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

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]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.[/quote]

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…

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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?[/quote]

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. [/quote]

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.”

[/quote]

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.[/quote]

I'm looking forward to this post on DCUM in 20 years:

"My MIL keeps demanding that we visit them in NYC because it's the world's greatest city but she doesn't understand why we don't go more than once a year. I enjoy NYC, but they live in a cramped apartment, there's no room for all of us and the kids have to sleep on the floor and NYC is always dirty and gritty. It's awful in the summers where I'd rather be at the beach. And so expensive to do anything with the kids. We always feel obliged to take the in laws out to dinner and it cost a fortune for all of us to eat out. And then on top of it, it's not so easy taking a whole weekend to go to NYC because we have things to do on the weekend and we work during the week. She just refuses to understand that it'd be a lot easier for them to come stay with us in our suburban house where there's plenty of room and the kids' schedules aren't disrupted. Can anyone suggest how I can gently let her know it really isn't that pleasurable to go up to NYC?" [/quote]

:shock:

NYC-lover, for what it’s worth, there is likely a lot of truth here. I love parts of the city but, even with my fairly high income, know a well-maintained 3+ bedroom in desirable neighborhoods would require a lot of sacrifices. I’d imagine two retirees from federal government, even with good savings, would be looking at pretty tight quarters—have you taken a serious look at real estate there?

It might be fun for your kids to come up to stay in the extra bedroom when they’re younger, but be prepared for a less enthusiastic reception as they marry and have children.

[/quote]

Keep the current home and get a small 1BR pied-a-terre in NYC for retirement. If your kids want to visit, you get them a hotel room on the same block or rent a neighbor's unit in the building for the weekend.

It absolutely can be done on dual-Fed income. The nice thing about dual pensions is that you can always pass underwriting for a new mortgage or a refinance in your retired years. If you're smart, you buy the NYC apartment now in your working years and just rent it out to a full-time tenant to pay down the mortgage. [/quote]

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