Anyone Relocate out of the North East - would love to hear if you loved your decision or regretted it...

My DH wants to move out of NY inthe worst way - he is done with NY! Only problem is I dont want to leave the Long Island area.

We have young 3 kids and ALL our family and friends are in Queens and Long Island.

He wants to move anywhere! We recently visited friends in Tennessee and showed me gorgeous new construction houses in the low $300K's

How can I compete with that!??!

When we go to Disney in May - he wants to see homes in Tampa area?!

I convinced him to do some open houses in LI yesterday and they were all crap - You couldn't pay me to live in any one of them! I am going to have a real Estate agent show me around because I know open houses aren't always the cream of the crop! But I have a lot of work cut out for me if I am going to succeed in convincing him to stay with these house prices and house TAXES!!!!!


SO - I would love to hear other ladies that moved out of LI and were happy (OR not happy) with their decision and where did you go?!?!! I am so afraid if I cave - I am going to be sad, lonely, and miserable!

Anyone Relocate out of the North East - would love to hear if you loved your decision or regretted it...

I would have moved anywhere. Yes I'm from Texas but was looking at South Carolina, Florida, California, Arizona and Georgia. Taxes are higher here for homes but the values are lower. A custom build 2000 4b, 2 and a half bath, 2 car garage in a gated community that's in the top school district runs less than 200k.

I miss my friends in NY. I miss the comfort of knowing the area of long island.

I don't miss cost of living. I don't miss shoveling snow. I don't miss the traffic. I don't miss the commute.

My quality of life for my daughter is so much better. I had no friends here and no close relatives. I get out there. PTA. Girl Scouts. School stuff I now have time for. She has no cousins near her age. Hubby had nothing here at all but me. Been here 5 years now and time has flown by. We may not have add many friends as new York but we do have friends.

AJ is so happy. This is her home. She calls or that.. This is her house. She had a back yard and front yard large room and her best friend lives across the street and is in her kindergarten class and girl scouts.

I officially now bring home more per paycheck than I did in New York because we have no state tax and I'm two years from digging myself out of major debt. I can see a future for her and honestly that's all that matters.

I would do it again in any state. But yes I'm glad it was Texas. Ironically, when I applied it was supposed to be Dallas. Then it was for Houston (not my favorite) then finally it settled on San Antonio which I do know well enough (but it's changed so much)

If given enough money and good quality of life (better than here) I'd move again and uproot her. But I grew up military and truly believe in my child's ability to adapt. She makes fast friends


ETA: oh btw.. Im also the one who moved to NYC with no job offers, no relatives, no friends and no place to live! LOL But the idea that I could improve myself and my way of life was my motivation. The move out of NY was the same, but for the way of HER life. Family is always a phone call away. My father raised me to have a good life, to live it to its fullest, do whats best for me. He had his life, he had a great time at it, travelled with the Navy, moved around, saw things, did things, etc. He wanted the same for us. To truly enjoy life and live it to our max. We are not by nature the type to stay within a stone's throw (if you will) from family. Most Texans aren't. We have a lot of NYkers her and they all say the same thing. Its so odd how Texans are willing to move around without much care. SA has so many transplants its crazy. The joke is, you are hard pressed to find an office where more than 25% of the staff is actually from San Antonio. I'm not even from here either! LOL

Message edited 3/12/2014 9:45:26 AM.

Re: Anyone Relocate out of the North East - would love to hear if you loved your decision or regretted it...

i have lived in the los angeles area, loveland CO, miami, nyc, and central nj (which is where i am, now).

we're planning to relocate back to southern california. we're planning that are because i want to be closer to the family i grew up with. i know it won't be easy when i first get there, but it will be so worth it.

to answer your question, i'll talk about NJ because this is where i do NOT have family. i love that i was able to give my son a front yard, back yard, the ability to have a dog to play with outside. i was able to give him a NON-crowded school with awesome teachers who took the time to realize that he had a learning disability... in NYC, the teacher just had him repeat the second grade... yes, i know there are good teachers and bad teachers EVERYWHERE... but this is my experience.

has it always been easy? no. has it always been worth it? YES.

it's taken a little time to set roots and make friends... but having kids does make that a little easier because they "force" you to interact with other families. even my kid, the most introverted person i know, had birthday parties and class field trips to help me meet people. the fact that i knit also helped, i joined a knitting group.

i say, take your time to find an area where employment for your and/or your DH's fields are good.

Re: Anyone Relocate out of the North East - would love to hear if you loved your decision or regretted it...

