Did you regret moving for a job?

[audry80]

My H has a potential job opportunity that would move us across the US from SF Bay Area to NYC. It’s an amazing opportunity but moving was not really something on our radar or life plan.

I would love to hear from others who have moved for a job.

Thank you.

[sdlaura]

DH and I moved cross-country for jobs. He found one first in the San Diego area, then I did as well. I had never been here before my job interview here, and now we’ve been here 16+ years and are very settled. But now, the prospect of moving even 20 miles away and having to reestablish schools, doctors, activities, and our ‘village’ sounds super daunting. I think I’d only move now if I didn’t have kids at home, or if it was back to where our extended families live on the east coast.

[audry80]

We don’t have kids. Our families are mostly in Nor Cal but about a 2 Hour drive.

[mokes]

We moved 4 times for DH’s job and I don’t regret it at all. We’re more settled now but I’m really happy we did it — it really expanded our horizons and we traveled a bunch. Do it!

That’s not to say it’s not hard — it is. I worked from home and it was super hard to make friends without an in-person job/kids/something that naturally connects you to people. But I’d still do it again.

I’m not moving again though unless it’s international. ☺️

[underwaterrhymes]

We’ve moved for a job many times and have never regretted it. We’ve lived in multiple states and a couple countries as a result and I wouldn’t change a thing.

@@
However, with the exception of one of those moves, they were all before kids and the last one was when our older kid was just two. It would be a lot more challenging to make that decision now that our kids are older.

Without kids, I would do it again in a heartbeat.

[lilypad1126]

We’ve moved multiple times for my job. And while I’ve liked some locations better than others, I’ve never regretted it. We’ve had so many great experiences that we otherwise wouldn’t have had. We don’t have kids, which made it easier.

We’re now contemplating what I think will be our last move, to move closer to my aging parents and closer to H’s hometown. I’m currently hesitant about this, but I’m sure it will be fine once we make the decision and just do it.

[Jalapeñomel]

Nope!

We moved to Peru, and loved it.

We moved to NYC, and we love it.

[wanderingback]

No, not at all. But I always moved to a place I wanted to live. At this point I love where we live and moving for a job doesn’t seem realistic due to the work that I do.

[RockNVoll]

I've moved the opposite way (Boston to SF) and then back again, as well as to London before returning again to the Boston area. However, each time was because those were cities I wanted to be in and I found or created jobs for myself as opposed to a job moving me there. Did not regret any of the moves and suspect we'll move again before all is said and done.

NY and SF are very different cities. Have you spent any significant time visiting NY? Would you be looking for a new job as well? Do you have any friends in the area (it's so much harder to make new friends the older you get)?

[rhian]

Nope! What are your concerns about moving specifically for a job? I think the hardest thing has been that most of our social circle is my colleagues, but that doesn't really bother me.

[plutosmoon]

I moved from Atlanta to rural Western MA for work about 10 years ago, overall it was a good choice. DD was 2 and I was able to get her the right early education opportunities. On occasion, I miss the services of a more urban area, but my daughter and I have thrived here and are very happy. I've moved a lot of times over the years, so my view is take the chance, if you don't like it you can always move back, or to a new location.

[audry80]

Oct 11, 2024 19:34:04 GMT -5 RockNVoll said:

I've moved the opposite way (Boston to SF) and then back again, as well as to London before returning again to the Boston area. However, each time was because those were cities I wanted to be in and I found or created jobs for myself as opposed to a job moving me there. Did not regret any of the moves and suspect we'll move again before all is said and done.

NY and SF are very different cities. Have you spent any significant time visiting NY? Would you be looking for a new job as well? Do you have any friends in the area (it's so much harder to make new friends the older you get)?

I have been to NYC 3 times for fun and about 6 times for work trips and I absolutely love it. My H has been for fun the same amount of times and for work a handful of times. I have always wanted to move there and he never was enthusiastic as I was so it’s ironic it’s a job for him that brings us this opportunity.

I’m pretty sure I would be able to keep my job, we have an office in NYC and would actually benefit my work since I manage a European team so the EST hours would be great.

I have a couple of old coworkers but worry about my husband. He recently got a great group of friends through golf and leaving them would be hard.

We do have a dog so that is our biggest worry about the move. Even though he hates his yard and makes us take him on walks 🤣

[wildrice]

I have moved because of a job twice and both were great places to live. I did not regret it and especially this last move has been a really good fit for us but we likely never would have even considered this area if not for career related reasons.

