Wyoming - It Just Makes Sense

[ColoradoEng]

In several posts you made it clear that the debt is her fault.  But anyway, I just wouldn't phrase it like that to her.  This is a message board so I'm sure you aren't talking to her like that.  Just tell her you want to face those things together as a team like you did and you're fine. 

It's not Wyoming as a whole, I would just rethink the Casper thing.  I've never met anyone who wanted to move to Casper for a better life outside of money reasons, and I certainly wouldn't think the kids would have a better experience there without you seeking out opportunities for them like travel.  The kids may not be as entitled but all the kids there are rancher or oil/coal kids.  Many have no interest in education because they want to end up on the ranch or the oil rig and can be entitled in their own way.  Casper is the same distance from the Grand Tetons as KC is to Mark Twain National Forest, so you won't be upping their national park exposure as much as you'd think. 

Wyoming does have awesome benefits like you said with no state income tax (may change with the coal issues).  But why not look at Laramie or Cheyenne? Both are super close to the Snowy Range and Vedauwoo (I love Vedauwoo).  You can drive 20 minutes from Laramie and camp in the middle of nowhere without seeing anyone for days.  The University of Wyoming is fantastic and have amazing goals for future academic opportunities for students.  Cody, Sheridan, even Gillette would be better options in my opinion. Just giving my two cents as someone raised in Wyoming, who has left but still loves it there.  Feel free to message me if you want to ask more.

[Rufus.T.Firefly]

I want to support Guitarist a bit here. It sounds like to me his intentions are honorable and his support of his wife is praiseworthy. I think he came on here to vent and get advice. Therefore the tone is different than the one he would use in a conversation with his wife.

Guitarist, it sounds like your a direct, to-the-point person. I am too. My wife is not. Early in our relationship she perceived my directness as confrontational and argumentative. I had to learn to tone it down and she learned to value that what I say is exactly what I mean, no need to read between the lines. Perhaps this is the dynamic occurring here?

Also, my wife accrued significant student loans whereas I entered our marriage debt free. And like you, the blame can be placed largely on her parents. I actually heard her dad and mom say they would pay for all of school. They paid for half. We were stuck with the rest.

The best gift you can give your wife is to wipe this slate clean. Don't bring up past history. Just slam those payments and move on with a great life. It won't accomplish anything to ever talk about it - except create resentment.

That dynamic sounds familiar. She says I can be confrontational and I too have learned to calm it down, that I don't need to fix every problem she's bringing up, and that sometimes she just wants to vent. It's taking time to get used to it but it's slowly happening. And the same thing from her, she thinks there's something to be read within what I say when I don't hide anything.

Her mom and dad situation was in some ways better in other ways worse. I don't think her parents ever offered to pay for it all (or any for that matter) so she was never under any delusions or false security about that. Where I have the problem is mostly with her mother who decided to claim her as a dependent for the tax benefits but never turned around to use that money to help her, which is what I think it's for. I wasn't around to advocate for her at the time in that regard and nobody was letting her in on what all this debt actually means. Had I been around I would have been trying to help her figure these things out sooner and you can bet your ass I would have been having a little talk with her mother and her CPA. A woman living on her own in college paying for everything and holding a job to take care of herself is nobody's dependent. If you all want to read the resentment/adversarial tone from me in this thread, there it is.

Anywho, I agree about wiping the slate clean. We still make the payments, but this opportunity rang of things I thought we both wanted and the pay would have just helped speed things along.
I've also just let the whole topic go because I don't want her to resent the idea of moving because of this when it comes up again in the future.

That last bit in bold: that is the topic to discuss. What she wants and expected timeline. Maybe she's never really thought about it before. Offer for her to think about it for a couple weeks. Give her time to process.

[Ellsie Equanimity]

Probably number one is, logic can't face emotion (and isn't a bitch that logic never wins?).

This is not true and sets up unnecessary adversarialness. Logic and emotion are not enemies. They are meant to work together. People may tend toward one or the other - but neither is better or worse and leaning heavily into one and not understanding the other actually shows some weakness in what you tend toward. Good logic takes into account emotion, just as emotions wielded well don't discount logic. To truly be good at them you have to be able to take into account and work with both. Life contains both, and quite frankly I don't think you would want a life devoid of either.

Try not to think of it as logic vs emotion in a win-lose scenario, but rather logic and emotion working together to get to what is best for the whole picture.