Thank you for your thorough and thoughtful and honest replies! I give you both credit! But I think that scares me the most is that I have never live OUTSIDE of New York ever - I grew up in Queens, went "away" to college up in Riverdale/Bronx, got married moved back to Queens and then had kids - so we moved to Nassau -

So I never lived more than 20 miles from the house I grew up in! All my family is here, all my friends (from grammar school , hs, or college) and I see them often (at least once a month!! )

I think I will miss that!

Re: Anyone Relocate out of the North East - would love to hear if you loved your decision or regretted it...

I am originally from LI and now live in the Albany area. I do not really miss LI, but I do miss living close to my friends and family. I hate that I only get to see them every 4-6 weeks when they are able to get together on a weekly basis. I think I would be miserable if we were not within driving distance.

Anyone Relocate out of the North East - would love to hear if you loved your decision or regretted it...

We are planning to leave in the next year to 2 years to TX. I want to be able to give my future kids everything that I can not give them here. The taxes are killing us slowly and I feel my pay check goes to just paying my basic bills and rent. I moved to So Fl when I was 20 and I came back. Florida is def not the right place for me for a numerous amount of reasons. If I cant go to TX I would move to TN since its so pretty and I have a few relatives in TN.

Re: Anyone Relocate out of the North East - would love to hear if you loved your decision or regretted it...

We are also planning on moving to TX (Austin) in the next year or two. We both freelance and work 90% online so we would make the same amount of money no matter where we are. It would be like giving ourselves an instant raise!

Anyone Relocate out of the North East - would love to hear if you loved your decision or regretted it...

DH and I left LI almost 4 years ago now. We were both born and raised in Nassau county with all our friends and family still there. We did both go away to school off the island but returned and got jobs in NYC and lived there for a few years enjoying being young in the city before we decided to leave. We originally moved to Virginia about 1 hour west of DC for a job opportunity for my DH. It was a small town and everything was much slower paced than NY. We liked it because we enjoy hiking and doing things outside but we knew it was not where we wanted to be permanently. Last spring we moved further south to Richmond VA and we love it. There is much more to do and better job opportunities than the first small town, and the quality of life is still so much better than Long Island. Houses/taxes are affordable, the weather is better, the people are nicer and our jobs are infinitely less stressful. We do miss friends and family a ton. We miss out on pretty much all family gatherings except major holidays which is hard. Aside from family/friends sometimes I think I miss New York but within 24-36 hours of being back on the island for a visit I am usually tired of the traffic, overcrowding, rude people and stress and ready to leave again. We are expecting our first child this July so I am interested to see how it is to start raising a family outside of NY and away from all our family. After living away 4 years and seeing what our money can buy us outside NY, I'm not sure I can picture us ever moving back. We do love going back for visits though!

Anyone Relocate out of the North East - would love to hear if you loved your decision or regretted it...

We left Long Island 8 yrs ago for S. Florida. Best decision we ever made. It was hard the first year, but we have such a different/better life here. We have a beautiful and affordable home, that we could never own on Long Island. No snow! good weather. Our area is great, we have cool neighbors. There's no traffic, everything is clean and new and we are close to the beach. Everything's in driving distance, Miami or Orlando. Sure you miss friends, but we've made all new friends who have become our family.
Honestly, we would never, ever move back to ny. I'd be open to other states and moving again one day, but def not ny.

Message edited 3/12/2014 9:25:06 AM.

Re: Anyone Relocate out of the North East - would love to hear if you loved your decision or regretted it...

Re: Anyone Relocate out of the North East - would love to hear if you loved your decision or regretted it...

Message edited 3/12/2014 9:25:30 AM.

Anyone Relocate out of the North East - would love to hear if you loved your decision or regretted it...

I spent 7 years in Tucson, AZ and would still be there if my DH was able to find a job there after finishing his PhD. We ended up back on LI 3 years ago because it just happened to be where he found a postdoc opportunity and after living away for so long, I hate living on LI even more than I thought I could.

Like a PP said, I feel like all that we work for is money to pay our bills and we work longer hours, with significantly longer commutes than we had in Tucson. I feel like we hardly get any time with DD and despite working so very hard, I constantly feel stressed about the fact that we just scraping by. We have good jobs, hardly any debt and we are frugal by nature and yet, I feel like we can't do anything extra or save much money, it's just SO expensive here.

I would give anything to go back to Tucson. I know I would be sad to be away from my folks and that my DD would miss them (and they would miss her!), but I know we could give her a much better life out there than we are currently doing here. I think we are stuck here for the long term, given the fact that DH's field is very specialized and his job here is very promising, but if he could find something somewhere else, I'd leave here without a second thought.