That said it would have to be somewhere really amazing or some other major exciting reason to get me to move again. Moving was exciting but it was also HARD and it had felt like it has taken years to regain my footing socially. In many ways I feel like I never will - making new friends at our age is just different than being young (or younger) together when you spent all that time together. I don't want to start over again

however NYC is one of the few places exciting enough that I might consider it!

[sdlaura]

audry80 I was in NYC for work last month on a gorgeous day and went for a run along the high line and Hudson River and thought ‘if I didn’t have kids/when I don’t have kids at home, it would be fun to live here!’

[sadie]

We moved from the East Coast to the Midwest a while ago for my husband's work. Our intention was to spend a few years out here, then move back home. 11 years later, we've settled here. It is getting harder as our parents age, but we are managing. Once we got our bearings being away from everyone, we've had a very positive experience rooting ourselves here. The job was very good to us and opened a lot of doors.

[heygrey]

We did a long haul move from eastern Canada to British Columbia for H’s job. He left that job within 3 years and we’re approaching our 15 year anniversary of living here. We kept the mindset that nothing is permanent, we could move back if we hated it, but it was fantastic for us. I thought we would move around more, but nothing has enticed us away from here yet.

I love the idea of moving and experiencing someplace new. As long as it’s a place I think I would enjoy living and it wouldn’t set us back financially I am 100% about the adventure.

[wanderingback]

As far as friends go- we moved here in 2019. Granted we did have a couple of friends here already, more specifically my partner did and I have 2 cousins here. The pandemic obviously put a damper on things but we have built a great community here. Even though people often have negative things to say about people being rude here I think building community is prominent here. There are so many things to do that you’re bound to meet people and meet people with similar interests. I just had a brunch for my birthday that my partner planned and we had a list of 10 people that I consider close friends (not including my 2 cousins) that I’ve made since living here.

[al dente]

I'm in a military heavy community, so people that are always moving for jobs lol.
People who don't like it tend to have big families that they feel like they are missing out on a lot not being able to drive 1-2 hours and see family/birthdays/random get togethers. They also are use to that family support esp if there's kids, and that is a big loss moving away.

Do you like the lifestyle of the new area? Weather, things to do? How does housing look? If you have kids do you have money to pay for the support systems needed?

I think it's totally worth it if you go in with the right mindset, and really do your research. I also find it takes 18+ months to start really feeling comfortable and like "home" which in the meantime can feel like you've made a huge mistake. But once it all comes together it's great!

[sequins]

Oct 11, 2024 20:27:45 GMT -5 audry80 said:

Oct 11, 2024 19:34:04 GMT -5 RockNVoll said:

I've moved the opposite way (Boston to SF) and then back again, as well as to London before returning again to the Boston area. However, each time was because those were cities I wanted to be in and I found or created jobs for myself as opposed to a job moving me there. Did not regret any of the moves and suspect we'll move again before all is said and done.

NY and SF are very different cities. Have you spent any significant time visiting NY? Would you be looking for a new job as well? Do you have any friends in the area (it's so much harder to make new friends the older you get)?

I have been to NYC 3 times for fun and about 6 times for work trips and I absolutely love it. My H has been for fun the same amount of times and for work a handful of times. I have always wanted to move there and he never was enthusiastic as I was so it’s ironic it’s a job for him that brings us this opportunity.

I’m pretty sure I would be able to keep my job, we have an office in NYC and would actually benefit my work since I manage a European team so the EST hours would be great.

I have a couple of old coworkers but worry about my husband. He recently got a great group of friends through golf and leaving them would be hard.

We do have a dog so that is our biggest worry about the move. Even though he hates his yard and makes us take him on walks 🤣

This update is makes it a no-brainer. Move, it will be fun!! Have your husband join a couple of golf groups as soon as you get there.

We moved from Cali to MD. We used a semi-private dog friendly airline called JSX. The tickets were expensive so only one of us traveled on it but our girl is old and we didn't want to put her in cargo across the country. It was a smooth experience. Let me know if you have any questions.

[audry80]

Thank you all!! You are making me feel so much better.

JSX doesn’t fly from West to East Coast anymore but I found Bark Air. It’s super pricey but it’s a semi private plane for dogs and an owner and flies from LA to NYC. My dog is old so wouldn’t feel comfortable with him in cargo and too big to fly in the cabin without being a service dog and a service dog is something he is not nor will ever be.