[COlady]

I grew up just outside of Casper so feel free to ask me any questions you would like! Casper recently made the nations worst winter weather list.  It is brutally cold and nasty in Casper in the winter.  When I graduated from UW 10 years ago I moved to the Denver area and never looked back. My husband and I LOVE Denver....but it is getting pretty darn expensive! What kind of engineering job are you looking at if you feel comfortable sharing?

When it comes to raising kids Casper is a great place to do it.  I have 6 month old twins and I'm dreading having them in school in the Denver area.  My graduation class was around 150 kids and I was with all of them from preschool through 12th grade.  All our parents knew each other, etc.  I think the area is really safe and a great place to raise children.

[Guitarist]

I grew up just outside of Casper so feel free to ask me any questions you would like! Casper recently made the nations worst winter weather list.  It is brutally cold and nasty in Casper in the winter.  When I graduated from UW 10 years ago I moved to the Denver area and never looked back. My husband and I LOVE Denver....but it is getting pretty darn expensive! What kind of engineering job are you looking at if you feel comfortable sharing?

When it comes to raising kids Casper is a great place to do it.  I have 6 month old twins and I'm dreading having them in school in the Denver area.  My graduation class was around 150 kids and I was with all of them from preschool through 12th grade.  All our parents knew each other, etc.  I think the area is really safe and a great place to raise children.

Colorado is great, I just don't think the cities I would choose would have the jobs in place to sustain us. Denver is too big and expensive. Obviously, there are other options. I saw a possible opportunity in Loveland but I hadn't really researched it all that much so I'm not sure if it is a "good" city or even a low(er) COL area. Yeah, I heard about the winters, especially the wind, I would imagine it could get old pretty fast.
I am an electrical engineer, right now I am actually a project manager. The job I was looking at was a PM manager position for the Bureau of Reclamation.

I've mentioned before, my top choice would have been Montana. I understand she doesn't like the distance and to be fair, there seems to be a higher percentage of kids I notice there with no direction compared to other places. Most of that is parenting which we could handle but it becomes harder when there are more negatives than positives with their peers. Of course, maybe the issue is most of the people I know who grew up in Montana did so around the Flathead Lake area. Maybe those in cities like Missoula are more normal.

[COlady]

I grew up just outside of Casper so feel free to ask me any questions you would like! Casper recently made the nations worst winter weather list.  It is brutally cold and nasty in Casper in the winter.  When I graduated from UW 10 years ago I moved to the Denver area and never looked back. My husband and I LOVE Denver....but it is getting pretty darn expensive! What kind of engineering job are you looking at if you feel comfortable sharing?

When it comes to raising kids Casper is a great place to do it.  I have 6 month old twins and I'm dreading having them in school in the Denver area.  My graduation class was around 150 kids and I was with all of them from preschool through 12th grade.  All our parents knew each other, etc.  I think the area is really safe and a great place to raise children.

Colorado is great, I just don't think the cities I would choose would have the jobs in place to sustain us. Denver is too big and expensive. Obviously, there are other options. I saw a possible opportunity in Loveland but I hadn't really researched it all that much so I'm not sure if it is a "good" city or even a low(er) COL area. Yeah, I heard about the winters, especially the wind, I would imagine it could get old pretty fast.
I am an electrical engineer, right now I am actually a project manager. The job I was looking at was a PM manager position for the Bureau of Reclamation.

I've mentioned before, my top choice would have been Montana. I understand she doesn't like the distance and to be fair, there seems to be a higher percentage of kids I notice there with no direction compared to other places. Most of that is parenting which we could handle but it becomes harder when there are more negatives than positives with their peers. Of course, maybe the issue is most of the people I know who grew up in Montana did so around the Flathead Lake area. Maybe those in cities like Missoula are more normal.

I don't know much about Montana, haven't spent much if any time there. My husband is also an EE. It doesn't sound like the Bureau job is really within the realm of EE if it's in project management.  Are you trying to move away from traditional EE type roles? My dad's neighbor (in Casper) mentioned to me that he knew of many EE jobs in the Casper area. He asked why we don't move to Casper and rather than hating on it I just said because my husband wouldn't be able to find a job and he started listing them off...

