I would consider moving to many lower cost areas, but not to Missouri. My relatives who live there call it "the state of Misery" and I haven't been impressed during visits.

If you really want to live there for reasons other than low cost, or you are willing to do it for a few years to save money, that's one thing, but I would not move there without a plan to get out if you don't like it.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not worth it. Your husbands salary will be adjusted downward due to a change in locality pay. You will also lose the low interest rate you have on your current mortgage, so a cheaper house may actually be more expensive.

I already looked at house similar to ours in sq footage and school district and its $200 less than our current mortgage that has a 3.5% interest rate. We could sell our house for 500 or more. It's way less tax and less to insure, etc. The salary difference is 10k per year and I would make my same salary. Housing costs are 60% of DC costs.

Just looking online doesn't work. You have to go to the city and see these neighborhoods. We moved to a LCOL area that on paper has houses significant less than our 2MM home in a HCOL city. But no way would we want to live in those neighborhoods. Usually newer developments farther away from things to do. And the older neighborhoods with less expensive house were owned by people who couldn't afford the upkeep. We ended up in a nearly 1MM house in a good neighborhood. We are better off financially, but we miss having so much to do in our HCOL city.

Anonymous wrote:We moved to Charlotte from the DC area 10 years ago. Sold our 1100 sf row house for $520k and bought a 2700 sf house with 2-car garage on .5 acres for $620k. It’s now worth $1.2. We were/are 6 miles from city canter in both places, so pretty comparable.

My husband is a fed and I’ve been working remotely since 2007.

Def a win for us. I can’t really think of one area of our lives that didn’t improve. Medical care especially has been much better.

DC is a tough place to live if you’re not raking it in. We definitely were not.

This is awesome, but in 2024, OP likely isn't buying a $1.2 M house, otherwise they'd just stay in MD?

We moved to Charlotte from the DC area 10 years ago. Sold our 1100 sf row house for $520k and bought a 2700 sf house with 2-car garage on .5 acres for $620k. It’s now worth $1.2. We were/are 6 miles from city canter in both places, so pretty comparable.

My husband is a fed and I’ve been working remotely since 2007.

Def a win for us. I can’t really think of one area of our lives that didn’t improve. Medical care especially has been much better.

DC is a tough place to live if you’re not raking it in. We definitely were not.

It seems like DH would be moving to a field or regional office and moving out of a HQ role? If that's the case, there may be lots of opportunity for him to move up to a management role in the region.

What do you value more-- a larger house or DC amenities? For us, one of the factors for staying in DC and not moving back to our hometown in Ohio is the 3 airports and easy access to travel, the museums, restaurants, and the # of concerts and events that come here. Yes, we'd get a larger house for the same price in Ohio, but that doesn't seem like a better tradeoff to me, and I don't see how we'd actually end up saving that much more, we'd just be getting more house for our money.

For you, you'll have to consider the cost of travel back to MD to visit family in your decision as well.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The tough thing is that if both of you are working it will be hard for both of you to advance in your careers in LCOL areas. If one of you wants to take a step back, fine. If not, make sure you move to another area that can support two professional careers. Remote workers are the ones first fired.

People don’t advance in their careers in LCOL areas?

How many policy analyst positions are you aware of in the Quad Cities of Illinois? In Wyoming? Let's not pretend job opportunities in DC specific fields are the same everywhere you go.

Anonymous wrote:I think what people here miss is that not all lcol areas are the same. Things like medical resources, cultural amenities, and proximity to air travel, for example are very present in some former rust belt cities.

This!
LCOL area doesn’t necessarily mean rural area in the middle of nowhere. Many large metropolitan areas are cheaper than DC.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think what people here miss is that not all lcol areas are the same. Things like medical resources, cultural amenities, and proximity to air travel, for example are very present in some former rust belt cities.

Yes exactly. Living in the middle of North Dakota isn't the same as nice suburbs of some Midwestern cities, which often have good public and private schools, healthcare, culture, etc. and are LCOL compare to DC.

Yes, Cleveland, for example, has its positives and negatives, but it arguably has better access to world class medical care than we do with the Cleveland Clinic.

Anonymous wrote:I think what people here miss is that not all lcol areas are the same. Things like medical resources, cultural amenities, and proximity to air travel, for example are very present in some former rust belt cities.

Yes exactly. Living in the middle of North Dakota isn't the same as nice suburbs of some Midwestern cities, which often have good public and private schools, healthcare, culture, etc. and are LCOL compare to DC.

I think what people here miss is that not all lcol areas are the same. Things like medical resources, cultural amenities, and proximity to air travel, for example are very present in some former rust belt cities.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I actually moved from a hcol area to DC area.

Pros:
larger house, lcol (compared to where we came from). I was able to step back a lot, and we weren't always feeling stressed about saving.

Cons:
I didn't know anyone, and that meant I made no friends on my own by working remotely. All friends I made were through my kids, and parents of their friends. We aren't even that close. Everyone is busy working and raising kids.

I missed where I moved from a lot, but not the hcol.

In some ways, I regret it; in other ways, I don't.

So, you have to weigh the pros/cons, and what's more important to you.

For the record, DC *IS* a hcol of living area. There are only a few that are worse than here. So you moved here from some places in CA, NYC,Hawaii or....what's left?

Not PP, but I moved from NYC, so DC was a lower COL where we could afford to buy a place (15 years ago).

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I actually moved from a hcol area to DC area.

Pros:
larger house, lcol (compared to where we came from). I was able to step back a lot, and we weren't always feeling stressed about saving.

Cons:
I didn't know anyone, and that meant I made no friends on my own by working remotely. All friends I made were through my kids, and parents of their friends. We aren't even that close. Everyone is busy working and raising kids.

I missed where I moved from a lot, but not the hcol.

In some ways, I regret it; in other ways, I don't.

So, you have to weigh the pros/cons, and what's more important to you.

For the record, DC *IS* a hcol of living area. There are only a few that are worse than here. So you moved here from some places in CA, NYC,Hawaii or....what's left?

Yes, it was one of those. We got double the house for the same price. I go back often (family), and the col is truly insane.

Had to CA, or maybe Hawaii it’s a nice lifestyle out there if you are rich and great weather

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I actually moved from a hcol area to DC area.

Pros:
larger house, lcol (compared to where we came from). I was able to step back a lot, and we weren't always feeling stressed about saving.

Cons:
I didn't know anyone, and that meant I made no friends on my own by working remotely. All friends I made were through my kids, and parents of their friends. We aren't even that close. Everyone is busy working and raising kids.

I missed where I moved from a lot, but not the hcol.

In some ways, I regret it; in other ways, I don't.

So, you have to weigh the pros/cons, and what's more important to you.

For the record, DC *IS* a hcol of living area. There are only a few that are worse than here. So you moved here from some places in CA, NYC,Hawaii or....what's left?

Yes, it was one of those. We got double the house for the same price. I go back often (family), and the col is truly insane.

Anonymous wrote:The tough thing is that if both of you are working it will be hard for both of you to advance in your careers in LCOL areas. If one of you wants to take a step back, fine. If not, make sure you move to another area that can support two professional careers. Remote workers are the ones first fired.

A Fed and a Fed contractor, those careers have harsh ceiling unless the contractor goes into business dev (which as a 100% remote is just not realistic)

Anonymous wrote:The tough thing is that if both of you are working it will be hard for both of you to advance in your careers in LCOL areas. If one of you wants to take a step back, fine. If not, make sure you move to another area that can support two professional careers. Remote workers are the ones first fired.

People don’t advance in their careers in LCOL areas?