He still has to get the job so so this could go no where but being proactive in our pros and cons list.

[lilac05]

We’ve made three big moves for a job. No regrets.

Every move had its pros and cons. We always made sure that we were making a JOINT decision to move, and made a deal to NEVER use it against the other. “I never wanted to be here/We wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for your stupid job/I only agreed because XYZ” were all 100% off limits after the decision was made. Even in the hard times, we stuck with that.

Moving early in our marriage was so good for us. We developed a real “it’s us taking on the world” type mentality, in a good way.

I will say, 6 months into each move, we hit a rough spot. The newness had worn off, but it didn’t really feel like home yet, either.

[sonrisa]

I've done that exact move (and the reverse) twice. I loved NYC without kids but was done by the time we returned. (Before that, everytime the plane touched down I felt like I was home. My last visit back I no longer felt that way).

What do you love about NYC? Will you be able to live that when you are there full time?
(for example: if you love the downtown aspect but picture yourself living in suburban NJ, move if you love Jersey, not for NYC. In my case, what I love about NYC are half things I couldn't enjoy now. I can do a midnight dinner or walk all over town because I'm tied to a very different stage of life. I could see returning during retirement).

[litebright]

We moved from CA to CO for DH's job when we first got married, then 12 years later, from CO to VA. Both times were great choices, zero regrets! The hardest part of both was establishing a social circle, it takes awhile to really feel part of a community/build friendships.

We had two old dogs when we moved from CO to VA. DH loaded them in my minivan and drove them cross-country to the new house, while I finished up the last of the house-tidying and then got on a plane with the kids to fly to VA a couple of days later. Putting the dogs on a plane in cargo wasn't an option, the stress probably would have killed them. My parents live in Ohio so he was able to crash there for one night mid-trip.

[mrsukyankee]

I have moved 4 times for jobs (3 different states, 1 new country). Even if every experience wasn't perfect, I never regretted it as I took something from each move (either learning about myself, the location or the job). My last move for a job was to London and, well, I'm here 20 years later. I have a much better life and found the place I really wanted to remain in. I'm quite certain that I would have stayed quite a while, even if I hadn't met my H here.

Now, is it hard? Yes. Finding new people, figuring out the best place to live, etc, can take a good long time. I found that it took about 2 years to really feel settled in, if I was ever to feel settled in.

[tiki]

My advice is to deeply research the job market for you before moving. We moved SF to Boston for H's job. While I love living here, the industry I worked in was CA-based so I've had to pivot my career direction. Financially we're fine, but I will likely never get back the career trajectory I was on pre-move.

[rupertpenny]

Move to New York! I moved here for a job 5.5 years ago and I don't have any regrets. I have a stronger community here than I have anywhere else I've lived as an adult. I live in a more residential part of Brooklyn and it's like living in a small town in all of the good ways, but I'm still just a few subway stops from almost anything I want to do.

This doesn't apply to the OP, but I moved here with young children (1 and 5) and I've found it a great place to live with kids.

[waverly]

We moved to NYC and moved back out due to livability and cost of living. But we did really enjoy it. And you are already used to a high cost of living. We also didn’t live in a neighborhood type area. It was a very urban area with few trees. Unfortunately that was closest to my work. We might have felt differently if we lived in a Brooklyn neighborhood or similar.

[ellipses84]

PDQ due to lots of personal details but feel free to tag me with any questions / comments. This is long!

Although DH and I managed to stay employed though the 2008 recession, his career really stagnated and around 2014 we found ourselves both laid off due to major company reorgs with a house and a toddler. We found other jobs but the pay was too low to pay our bills, esp. DH’s. We struggled for a year, while he had a job offer that entire year for his dream position in Houston. I did not want to leave SoCal, but finally agreed we could go for a few years thinking that our quality of life would improve, it would be cheaper to live there, we could afford to have another kid, and it would help his resume so we could eventually move somewhere else (this is a second career for him after the military).

The only things I was really worried about were the bugs, the humidity and the politics, none of which bothered me at first. Houston seemed like every other city at first and I had lots of LGTBQ friends who had wonderful lives, but then there’d be startling things, like realizing they were having a destination wedding because they still couldn’t get married there. That changed while we lived there, but national and state politics also changed (or became or apparent to me) during the 2016 election and I’m glad we are not there anymore and I’m not raising my boys in that culture (and I wouldn’t want to raise girls of reproductive age where they do not have access to all the healthcare they may need) but I wish i could still vote for change. We were able to have another child, had excellent medical care, and ok healthcare / maternity benefits via work, but I wouldn't want to be pregnant in TX now and I had better benefits (via state and work) and less OOP costs in CA with my first.