[Guitarist]

In several posts you made it clear that the debt is her fault.  But anyway, I just wouldn't phrase it like that to her.  This is a message board so I'm sure you aren't talking to her like that.  Just tell her you want to face those things together as a team like you did and you're fine. 

It's not Wyoming as a whole, I would just rethink the Casper thing.  I've never met anyone who wanted to move to Casper for a better life outside of money reasons, and I certainly wouldn't think the kids would have a better experience there without you seeking out opportunities for them like travel.  The kids may not be as entitled but all the kids there are rancher or oil/coal kids.  Many have no interest in education because they want to end up on the ranch or the oil rig and can be entitled in their own way.  Casper is the same distance from the Grand Tetons as KC is to Mark Twain National Forest, so you won't be upping their national park exposure as much as you'd think. 

Wyoming does have awesome benefits like you said with no state income tax (may change with the coal issues).  But why not look at Laramie or Cheyenne? Both are super close to the Snowy Range and Vedauwoo (I love Vedauwoo).  You can drive 20 minutes from Laramie and camp in the middle of nowhere without seeing anyone for days.  The University of Wyoming is fantastic and have amazing goals for future academic opportunities for students.  Cody, Sheridan, even Gillette would be better options in my opinion. Just giving my two cents as someone raised in Wyoming, who has left but still loves it there.  Feel free to message me if you want to ask more.

I don't and it's not a fault thing, just a fact. She accrued it in college.
I figured something coming along to help get that monkey off our back would have appealed to her.

I see that it is still far from the "big" national parks, but Bighorn National Forest is about an hour and half away. That could be a day trip of hiking if we felt like it on a Saturday or Sunday. 4.5 hours to the Mark Twain National Forest is at least a weekend. And then make a comparison of that 4.5 hours and see what more there is around a town like Casper compared to KC. I think within that range, the Missouri/Arkansas border area has some decent areas to visit and a few places hiding away in Iowa. From Casper you have the Tetons, Yellowstone, Bighorn, the Blackhills, Medicine Bow, areas in northern Colorado, Little Bighorn.

Cheyenne and Laramie appeal to me as well, but as I mentioned a little earlier, she had specifically called out Casper as a place she liked and as another poster mentioned, they wouldn't recommend Wyoming but the only other place they'd probably recommend less is Kansas.

[Guitarist]

I grew up just outside of Casper so feel free to ask me any questions you would like! Casper recently made the nations worst winter weather list.  It is brutally cold and nasty in Casper in the winter.  When I graduated from UW 10 years ago I moved to the Denver area and never looked back. My husband and I LOVE Denver....but it is getting pretty darn expensive! What kind of engineering job are you looking at if you feel comfortable sharing?

When it comes to raising kids Casper is a great place to do it.  I have 6 month old twins and I'm dreading having them in school in the Denver area.  My graduation class was around 150 kids and I was with all of them from preschool through 12th grade.  All our parents knew each other, etc.  I think the area is really safe and a great place to raise children.

Colorado is great, I just don't think the cities I would choose would have the jobs in place to sustain us. Denver is too big and expensive. Obviously, there are other options. I saw a possible opportunity in Loveland but I hadn't really researched it all that much so I'm not sure if it is a "good" city or even a low(er) COL area. Yeah, I heard about the winters, especially the wind, I would imagine it could get old pretty fast.
I am an electrical engineer, right now I am actually a project manager. The job I was looking at was a PM manager position for the Bureau of Reclamation.

I've mentioned before, my top choice would have been Montana. I understand she doesn't like the distance and to be fair, there seems to be a higher percentage of kids I notice there with no direction compared to other places. Most of that is parenting which we could handle but it becomes harder when there are more negatives than positives with their peers. Of course, maybe the issue is most of the people I know who grew up in Montana did so around the Flathead Lake area. Maybe those in cities like Missoula are more normal.

I don't know much about Montana, haven't spent much if any time there. My husband is also an EE. It doesn't sound like the Bureau job is really within the realm of EE if it's in project management.  Are you trying to move away from traditional EE type roles? My dad's neighbor (in Casper) mentioned to me that he knew of many EE jobs in the Casper area. He asked why we don't move to Casper and rather than hating on it I just said because my husband wouldn't be able to find a job and he started listing them off...

The degree is EE but I've been doing construction PM'ing/CM'ing for the federal government (different agency) since I graduated, not really EE focused.
I meet the requirements of the job pretty soundly.