Anyone Relocate out of the North East - would love to hear if you loved your decision or regretted it...

Martin county. It's on the east coast.
But Sarasota/Bradenton is beautiful and close to ocean too. And in all these areas, it seems so many have moved down here from the tri state area. Everyone we meet is a transplant NY'er.

Re: Anyone Relocate out of the North East - would love to hear if you loved your decision or regretted it...

Re: Anyone Relocate out of the North East - would love to hear if you loved your decision or regretted it...

Re: Anyone Relocate out of the North East - would love to hear if you loved your decision or regretted it...

I have to say...

I was sad when I moved away from NY. Leaving somewhere you've always been is very hard. BUT as time went on, I started loving so many things about the DC area (we were in alexandria VA and now Maryland for the last 4 years).

The one thing that was a MUST for me was being within a decent driving distance from family. Like if I needed to be in NY for an emergency I could hop in a car and be there within 4-5 hours. I visit NY quite often and my family comes here all the time. It's worked out beautifully.

I never ever ever thought I would reach a point in life where I would be anywhere other than NY. And while I miss certain things (the best pizza and bagels ever!! and of course family!), I love returning home to Maryland. I love it here. I've made the greatest, sweetest friends...I've fallen in love with annapolis, DC, old town alexandria, etc...the people are a bit nicer, and its just a different feeling. Hard to explain. Pace of life isn't as crazy (though it isn't slow either), and I find now when I'm on long island for too long I feel like i can't breathe. It's weird. It's not to knock LI (I grew up here and loved it) but don't think I'll ever be moving back. In fact I've had family say they would love to relocate to MD with me, they love visiting here!

You sound a LOT like me and just think long and hard before going anywhere that would make it hard to come back for seeing family. Even a two hour plane ride a)gets expensive to do often and b) takes a large part of a day to travel

Re: Anyone Relocate out of the North East - would love to hear if you loved your decision or regretted it...

Does it have to be down south? What about a place like PA? A family member of mine moved there a year ago and they are very happy. Its only a few hours from Long Island, so realistically they can be at all the big events for the kids here.

And as far as houses you can get a decent home for under 200K (not sure about new construction) and taxes range but in their area I think its under $3K

Re: Anyone Relocate out of the North East - would love to hear if you loved your decision or regretted it...

I've heard a mixed bag of reviews. I think if you have good jobs lined up that's one thing. But I know someone who moved for COL and then lost their job and there were even less to be had in their area. Plus lack of family support made it even worse.

Re: Anyone Relocate out of the North East - would love to hear if you loved your decision or regretted it...

I recently moved to new hampshire. I LOVE IT. I lived in queens for 32 years then moved to li when i got married. Just way to expensive for us. My dh got a transfer with his job and weve been here for 5 months. Dh and i come from extremely small families. I left behind my sister, dad and two best friends. Thats all i really have. We keep in touch alot and once the weather gets nicer they will all be coming to visit. No regrets here.

Anyone Relocate out of the North East - would love to hear if you loved your decision or regretted it...

I relocated to be with DH on LI from MA in 2007.

We relocated as a family to CT 2 years ago and are considering a relo to TX or FL for health/weather and quality of life/opportunity reasons.

I can't take the bitter cold anymore. I've had so many injuries to bones/soft tissue and every time it's cold like today I am miserable and in a lot of pain. DH and both kids hate the cold/winter as well. This is one of the major reasons we are going south.

Even though CT is cheaper than LI, it's still expensive up here. DH's field is stagnant up here in the northeast, his best opportunities are in TX. We want stability and quality of life. We have a ton of debt from the CT relocation and me being out of work, and we want to dig out of that. Ultimately, though, if the market for his career were the same here as in TX and we could live on single income, we'd be staying.

Relocating away from family and friends and everything I knew was hard but in the long run, we've been so much happier in CT. Being out of your comfort zone forces you to get out there and meet new people. The friends I've made here are amazing and I'll be sad to leave them, but I know now that we can do this anywhere.

It's scary to relocate, but you never know until you try. You can always move back if you hate it, but make sure you give ti time before you decide you despise it. Keep an open mind.

Re: Anyone Relocate out of the North East - would love to hear if you loved your decision or regretted it...

Re: Anyone Relocate out of the North East - would love to hear if you loved your decision or regretted it...

We have lived OOS and consider moving back OOS for many of the reasons you name, but my whole family is here so that is very tough, and my mom currently provides free and amazing childcare for DS. I also have a well-paying flexible job (I can transfer cities but might lose my flexibility). We honestly dont know. We are here for now but not necessarily long term