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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]01:35, what school pyramid or are you going private?  Schools are what give me pause in PGC.[/quote]

1:35 here.  And I missed the part where OP said that she was commuting to Arlington/Foggy Bottom amidst all the humble-bragging about buying a house without your parents' help.

What led us to PG County was that DH works there, and a commute from anywhere we could afford in Virginia would have been terrible.  Of course, we could have bought in certain parts of Alexandria, but I began to realize that the schools there weren't even very good, so why was I looking at these old ugly houses?  Then we started looking at the Bowie/Glenn Dale area.  I realized that for 400k we could buy a house that would cost at least 800k on any other part of the beltway.  So I did a calculation in my mind- what would that 400k difference mean?  For our financial situation, it meant we would be paying taxes on a 400k house instead of a 800k house, have an easy commute for dh, be paying a mortgage on 400k instead of 800k, etc., and put our 1 dc in private school.  It meant that I could stay home if I want to at any point.  For health reasons it is unlikely that I will have another dc, so that was another factor to consider.  The elementary school where we bought is a 6, last year was a 7, which is fairly impressive for the # of FARMS kids in the school.  I also will apply for the lottery for the French and Montessori schools near the house.  I also researched the crime in the area we bought, mostly petty, theft, and theft from vehicle.  We went to the neighborhood at all hours of the day.  I knocked on a bunch of neighbors' doors and introduced myself and chatted with them.  DH asked people he worked with about living in that part of the county.  I asked questions on city-data.  It took a long time, and it was sort of an absurd amount of research that I didn't feel I needed to do when looking in VA. [/quote]

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