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 -
I'll go first.
Personal Preferences :
My fun picks:
As an American, the availability and affordability (let's just ignore the repair and maintenance for now....) of these castles is something I would never have guessed at.
Some boring (“realistic”) cities that are currently on my list that I plan to explore:
These areas provide affordable homes near to a reasonably large city combined with proximity to numerous outdoor recreation options.
Your 3 boring picks are the top 3 picks for many in your demographic and beyond. They are already "discovered" so to speak, but there are no more secrets in this day and age, so that will be the case for any desirable place to live. They will have all the usual city issues and aren't in the hidden gem "keep Austin weird" phase or "where is Boise?"
All three of those cities are among the fastest growing in the country and have been for many years, if you want a house in an area with access to the amenities of city and the outdoor rec scene, you'll be paying a lot more than the cost of those castles. Also, any popular outdoor areas within 3 hours of the city are always swamped on any nice day, same goes for restaurants, grocery stores at peak times etc... there are simply a shit ton of people, and more are coming every year.
Your fun options are fun and cheap partially because they are not in the USA. How do you feel about becoming fluent in a foreign language? You say you don't have experience now, getting fluent is hard, at least for me, it would help if I lived there and had to do it every day, as I get better on long trips. If you want to really put down roots and spend 25 years somewhere it will be much more pleasant if you can really speak the local language well.
Since you're considering Boise, that means you're not afraid of winter, which opens up a lot more options for you. There are a lot of charming NE towns and cities that are close to the White Mountains, Lakes, AND the ocean. You don't get that combo too many places. I can't speak to Minnesota or the midwest at all since I've never spent any real time there. Montana is awesome, but again, not undiscovered, although still very sparsely populated. Colorado, maybe 20 years ago...Have to set out the night before so you can wait in traffic for 8 hours if you want to ski after a powder dump.
I mean I would love to live in the French countryside, I can speak some French but I'm certainly not fluent, and I don't know if I ever will be. Homes are cheap there and it is absolutely great, I recently stayed in a small town South of Normandy and it had just enough of a tourism industry by virtue of being on the "apple trail" of all things, that there were a good number of English speaking folks there. I tried to explain what apple picking was and they looked at me like I had 2 heads haha, "So you are stealing this farmer's apples?"..."No no, we pay to pick them?".... "Why would you pay to pick someone's apples?"
Backwater France isn't the same as backwater USA, the whole area has been cultivated for thousands of years, the scale is much smaller as well, you can easily live in the best of the countryside and go into the city any time with a very short car ride, they just don't see distance the same way we do. So yeah, the sticks of France would be my choice. They also have strong governance and straightforward property laws. Buttt.....It would get a bit boring, especially if you're both already working from home the whole time. Really you need 2 houses, one in the states and one in the French countryside.
Language barriers
A language barrier is insanely difficult to overcome. I didn't want to spend too much on this one in my opening post and hoped that my caveat was sufficient. But let's do it now.
For context, we have each attempted to learn several languages. My partner is a heritage speaker of another language and significantly beyond fluent. She is also fluent (depending on definition) in another language. I had the typical American school experience of attending years of classes only to be barely conversational in the language and am currently in the process of learning a separate new language .
My belief is that it is possible for a sufficiently smart person to get fluent within a few years IF they are willing to put in the time. Immersion is one hack to force you to put in the effort. I do not believe most people will ever reach a native speaker level of proficiency even after living in a country for decades. I do not expect us to be the exception. Therefore, living in a non-English speaking location means accepting that you will always be an outsider to some degree - full assimilation is not possible. This is not a dealbreaker for us, however, and we are at least be open to living in a foreign country knowing that our children will be able to assimilate in a way we never could.
@AhhhTheFrench, I have to say that your thinking aligns alarmingly close to my own on just about everything.
Regarding the "already discovered" aspect. While I know that this is almost exclusively thought of as a negative in popular attitudes, I think it may actually be more of a positive. (To the people living in an area who like the culture/vibe it had: you have my condolences. Your beloved town will never be the same). A discovered city means that the population is selected for a few aspects that I think are very positive:
For the sake of completeness I'll include one big negative: people who were willing to uproot their lives to move to a new location are also much more likely to do the same thing again and leave. Obviously some of the recent additions to the city are going to be trend chasers who plan on regular relocation. If my goal was property value growth this would concern me a lot. To assess the likelihood of someone leaving I think it's important to distinguish the recent immigrants into two classes: those who moved to the town because it was "hot" and those who moved to the town because the town itself had some core aspect that they felt aligned with (apart from being trending). Of the three cities I listed, I think Austin has more of the former. I believe this also explains why Austin has had more of a recent collapse than the others.
re: Colorado (Denver in particular). I could not agree more. It really is amazing that the entire town just spends every weekend sitting in traffic in the passes. There are some political currents in Colorado that also concern me. I would love to live in the Colorado of the 90s. But if I ask myself honestly, "Would you like to live in the Colorado of 2045?" I think the answer is no.
