Moving to Different Communities For A Change

I’m curious to hear if you’ve ever moved to a different location just because you were bored of your current surroundings and if it worked out for you. Did you end up being happy? What were any surprising challenges you faced? Did you ever rebuild your friend group?

I’ve lived in the same college town for 20 years and I’m ready for a change, but my partner thinks I’m crazy since I have a good job and we have an established community here. He works from home and can live anywhere. I want to live in a more urban area before I’m too old to enjoy it (and honestly get out of the South). But I do have a big friend group here, and I know it can take a few years to build up a community in a new place. Plus, wherever you go, there you are, etc. etc. So did you do it? Give me that sweet, sweet hope of possibility.

I worked for a company that was closing down a long while back, and so I went out interviewing. I did interview locally and get an offer, but my wife and I didn’t have kids at the time, so we thought, what the hell, let’s look for a job in all the different places we’d considered living (I had lived my whole life in Texas at the time, and was ready for change).

The result of all that was our moving to the Boston area, which was about as different (in US terms) from Fort Worth as could be, and which I had literally only ever visited once, for a day. In the end it was the best decision we ever made, we love it here, and are happily retired here, though we may move more north.

As for establishing roots, growing our family shortly after moving here made a HUGE difference. Having kids immediately creates social groups (through various activities), and as a result we made friends in the first five years who are still friends now 24 years later.

Absent kids, I’m less sure…having some kind of community of common interest does help.

Good luck!

I grew up in the SF Bay Area prior to the birth of Silicon Valley. If you have ever been to San Jose, California it’s hard to imagine it used to once be a fertile valley covered with farms and orchards. I grew up in San Jose in the 50s, 60s, and 70s, and saw all of those cherry orchards bulldozed to build houses and commercial buildings. Ironically, I ended up making a good living working for High Tech companies in the 80s, 90s, and 2000s, but by the time I reached 55, I realized I couldn’t live there anymore. The traffic, crowds, noise, pollution, crime, and high cost of living made it unbearable for someone who remembered what it was like 50 years earlier. At the time I was working for a large multinational tech company and had the option to live anywhere I wanted. My wife and I still had family in the Bay Area, but we both needed a change. After a two-year search, we ended up in a small resort town in Northwest Montana. Nothing could be further from the Bay Area culturally, but it was quiet and peaceful. We started doing volunteer work in the community and made many friends. We even bought two horses so we could explore the backcountry. We lived far enough from “town” where we didn’t hear cars driving by or planes overhead. There were moose, bears, and elk in the neighborhood. Moving here could have been a disaster, but we did our homework and investigated dozens of places before deciding on Montana. It’s not for everyone, but it certainly worked out for us.

Both my wife and I were feeling stuck in a rut. I had just gone through cancer treatment and she had a rough time watching me wither. We were both just done with our jobs at the time, and weren’t getting anywhere with our goals of owning a home and starting a family. This was in Silicon Valley, so we were also getting a little crowded. My long commute got longer when I moved to an apartment farther away and the store location also moved - I was driving from Campbell to Redwood City and back every day.

So, about 7 years ago we started doing research on where we should go. We narrowed in on Washington, being on the west coast and being “neutral,” not known to either of us (I’m from Oregon, she had been in the Santa Clara Valley her whole life). I spent a long weekend driving around Seattle suburbs. We chose the semi-rural Kitsap County across Puget Sound from the city.

It meant leaving family, but we were a little tired of them anyway. No real friends to speak of. We were going to do job searching either way. It worked out. I got out of the retail grind, we have a house and a small apartment building, and somehow wound up with an amazing 4-year-old son.

Even if it hadn’t been a big positive, I’d still do it over again. Even spectacular failure would have been more interesting than our old lives of slowly dying of stasis.

We moved from Santa Barbara to Bend a bit over a year and a half ago. Not so much that we were bored with where we were, but we didn’t want to live in one spot our entire lives, and after starting a family and considering what we wanted out of life, we decided to make a change.

We love it here, although we do miss our friends back in SB and I certainly haven’t rebuilt my friend group yet (I blame the pandemic for that at least partly, since it’s harder to meet people when lots of sorts of events where you might meet them aren’t happening, and even when you did we were all a bit skittish about things). My wife has done better on that front.

But that’s the only negative. Everything else has been great.

What?!?

How exactly would you be too old to enjoy cool little ethnic restaurants? Parks? Music? Theater? Street performers? Skee-Ball? Boutiques? Funky bookstores? Huge record shops? Hole-In-The-Wall bars? Oh, and food trucks!

(The only thing that makes sense is that you’re thinking of those clubs that cater to shallow douchebags who are showing off and going deaf… they’re too young, too immature for a more urban area.)

I’m pushin’ 70, and nothing I like better than to head out and just experience the city. One night, I found a little emañada café with live music, a great bartender, and twenty vintage pinball machines.

My wife and I probably will after we retire. We love where we live, but the climate (we get a ridiculous amount of snow) makes it dangerous. If you need an ambulance after a storm, you might be out of luck. Not to mention that it would take about a half hour to get here on a GOOD day.

It’s going to be hard on me. This is the first and only house I’ve ever bought. I’ve put a shit ton of work into too.

