Does anyone leave Denver??? (Boulder, Evergreen: homes, find a job, wedding)

[dnvrsoul]

Originally Posted by dmiller91

Hello,

I've been following the Denver board as another one of those potential "move to the area" types. But I have to say, just judging from this board, it's a crazy popular place and I wonder what that will mean in 10-20 years.

Does anyone ever leave Denver? Does anyone ever move there and say, crap, what a mistake? Just curious if any naysayers exist.

I found an old thread about what Denver "doesn't have", and it wasn't much.

Just curious to hear from the other side. I do happen to know one woman who moved there during a particularly snowy winter and was gone within a year!! Any others?

I moved from Denver to Florida-BIGGEST MISTAKE of my life....once I finish school I will move back. I'm bias but Denver is a great place to live...yes I wish it wasn't so popular and it does have it's problems...but when people move from Denver I think they see what they are missing. ...

I miss the 70 degrees and snow in the same day

[Ming Ming]

My husband is a native and moved to California for college, he was determined to move back home no matter what. My good friend said she moved to Texas and said it was awful and moved back also. I am not a native but I love it here.

I have talked to a few natives and they seem a little irritated by so many people moving to Denver, they claim it's not the same now and people are ruining it, so I don't know. Being a non native and just reading the boards here, I do see a lot of posts from people just moving here with no jobs, no plans but just want to live here. I am not saying it's a bad thing, I just find it unusual.

[Snikt]

Originally Posted by dnvrsoul

I moved from Denver to Florida-BIGGEST MISTAKE of my life....once I finish school I will move back. I'm bias but Denver is a great place to live...yes I wish it wasn't so popular and it does have it's problems...but when people move from Denver I think they see what they are missing. ...

I miss the 70 degrees and snow in the same day

I moved here from Florida, and I can't fathom why anyone would move back. I may be biased, but FL is just awful. Everyone I bring here on vacation that lives there seems to agree also

The people, the weather, economics, scenery, like everything here is upgraded

[Timmyy]

Originally Posted by Ming Ming

My husband is a native and moved to California for college, he was determined to move back home no matter what. My good friend said she moved to Texas and said it was awful and moved back also. I am not a native but I love it here.

I have talked to a few natives and they seem a little irritated by so many people moving to Denver, they claim it's not the same now and people are ruining it, so I don't know. Being a non native and just reading the boards here, I do see a lot of posts from people just moving here with no jobs, no plans but just want to live here. I am not saying it's a bad thing, I just find it unusual.

[Ming Ming]

Is that our sticker Timmyy? lol

[Mach50]

People leave all the time, they just leave somewhat happy unlike California for example.

My next door neighbor just sold their house and moved to L.A.
My neighbor across the street wants to leave badly, they are young and want to live somewhere warmer.

[Timmyy]

Originally Posted by Ming Ming

Is that our sticker Timmyy? lol

Sure is. The "Native" vs "Non-Native" debate makes me chuckle.

[strawberrykiki]

One person's heaven is another person's hell. Lots of people love it here but not everyone.

[Ming Ming]

Originally Posted by Timmyy

Sure is. The "Native" vs "Non-Native" debate makes me chuckle.

I noticed native Coloradans are really proud and a little xenophobic ( I don't mean that in bad way). In California, we don't care of we are native or not but most prefer not to leave California though.

[Idlewile]

We moved away last year after roughly 13 years in CO, which also included attending CU Boulder a long time ago. It was a very difficult decision.

The only reason we moved is we have a very young family and wanted to spend more time with our young children instead of getting home and then having them go to bed 20 minutes later. We employed wonderful childcare but had no quality time with the kids during the week because of our long hours. Both of us worked hectic jobs requiring long hours each day and we both had long commutes; both jobs/careers were unable to offer either one of us flexible hours, let a lone part-time. If one of us chose to quit and stay at home with the kids then we would have been forced to buy a much less expensive home is a school district that did not meet our expectations.

As others have said here, and it's been featured in many business articles over the past decade, the Denver area is near the bottom of the list for COL increase as compared to salaries. Salaries in Denver – on the whole – are not keeping up with the local COL like other cities. Basically, in many professional job sectors you will receive the same pay or likely higher in places like Atlanta and Austin but pay substantially less for housing. (This is what happened for us too.)

All of these puzzle pieces made it clear that in order to have more time with our kids, more flexibility for our family, considering our specific careers and requirement for schools, Denver and surrounding area was not going to cut it based on our budget. Very sad. I will also say, the job market in Denver suffered much more than in places like where we ended up and that sluggish job market feeds into the salary vs. COL issue. Hard to argue with an offer that solves our problem, offers our family more flexibility and all this based on living out of state and still getting a job offer when it was difficult to find a job in Denver while living there while having an absurd amount of connections. And free relocation helps too.

We definitely miss certain things and are homesick from time to time (but I will spare you the comparisons and miss lists since that's not what you're asking). We absolutely would move back but it would have to be for a great career opportunity offering our family more than what we have now so we can live in exactly the area we want.