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Being  1mo ago (text post)   1728 thread views

The Motte Picks Where I Spend the Rest of My Life

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:

  1. 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
  2. Long Term, Stable Couple
    • All preferences are shared between both of us
    • Do not need to consider relationship prospects of destination
    • Monogamous
    • Straight
  3. Young (~30) years old
  4. 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)
  5. $250k household income
    • Assume standard income growth for competitive tech field: +5-10% real growth per year.
  6. 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.

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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.

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

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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