The move was fantastic for both of our careers but it is a fast moving city and we both worked a lot. Due to our types of jobs and where they tend to be located, mine in downtown and DH’s in the burbs, with kids in school / daycare we had to live somewhere in between that was commutable so cost of living for us ended up being exactly the same as SoCal before! Even in the suburbs, people had way bigger houses but their mortgages were the same. Some things were cheaper like gas and groceries, but a lot of things were way more expensive in TX like property taxes and insurance (for EVERYONE as a baseline in each zip code due to natural disasters for car and home). COL has skyrocketed in SoCal and gone up in Houston but IDK the difference now, and SoCal pay tends to be better.

Although there hadn't been many major storms/ floods in years before we moved there, the 3 years we were there had 5 major floods. I was pretty naive to the issue and when I was 9 months pregnant we moved into a rental house that was destroyed by a flash flood and had to evacuate with our 5 year old. We lost almost everything and had to scramble to find a new rental by the time the baby was born. 17 months later we were all settled in and I said I wanted to move back to the west coast in a few years. 2 weeks later, our house that was built in the 1950s and had never flooded before, flooded along with a lot of the rest of the city. It wasn't as bad and we had more prep time so most of our belongings were saved. Houston had been told NOT to evacuate and we were lucky to be trapped in a neighboring house for days that was raised with water and power, but we still had to deal with the fear that we'd have to swim our with two little kids who can't swim because there was literally too many people who needed rescuing and help was not coming. While we were trapped, we made the decision to leave. I could transfer offices so I gave DH a list of 8 west coast cities and told him to find a new job in 1. He happened to find a job in our original city. It sucks we sold our house here and now we rent and are kind of priced out of the market but we bought/ sold at a good time before and needed the money and it wasn't anywhere near the area we live in now. I don't really have regrets. If we didn't move, we might not have my youngest son and if it weren't for the floods we might still be there (which would be good for our careers but nothing else, my career is really demanding, DH has more work/life balance here and has shifted his priority to the kids until they turn 18).

The first move, DH went ahead, stayed with friends and started his job while I stayed behind, working, with a toddler, selling the house, interviewing, etc. It was really rough on our marriage and there was a point where I almost didn't go. Like there was a fork in the road and one path was stay here and get a divorce and the other was take a huge leap of faith and move with him. He had all this time on his hands, had read a marriage book, wanted me to read it and talk about it with him and I literally had no spare time, but he was being very insecure and lonely. When we moved away, as soon as we weren't trapped, I took the kids and stayed out of state with family for 3 months and he stayed behind to deal with the house his work which also flooded. That was much better because we were better at dealing with crisis, he was busy, and I had a village to help me with the kids.

All that to say, really think about ALL the financial, weather, political, logistical factors. What are the pros/ cons besides the job and how often will those happen. We thought we might travel East / Internationally more. We didn't travel Internationally at all, I travelled to NC a lot for work, we went to New Orleans quite a bit which was great and the one time we debated on going to Disneyworld, Disneyland was cheaper so we flew there. Moving with kid, especially school and/or daycare age is challenging. TX daycare standards are not the same as CA and I was a bit horrified by some I toured (but we found great ones).

[DotAndBuzz]

We've moved 3x for H's job. All either before kids, or before kids were in school. Last move was 12 years ago, and it isn't at all where we thought we'd end up/wanted to be long-term, but it feels like home now. A job opportunity has come up a few times that could take us to our dream location, but now that kids are older (middle and high school), we decided against pursuing it. Rebuilding/finding our "community" from scratch now feels like a really heavy lift, especially with the kids being so much older.

Our parents are also mid seventies, so they're not that far off from needing more of our time and energy. They're currently 3-4 hours away, and dream location would be about 10 hours by car, and no direct flights. We lived about that far from them at one point, and it was tough not being able to see them on short-ish notice.

I guess thinking about that factor, and the social rebuilding (so much harder as an adult), I'd be hesitant to do such a major move. But I'm also not an adventurous/risk taking person at heart. Some people absolutely LOVE those types of adventures, shaking things up, getting out and meeting new people, etc. I'm just not one of them.

[Jalapeñomel]

Also keep in mind that different area of NYC feel really different, so even if you didn’t like Brooklyn you may love Manhattan.