I’m a Florida native, and in 2016 relocated to Colorado. As a lawyer, I had to get licensed and than find a job (long story short: I had to pass the bar exam again), which took about a year, but after that I got a great job.

Due to a series of circumstances, I’m now back in Florida, but I miss Colorado near daily. I loved the climate and culture, and Florida pisses me off.

So, I’m one who votes for going for it, although I’d caution to have several months of savings to handle the transition. Even if you have a job or some other income stream lined up, the stress of getting settled in can certainly be exacerbated by unexpected expenses.

I have a 12-month emergency fund saved up, so I feel okay about this part. I definitely have had friends in my younger days that moved without any savings whatsoever, and while I think they enjoyed the thrill of the unknown, I’m way too risk-averse to do that. (Which is why I’m posting about it on a message board instead of just doing it, haha.)

And @digs I get the message! It sounds great. But my total transformation into a swamp crone probably requires me moving back into the middle of nowhere eventually.

@Maserschmidt Boston is on my list! It’s closer to my partner’s family and I want to know what real winter feels like.

And @Moriarty, as someone who used to live in Florida, I hope you get to escape again.

Thanks everyone for your stories!! It’s good to know that lots of people do this and end up in a happy place.

Maybe the OP believes that it would be too much of an adjustment moving to a completely new city later in life where they don’t know anyone and have no connections? Cities can also be very expensive if you are on a fixed income.

Also, what the hell is a “huge record shop”? :smiley:

Bah! Real winter is for wimps! Come to South Texas and you can have real winter with no electricity, contaminated water, and a city that has no capability for dealing with snow. Those are the test of a person’s mettle.

My first husband and I moved to Denver in 1971 (‘cause it seemed like the thing to do…) and after we arrived, found an apartment and paid the deposit/rent, we had $13.00 left to our names in the whole world. No savings, no backup, no nuttin’. I think I mentioned in another thread that our level of cluelessness combined with optimism was off the charts.

Re the thread topic: I was an Air Force brat so moving has no charm for me. I like being in a place where I (now) have decades of history. Good weather, interesting geography-- they don’t spell home to me. History does, even if the weather sucks and the geography is boring.

But I’m loving reading other people’s stories and aspirations. Carry on.

“Valley of the Heart’s Delight” it used to be. It was the center for canned fruit cocktail because everything but the pineapple easily grew there, and they were close enough to saltwater they could import that.

You’re correct DesertDog. I worked at a local cannery when I was in high school. It was back-breaking work, but paid better than any other job I could get. Underneath all of that asphalt is extremely fertile soil, much like parts of Southern California.

I was lucky to have been living there during the rise of Silicon Valley, but it’s a shame that all of those orchards had to be sacrificed and are lost forever.

It’s a good idea to do a lot of research before leaving for greener pastures not related to job requirements, before taking the plunge.

The Wall St. Journal recently had an article on retirees who moved to what they thought would be an ideal new environment and spent lots of money for their “forever” home, only it wasn’t forever…

“…some experts urge buyers to learn as much as they can about a new location before shelling out for a home. “It’s OK to take a couple of years to explore other areas and don’t jump in immediately,” says Mike Leverty, a financial adviser in Hudson, Wis. He advises his clients to rent in the area where they think they want to live, even if it is only part time. “You really have to view it as a second home and not a vacation,” he says. “Factor in amenities like shopping and healthcare—things you wouldn’t think about if you just vacationed there for a couple of weeks.””…

"The Browns began their forever-home quest in 2011, when they sold a bed-and-breakfast in Annapolis, Md., that Mrs. Brown had operated since 1997…
The Browns found their first forever home in Southport, N.C., near the Intracoastal Waterway. They paid about $200,000 for land and another $400,000 to build “the nicest place we have ever lived in,” Mr. Brown says. Still, the nearest big city was Wilmington, N.C., over a half-hour away. “We loved the area and our home there, but it was isolated,” Mr. Brown says. “We were accustomed to good restaurants and the theater, and the like.”

“While living in Southport, the Browns traveled west to Asheville, N.C., for a tennis tournament. Driving around, they realized Asheville offered the best of both worlds—the trappings of city life and the outdoor activities in the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains. So, they sold their Southport home for $480,000 in 2016.”

“Where we got clobbered was the purchase price of the lot,” Mr. Brown says, which the couple had purchased right before the recession of 2007-09. “When we left, the value of the lot had fallen about 50%.”

"The couple spent about $470,000 to build their second forever home, situated on the side of a mountain about 15 minutes from downtown Asheville. To stay busy, both Browns took part-time jobs, volunteered and pursued their hobbies. “But despite being a nice area, we had a tough time breaking into the social arena,” Mr. Brown says. “I didn’t click with the different types of groups. I thought, ‘Maybe this isn’t the place for us.’ ”

“That realization led to their third—and current—forever home. In 2019, the Browns sold their house in Asheville for about $570,000 and moved to the Villages, a sprawling 55-and-older community in central Florida.”

Article may be paywalled:

What were these people thinking? First they decide that country living and relative isolation is just the thing, then eventually wind up in the Villages, an ultra-regimented, planned activity retirement community in Florida (subject of an ultra-depressing documentary lampooning things like a precision golf cart drill team. With aged cheerleaders.