Reply to At what point did you throw in the towel because DC is just too expensive?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]We've been here two years. I've never made as much as I do now, and felt as poor as I do here. We are seriously considering moving. We like it, but it seems like you need to be making very substantial sums of money to be comfortable.[/quote]

I'm confused as to why you didn't realize this before you moved here.[/quote]

I knew DC was expensive. I wasn't moving from some podunk town in Idaho where a 5 bedroom house costs $100K. We came in figuring we could buy a place we liked for about $700K, in the end, it ended up being more like $1M to get into the right neighborhood. There were some expenses that caught us by surprise - for instance, unskilled labour here is much higher cost (lawn service is $250 vs $100 or so where we came from) and our car insurance rates are quite a bit more, as were our home owners, and home repairs here are 3x what we've experienced in other markets. We assumed the market for daycare was similar (I admit that was dumb) but found that anything convenient meant a few hundred more a month. I also found that metro, unlike where I came from, was not actually a cost-effective transportation option relative to driving, but that increased my gas and vehicle depreciation expenses. None of these things on their own really make much of a difference - an extra $100 for lawn service, an extra $300 for daycare, an extra $100 on gas, whatever - but eventually it adds up and before you know it, you are talking about an extra $1000 or $2000 a month, and that starts getting to be real money. Its not that we are struggling, its just that our overall purchasing power / quality of life has decreased with the move, despite the higher salary. [/quote]

Stop giving money to these blue collar thugs. I have been able to find lawn and home repair costs for a fraction of what you are paying. [/quote]

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