OP here....we threw in the towel. To answer questions, yes we lost my income because of a merger but I was pregnant so it worked out. My salary would basically only cover daycare/commuting costs so it was best for me to stay home.

My husband was able to get the same salary with his new job which is HQ in DC but we will be moving a few hours away where the cost of living is 75% cheaper (or so it says), so it's a win win. We can visit the city very easily but not have to deal with the traffic, rude people and expense.

I've been shocked that two kids can go to preschool cheaper than one here. We'll be able to buy a house that we could never afford here and the people just seem nicer. And the schools are amazing.

Thanks for the responses!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
You couldn't pay me enough to live in NC.

Why? Just curious. I went to school there and have plenty of friends who live there and seem to be very happy.

Now, most of them ARE bitching about their currently insane state legislature and how it makes their state look bad. Of course, as a person who lives in Virginia by necessity (I'd move to MD in a heartbeat just to escape OUR state legislature if it made any sense for our commutes), I can sympathize.

Are you white?

The problem is jobs. My husband and I would move in a heartbeat if we felt confident we could find jobs that paid enough to live comfortably (taking into account reduced cost of living) *and* if we felt that there was a decent job market, i.e. it's not like the jobs we found were the only game in town.

And therein lies this issue. Most areas that we would like to live in that also have a lower cost of living have a limited job market, meaning there might be one or two big employers in town. The white collar job market is limited, and if something happens with those one or two big employers, well, you're screwed.

The other places in the country where there is a good variety of white collar jobs *also* have a high cost of living if you want to live someone where and not commute (NY, Chicago, Boston).

So whenever I entertain the daydream of moving, I can't think of a place that works. I don't think I could live down south happily. There are pockets in South that aren't overly religious, but it's hard to find a job in those pockets, and they tend to be the places where housing and everything costs more anyhow.

So many places in the Midwest are just too cold for me, and I don't think there are white collar job opportunities.

West Coast -- Seattle, San Diego -- just as expensive as it is here.

I'd love to move to some place in Colorado or New Mexico, but the job market is the problem.

I think it's easy to pretend the grass is always greener, but I think it's highly individual. If some sweet opportunity came my way, it would be one thing. But unless you are a doctor, nurse, or engineer, there really isn't the job mobility. Perhaps IT professionals can be lumped in there as well, as they have some mobility, but that field is becoming increasingly flooded with new blood, so over time, people are becoming less marketable. It's the one job area where being a recent grad in that field actually might make you a bit more marketable than someone who has been in the field for a while (especially someone employed in government IT, who is likely not on the cutting edge).

Anonymous wrote:
You couldn't pay me enough to live in NC.

Why? Just curious. I went to school there and have plenty of friends who live there and seem to be very happy.

Now, most of them ARE bitching about their currently insane state legislature and how it makes their state look bad. Of course, as a person who lives in Virginia by necessity (I'd move to MD in a heartbeat just to escape OUR state legislature if it made any sense for our commutes), I can sympathize.

Anonymous wrote:When we were making the equivalent to what our parents made at our age and living in an 800 sq ft apartment in a crime-ridden AKA "gentrifying" part of town. When we realized we weren't happy and that life felt too hard with our commutes. We wanted a yard, a nice house, good schools, AND fun things to do in an urban setting and we didn't think those things should require making a quarter of a million dollars a year or more.

We moved to a large city in North Carolina, near where I grew up. We bought a beautiful house in the vibrant downtown area for less than the price of a townhouse in Manassas or Haymarket. Life is amazing now -- so good that sometimes I worry it means something bad is around the corner, but I'm weird and superstitious like that. We have all the restaurants and museums and parks that people in DC talk about but it doesn't require a struggle to get there. We walk or bike. No problems with parking, ever. That's been the biggest surprise.

You couldn't pay me enough to live in NC.

I always thought the goal was to get out of the city. If you HAVE to move to the city to get a job you do but then you build a resume and try to get out.

I am out because I was able to build my resume and find an job equal in income close to a neighborhood I love. Commute is 15 minutes to work. Walkable to me is going to the creek. Coffee is on my patio and wine is on my neighbor's deck.

Anonymous wrote:We moved here almost 8 years ago with tons in savings, CDs, no cc debt and retirement accounts large. Fast forward and we now live paycheck to paycheck with a small savings account as our emergency fund, retirement accounts took a huge hit because of the economy and tons of cc debt. We are both in our early 30's, have 2 kids but feel like we'll never be able to buy a house let alone a condo or be able to afford anything. We rarely eat out and when we do it's not at high end restaurants, I clip coupons, buy the kids clothing used, we've cut back on anything we could to pay for preschool which I know isn't a necessity but we found it important for our oldest. But, at what point do you just say enough is enough?

