Alternative Title: Where would you live if you had only minimal constraints?
While I am very much soliciting genuine requests and hope to follow through on the post title, I hope this prompt will also be a fun one.
Many of us fantasize about living abroad or starting over. But there is always an excuse. Some factor tying us down or preventing us from making the lunge: a job, a partner, a sick relative. I have found myself with these excuses recently plucked away.
Since any (good) recommendation should be tailored to the recipient, here are the aforementioned minimal constraints:
- American citizen. Native English speaker.
- Not restricted to English speaking locations, but the difficulties of learning a language and assimilating should be considered
- For simplicity and op-sec, assume fluency in other languages can be rounded down to 0
- Long Term, Stable Couple
- All preferences are shared between both of us
- Do not need to consider relationship prospects of destination
- Monogamous
- Straight
- Young (~30) years old
- No children yet. Will have first (of several) children within next 3 years.
- No adult dependents (such as sick family members that need to be cared for)
- $250k household income
- Assume standard income growth for competitive tech field: +5-10% real growth per year.
- Fully Remote Work
- This is the big one that opens up the world
- Assume remote work will remain viable (fair assumption given our fields)
I'm a believer in the idea that constraints can paradoxically increase creativity, but if you have a dream destination that is incompatible with these constraints don't let me stop you from sharing.
The Motte has an eclectic mix of users and I specifically want to know YOUR ideal destination, NOT what you think someone like us would want. The standard lists and rankings of "best places to live" are either bizarre (they overweight metrics that don't matter to most) or end up just being too blank - effectively just a list of major cities.
I'm hoping to discover some unusual preferences. Maybe your dream is a few hundred acres of farmland in a rural spot. Maybe it's something incredibly niche like needing to be walking distance from the Louvre or being able to view the Khumbu at sunrise from your porch. Now is the time to sell me the rest of us on your dream :).
We will be visiting a number of options this summer and would love to add some additional locations to either this trip or the next. The goal is to move to this location early 2025.
Will include some of the options I've been toying with as a comment.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Have you considered the Alaskan wilderness?
Obviously it's not the most appealing place, but as @George_E_Hale says, you shouldn't just be thinking about yourself.
Choosing where your children grow up is a big influence on their development, so it's worth considering all options.
Kids are resilient, and if they make it to adulthood, the hardship will make them infinitely attractive and set them up for a good life.
Its never too young for The Hock. Set them up for their first solo camping trip by the age of 5 and they'll be wrestling bears by 10.
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Clearly this is satire, but just on the off chance anyone reading thinks this kind of trial by fire is a good idea (now that I know there is a vocal rDrama contingent here, all bets are off). A childhood filled with hardship probably ups their ACEs (adverse childhood experiences) score quite a bit, which is a really good predictor of problems later on down the line in life. Kids are sometimes resilient, the adults they turn into aren't always, especially those with high ACEs numbers .
ACE numbers, to my knowledge, are almost entirely about interpersonal experiences (Did anyone in your family go to prison? is an exception but not by much) and have little to do with the physical environment of the child. A kid could be raised in BFE and have a non significant ACE score. If the parents neglect, slap, insult, etc. that's going to show up in the ACE score.
Take the test via NPR
Being raised by someone that moves to the Alaskan wilderness to prioritize some kind of crucible for you and hopes you just might make it to adulthood if you're lucky, to then enjoy "infinite attraction" from the opposite sex from your "hardship"--- probably would give yah about 4 of those to start, perhaps culminating in Prison for a family member depending on how many of their children survive.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=BFC5PkSdFvk
I used to run a high-adventure program for the Boy Scouts, and whether or not some sourt of "Trial by fire" wilderness experience would be considered abuse would depend on the nature of the experience. There's a big difference between pushing a kid's limits and actively abusing them. If I take a kid mountain biking and he's apprehensive about riding a certain line, I'll encourage him to ride it if I think it's within his ability based on my observation of him. If I don't think he can ride it and that it's going to end in a crash I'll tell him to walk it. If he's clearly freaking out at the prospect of riding it, I'll tell him to walk it. If it's a difficult line I'll probably won't even pressure the kid into riding even if I think he can ride it; I'll just tell everyone they can walk it if they'd like. It gets more difficult when, say, you take the kid on a long bike trip with limited or no opportunity to bail. In that case it's more a question of getting them motivated enough to keep pedaling rather than putting them in a situation that could lead to injury, and making sure they have enough snacks, water, etc. so that an acute event isn't going to happen. I mean, I always have outs in case of emergency, but a kid being tired isn't an emergency unless they're obviously incapable of continuing. Usually I just slow down the pace and take more frequent breaks to keep them moving, even if it ultimately takes longer. When they complain, I just ask what they expect me to do about it, and that usually shuts them up, especially when I tell them that an evac means an ambulance ride and a trip to the hospital that will likely end their time in the program.
The key is that the adversity be time-limited, controlled, and intended to develop skills and build confidence. Telling kids who are old enough that they'll be cooking dinner one night a week so they can learn the skills necessary to be adults is a lot different than just not feeding the kids. Making sure your kids get early exposure to outdoor adventure in the hopes that it will maintain fitness and social relationships while building a lifetime hobby is different than putting the kid in situations he's clearly uncomfortable with (and that come with high risk of injury) and regularly subjecting them to death marches in the woods. Some kids are just whiners who want to stay inside and play video games all day and not do anything that's going to make them mildly short of breath, and I never had any problem trying to toughen those kids up over their complaints. But it's important that you know where the line is, and that you make sure you never get anywhere near it. If you're moving to the Alaskan wilderness because you like the outdoors and want your kids to learn self-sufficiency, I don't think that's too much of a problem, as long as you understand the limits I outlined above. I certainly wouldn't put it anywhere near the level of the kind of stuff that's on the ACE quiz.
Agreed. I think the best criteria for determining when a challenge will cause growth or trauma is the likelihood of success. If you force a child to repeatedly endure a ritual they have 0 chance of succeeding at, that is abuse.
Overcoming a challenge provides a sense of accomplishment that has no substitute - for children and adults alike. Kids (over the age of 10 at least) can assess difficulty well enough to know whether the challenge was real or not.
Of course in order for a challenge to be real enough to provide that positivity there has to be a real chance of failure too. But then, learning to deal with failure is it's own sort of reward. It's a tough calibration and has to be adapted to the individual child as well.
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You may have me confused with @SkookumTree, may he live long, and prosper.
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Am I looking at the same quiz? Looks to me that a super harsh upbringing "trial by fire" by loving parents would still result in a 0/10 on those questions.
I don't think you can be the type of person to move across the world to "trial by fire" your kids in the Alaskan outback and also not have a lot of problems that would lead to a pretty high aces score. I would also suspect that most wives wouldn't be into that, divorce is an extra point as well.
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