Anonymous wrote:I seriously doubt your children will have better opportunities in life having grown up thinking of thinking of themselves as “rich” in some LCOL brain drained city than “average” in a HCOL city. They’ll be more competitive and understand the real economy if you stay in DC. Raise your children to be happy regardless of their socioeconomic status. It’s friends and education and passion that make someone happy not stuff. You do a disservice to your children if you and they don’t know this.

+1. And, actually, some of the "rich" kids in my original hometown (classic brain-drained mid-size flyover city) were the worst of all in terms of attitude, entitlement, etc. (I shudder that I ever thought of myself as inferior to them just because they had the Tommy Hilfiger jeans or the Air Jordans or whatever that my parents couldn't afford.) Who knows how it will impact your kids, OP, to be the fancy rich kids who just moved to Podunk from the Big City. Maybe they'll lord it over other kids, maybe they'll be ostracized, maybe it'll all be peachy. You can't control the outcomes, you can only do your level best to raise respectful, resilient kids. You can do that here, you can do that there. Candidly I'd rather me and my kids be MC here in the DC area than UMC in my tiny flyover hometown -- even though it's a place I love fondly.

Anonymous wrote:I have a different perspective on this but my point will be that it's all relative. DH and I grew up in a tiny rural town in the midwest. We had 1 choice for a foreign language in HS and my parents both worked factory jobs that they ended up losing when the company was sold and their jobs went overseas. Not a situation I want to move back to at all.

DH and I both have good jobs here and make what I think is a median income for this area. But the benefits here are numerous. We love the diversity and the options. So, rather than thinking about all the things you may not be able to provide your children compared to others, it might be helpful to think about all the other things they are gaining here and the exposure they might not get elsewhere.

NP. I needed to read this today. Thank you for the perspective!