I am OP from a different thread (Sticker Shock Advice) and would love to network with you. We're also mid-30s though we have two mixed kids. Could I PM you?

ETA: You would have to PM me, it looks like.

Thank you all for your insight and perspectives, negative and positive.

I must admit I am feeling a bit discouraged but remain undeterred. Now, I am armed with more information and will go back to crunching numbers and figuring where our comfort lies. At worse, we've a soft place to land back in Jacksonville if it all goes awry in DC.

Hubs is preceding us to DC and will be there three months before we move so that DD can finish out the school year here so that'll give him the opportunity to "practice" commuting from different areas and we'll be up to visit him several times to check out different areas now that I have some zip codes to research.

Why move? One word: opportunity.

I've reached my ceiling unless I move into management which I have no desire to do. DH is in corporate banking and transitioning to corporate finance with base salary AND phenomal commission structure.

HHI will be above 350k with dual income.

I loathe Jacksonville. Hub's dislike isn't as great as mine, but he's not a fan either.

We're both 35 and subscribe to the idea that you miss 100% of the shots you don't take and this shot is definitely one we're taking; might be a long three, but we're banking on the nothing but net.

Anonymous wrote:
Cheap housing isn’t everything in life! Jacksonville is inexpensive for a reason. There is a ton of land and people have to use their car multiple times a day. There aren’t as many high paying job opportunities. There are a lot of dumb people. Many people will gladly pay a premium to live in a vibrant city around driven and smart people and not be forced to drive a car to get their fat as$ around.

This!

We've been in Jacksonville for just over two years now, having returned to help my father rehab after quadruple bypass.

The cost of living is amazing but we were previously in South Florida and I took a $20k pay cut coming to Jacksonville. It was a lateral move for my husband. Our house was much smaller in South Florida vs Jacksonville but I preferred it to how large our house is now. (It's impossible to keep clean and we only use about half the space we have.)

I'm very much looking forward to DC for the vibrancy and access to public transportation. If I worked and stayed in the same field, a quick Indeed search indicates I'd be back at or exceeding the pay I received in South Florida, though as mentioned earlier, I'd love to leverage my skills into non-profit work.

So ... it appears after spending time on this board, my wants don't align with what's realistic but that just means that a little more research is required and a mental rearrangement of what we're willing to sacrifice/gain.

But, you don't know what you don't know. Now I know!

Only federal taxes currently in Florida. As I understand it, Virginia has state and federal income taxes and Maryland has state, federal, AND local income taxes.

Current dual HHI is mid 100s. I would guess we're at about 30%ish tax rate.

We currently pay around $1000 a month in child care between before/after school for DD and fulltime care (55 hours a week) for DS. I am aware that I'll be looking at $1000 a WEEK moving there.

Anonymous wrote:
Looks like you can easily afford to increase your rental budget.

/Can/ but really don't want to. We live well beneath our means now and are financially conservative. Also, don't want to sink a lot into rental and have nothing to show for it in the end and don't want to buy knowing absolutely nothing about where we're headed and want to "root."