Lurker w/ a question...

[swagger]

So, I've lived in Texas all my life (one city/suburban area to be exact). Lately I've been really depressed and unhappy with life. I like my job, but I hate the commute. I'm tired of family drama and have been working every major/minor holiday to avoid my mother/grandmother.

I really want to pack up and move across the country to start over. How the hell do I figure this out? There are three states that my H and I can agree on, but no idea how to choose. We don't have kids (yet) and don't own a home.

I have to stay at my current job until October due to a contract I signed when I started my internship, so we have some time to save/plan.

I don't know what to do.

[apelila]

I was born and raised in the same small-ish town in Florida, and packed up and moved halfway across the country by myself five years ago. I realized I didn't want to live and die in the same place without experiencing anywhere else.

I also had a few choices, and all of them were states that either had friends or family, since I didn't want to move someplace where I knew NO ONE. Then I looked at cost of living and whether or not there was a state income tax. Then I considered how easy/difficult it would be to find a job in my field.

I do not regret leaving at all, and I met my husband soon after!
Sometimes a change of scenery is a really good thing, good luck!

[gt7301b]

I'd start applying for jobs and see where you get a job. Make a short list of cities and start applying in those cities.

[mskitkat]

Pick where you would like to move and start applying for jobs. I know it sounds scary, but it is really that easy. I did it, and it was the best decision I could possibly make.

[ellipses84]

I had lived in lots of places as a kid, but DH and I had separately both wanted to live in a specific city for a long time. He hated living in the state where my family is, so we decided to move and planned for a year before we did it.

The cons- We get a lot of family guilt trips for moving away, we spend a lot of our vacation time visiting family (DH's is elsewhere too) and we spend a lot on travel, it is hard not to have that support network now that we have kids, and it can be hard to make new, good friends as an adult after college.

The pros: We absolutely love living here and have never seriously considered moving back, the weather is better, it is nice to be removed from family drama, it's a vacation destination so tons of family and friends visits us, I see my family about half as much as I did when I lived an hour away, everyone said the traffic was worse, but it is actually better.

It is ultimately better for DH's career. The economy was good when we moved so we had no problem finding jobs and have been employed the whole time, but DH has been underpaid/underemployed. That probably would have been the case anywhere. It was HCOL to HCOL so that wasn't really an issue for us, but I know a lot of people who moved here who have had COL and state tax sticker shock, and some have moved back home because of it. Do your research on pay scale before you accept a job offer!

To decide on a city, I would ask about your top choices here to get info from people who live there. Then visit your top choice with the mindset of moving there and decide if you really love it. I do recommend being 1 plane flight or an easy route away from family, because travel time and paying for it suck!

[swagger]

I'd really like to move to Colorado or the Portland / Seattle area. My husband would like Seattle, but is open to Portland or Colorado. So really, we don't know. We are planning a road trip to Colorado to check out locations, but how much can you really see in a week?