While I lived in Boston for a few years and have spent at least a few days in each of the NE states, I have never really considered living there. Do you have a particular spot you think would be worth us checking out?
The backwater/castle living idea I think is one of those romantic ideas that I love to love. The idea of spending my days laboring to restore some 500 year old piece of history to it's former glory really pulls at the heartstrings. If I'm being honest I think it's also better as a dream - I'll continue to tell myself I don't want to sully it by burdening it with the shackles of reality.
Well, I'm totally biased but Pittsburgh has most of the pros of the trendy cities and few of the cons. It's become a semi-trendy place to want to live if you believe Reddit, but the population isn't exactly exploding (the city population is holding steady and Allegheny County is actually losing population). It's also about double the size of Salt Lake and triple the size of Boise, and while it's similar in size to Austin, it's an older, more established city. What this means is that it has more big-city institutions than you'll find in any of those places and more of a big city feel rather than overgrown suburb (e.g. I don't think the Austin Symphony is playing for the pope any time soon).
As much as locals complain about the recent housing price increases, it's still nothing compared to the trendy cities. 500k gets you a four bedroom house in a highly desirable suburb with excellent schools. If you're paying more than that you're in a McMansion (or a mansion). And that's not just in a desirable neighborhood with good schools; that's in the most desirable area with the best schools. If you're satisfied with the former you're going to pay a lot less.
As an avid outdoorsman, the outdoor recreation is great. No, it's not as spectacular as certain areas out West, but an hour drive gets you pretty far out there and only the popular easy hikes are swamped. For example, Ohiopyle State Park is a popular area andit can be hard to find parking in town on a summer weekend. But as soon as you get away from town it's practically deserted even at the busiest times. A few years ago I was there Sunday of Memorial Day weekend up on the mountain and I saw a total of five other people, three of whom I knew. And the city is pretty hilly, with lots of wooded areas, so there's perfectly decent hiking without driving anywhere depending on where you live, though places in the city itself are going to be more crowded. The lack of spectacular views is only really a concern, though, if you're focused on "payoff hikes" that involve views. There are plenty of waterfalls, and the forests themselves are top-notch.
Getting beyond hiking and views, though, the mountains are first-class. I've mountain biked in several of the big name destinations across the country (Pisgah, the Rockies, the Western Slope, etc.), and the mountain biking in the Laurels is as good as it gets. I'll admit the skiing isn't exactly Colorado, but at least we have skiing. The real secret, though, is the whitewater. SWPA and Northern WV probably have the best whitewater anywhere in the world, and certainly the best whitewater a reasonable day trip from a major city. A lot of the Western states have more mileage, but most of it's only runnable during spring snowmelt. Here, we get enough rain that even the small stuff is runnable a few days after a heavy rain, and we have everything from Class II family floats to sketchy-as-hell steep creeks.
Pittsburgh is unique in that it's a rust belt city that people actually want to move to. The declining population of the region is largely a function of the exodus in the 90s, during which an entire generation moved away. Their parents stayed, and now that generation is dying off at a faster rate than new arrivals can make up for. That being said, the declining population isn't the same as places like Cleveland or Detroit that look like bombed out shells of their former selves. There are a few ghetto areas like that, but most of the city population's decline is more due to declining household size than outright abandonment. At some point I'd like to do a survey of the region on here to evaluate its potential on a granular level, but I've got the music thing to do for now. But I'm actually dead serious when I think you should move here, because it's actually realistic and makes more financial sense than trying to pursue some pipe dream of living internationally or moving to some overly trendy city that's going to run into problems as a result of the population crush.
Great comment. I never considered Pittsburgh as a place people choose to move to - I'm obviously ignorant but the impression among myself and peers is that it's a steel city that is dying as US manufacturing has declined (like Detroit or Cleveland).
I'll spend some time doing some research to fill in what is clearly a gap in my knowledge, thanks for the rec!
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