OP - while I sympathize I'm not really understanding what happened to your stash of money. If you came here with money and jobs and were renting, WHAT happened to your savings? unless one of you lost your job....like millions of others around the country?

I have lived in other parts of the country, 3 other major metros- I can tell you its not much more expensive here, when you remove housing from the equation. Yes, if you want to buy a home then forget about it but renting is truly not that much more than in other major metros and salaries are higher here. Eating out, retail, gas prices, utilities - those are all pretty equal to other parts of the country. So what gives, really?

As for leaving DC - as soon as I am able I am out of here but not because of the cost of living. people here are nasty, and our jobs are the only things holding us here. FWIW, I was born and raised here.my whole family is here - I still can't wait to move but that's not for another 10yrs.

When we were making the equivalent to what our parents made at our age and living in an 800 sq ft apartment in a crime-ridden AKA "gentrifying" part of town. When we realized we weren't happy and that life felt too hard with our commutes. We wanted a yard, a nice house, good schools, AND fun things to do in an urban setting and we didn't think those things should require making a quarter of a million dollars a year or more.

We moved to a large city in North Carolina, near where I grew up. We bought a beautiful house in the vibrant downtown area for less than the price of a townhouse in Manassas or Haymarket. Life is amazing now -- so good that sometimes I worry it means something bad is around the corner, but I'm weird and superstitious like that. We have all the restaurants and museums and parks that people in DC talk about but it doesn't require a struggle to get there. We walk or bike. No problems with parking, ever. That's been the biggest surprise.

Moved when it was time to buy a house. Pittsburgh much cheaper and housing costs were not affected by the recession.

I completely understand! While we are nowhere near the idea of having a 1M house, we are very practical about our finances and find it hard here too. It is tough to be middle class in this town full of people at the very top. We made a combined HHI of 75K with one of us only working part-time prior to moving to DC. Money into savings, money into retirement, money into travel savings, went to the best dentist in town, could afford the best doctors and some splurges here and there. Same scenario in DC with a combined HHI of 110K and both of us working full-time...yeah we are nowhere near where we were. That said, we love a lot of what DC has to offer and hope we move to a financial situation that is more comfortable soon. I find that the invariables just cost so much more here that it is hard to scale back one month and save extra like we could before.

Another big killer is student loan debt. STOP BORROWING FOR STUPID Majors let alone masters degrees that have no hope of paying a decent wage.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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.

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

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.

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.

Anonymous wrote:OP, based on your response above, it sounds like your financial situation is more about the fact that adult life with kids costs a lot and less about the place. Now, I don't know where you live exactly, and rents in this area are exorbitant, but most of the things you cited are not related to your rent -- they are expenses that would have cropped up regardless of where you were living. And I'm one of those people who doesn't love this area, so I don't say that to defend it! I just know that when I was in my 20s, I had NO IDEA how much a comfortable middle-class life costs. Between various insurances, health care expenses, auto maintenance, and so forth (those periodic expenses are the killer), it is dead easy to eat through savings and go into credit card debt unless you make enough money to be one of those uber-responsible types who puts 20% into savings and lives below her means. I don't know if I *could* do that, but I know for damn sure I have never had a high enough income to do that except for a brief period before I had my first child when I was able to save a large chunk of my salary so that I could take some unpaid maternity leave. Exactly how much cheaper would it be to live somewhere else? I honestly haven't looked at rents in other areas in a really long time. If your rent would go from, say, $2500 to $1500, and everything else stayed the same (including income) ... then, I could see moving for a better quality of life. But would income stay the same? My DH is an attorney and at his type of job (small firm), I think his salary would go down so much in a cheaper place that it would be a wash. So, we struggle on ... as do a lot of others.

OP here, thanks for the input. In researching things, gasoline for the car is cheaper, we could BUY a house for about what we pay in rent, preschool is half the price, groceries are cheaper. I think we're throwing in the towel. It's been fun but unless DHs salary doubled, we just can't stay;(

10 years ago DC was NOT murder capital of the world. More like 25 years ago. You do realize that 1988 was 25 years ago, right? I know, it's sickening.

Anonymous wrote:DC doesn't have "free daycare" for 0-3. Unless you are destitute / living under poverty line.

This is true. But there are free preschools starting at age 3 in some DC neighborhoods.