The Money Mustache Community
Learning, Sharing, and Teaching => Ask a Mustachian => Topic started by: City Mouse on July 31, 2014, 11:13:29 AM
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I am an aspiring mustachian and am considering a move with my family from my very expensive but highly resourced city to a rural town. I have been offered a job that provides a decent salary and benefits. I think we could live in town where we would be within biking/walking range to outdoor activities, entertainment and other amenities but the position I've been offered requires a lot of car travel to different sites and my primary office site would be about 35 minutes away.
Moving to a more affordable town that requires a greater reliance on a car seems antimustachian to me but I don't know if it makes sense to live in an expensive city that permits me to walk or bike to work now. Perhaps I'm not looking at the big picture. What do you all think?
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I am an aspiring mustachian and am considering a move with my family from my very expensive but highly resourced city to a rural town. I have been offered a job that provides a decent salary and benefits. I think we could live in town where we would be within biking/walking range to outdoor activities, entertainment and other amenities but the position I've been offered requires a lot of car travel to different sites and my primary office site would be about 35 minutes away.
Moving to a more affordable town that requires a greater reliance on a car seems antimustachian to me but I don't know if it makes sense to live in an expensive city that permits me to walk or bike to work now. Perhaps I'm not looking at the big picture. What do you all think?
I live in an incredibly expensive city (San Jose, CA). However, you have to remember that along with cost of living comes increased salaries. I live in a studio apartment. Basically, the salary increase over a rural area MORE than makes up for the COL increase. Remember, most COL assumptions are based on non-Mustachian lifestyles, particularly in housing. I would never consider buying a house in this area, but renting actually isn't a bad deal where I am now. If you can "beat the game", you can reach FI even faster while living in an expensive area.
After FI, I'm getting out of this area, no question.
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OP - YMMV but as a cautionary tale, look at all the expenses that come with a rural house. We traded a big East coast city (albeit living in an inexpensive and dangerous neighborhood) to a rural hamlet in New England at the top of the year. Our mortgage went straight through the roof, which I expected (the house we previously lived in was way cheap - under 100k by a good bit), but what I wasn't expecting were:
- All basic necessities now require driving. And often driving a good distance - 45 minutes or so. Bicycles can be used sometimes but very impractical for most things.
- Utility costs for a freestanding rural home have been considerably higher than our city home.
- We live impractically far away from a gym, so if that's something you've become accustomed to - factor in a healthy dose of self-discipline to work out on your own. Or be okay with losing the gains you made in the gym in a hurry.
- The social network we built up in the city included folks that knew how to do stuff we just don't know how to do. So instead of calling our neighbor the electrician over for a minute and paying him in beer and banter, we have to hire things out beyond our expertise - or absorb the risk of doing lots of things beyond our experience base ourselves.
- City driving isn't great on a car, but depending on where you live - dirt, gravel backroads and ice/ snow are no picnic on them either.
This isn't meant to scare you away from it. There are a lot of things I absolutely love about where we live now - not the least of which is green everywhere, fresh air, and stars - I hadn't seen stars in YEARS when I lived in the city.
But definitely take a hard look at your expenses and make sure you're appropriately calculating for all those things that might increase. Your life is going to change more than you think.