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Just a general question. How many people have / are planning to relocate from where they grew up ? Did you move just to go somewhere new or was it mandatory for a job ? I despise Memphis and as soon as the kids are grown I may move. Just trying to get other peoples experience. TIA for the info
I grew up in Los Angeles, then went to northern California for college. I then went to Ohio for medical school, and then came back to Los Angeles for residency training. I'm now living back in northern California. I love my job, but I can't afford to live here anymore. I'm planning to move somewhere in 2 years when my contract is up. Funny you're trying to leave Memphis. I wouldn't mind living there, if not for the bugs (very few biting bugs out west). I think a median house in Memphis is like 100K, in San Jose it's 7-8x that much. There's no way your salary is 7-8x as much. Even as a doctor, I can't afford an $800,000 house, especially not with my med school loans.
Just a general question. How many people have / are planning to relocate from where they grew up ? Did you move just to go somewhere new or was it mandatory for a job ? I despise Memphis and as soon as the kids are grown I may move. Just trying to get other peoples experience. TIA for the info
I'm trying to move somewhere else. The places I think are ideal I know no one living there. Me and all of my family are Phoenicians, I have very distant family who I don't even know in Pennsylvania and Maryland, and that's it. Moving out of Arizona would be very different. I went to college in a different city within the state and I didn't know anyone here originally. In some ways I liked the thrill of starting out from scratch, a blank slate, and I would like to have that again.
I remember seeing a study that said most people live within a certain close distance from their hometowns. I think it was around ~50% of Americans are in a couple hour drive of where they grew up but don't quote me on that figure. I think since C-D attracts a certain type of people to these forums, people who are interested in relocations and geography/travel in general, I think you will find a higher percentage of C-D posters who are willing to relocate from where they grew up in comparison to real life.
I think since C-D attracts a certain type of people to these forums, people who are interested in relocations and geography/travel in general, I think you will find a higher percentage of C-D posters who are willing to relocate from where they grew up in comparison to real life.
Very good point, this forum is probably skewed to people interested in moving, or geography at the very least. I think I read that the vast majority of doctors end up practising withing 100 miles of where they did residency training.
Very good point, this forum is probably skewed to people interested in moving, or geography at the very least. I think I read that the vast majority of doctors end up practising withing 100 miles of where they did residency training.
Interesting about doctors. My uncle did his residency in San Diego and when he finished he did have a job offer, but he also had a job offer in Scottsdale that I think was as much as 50-100k more a year, and considering Arizona is a lot cheaper than San Diego it was a no brainer. My uncle grew up in Scottsdale so that wasn't an issue either. My uncle lives like half a mile from the house he grew up in, after doing college in Pennsylvania, medical school in Missouri, residency in California, he ended up about two blocks away from where he grew up.
I think a lot of people are like that OP. Live somewhere foreign for a while, only to end up going back. Some people you know won't be like this. It has more to do with ties to family and relative independence. It takes a certain person who is willing to leave family, and believe me when I say it's a minority of people. I personally think that's why Westerners in general are so different than Easterners, Westerners are generally characterized as being independent, open-minded to new ideas, "isolated" in the sense there is very rarely a community feel in neighborhoods or something like that--people tend to do their own things and if someone fits in, great. We came from the "adventurous" types who at one point left their family that was thousands of miles away with barely any ways to communicate except mail that took weeks sometimes. Visiting was almost out of the question back then, and they risked that to move somewhere completely new and foreign with little idea of what it is like. We now live in an amazing era with something called the Internet, which completely eliminates all those risks. We also have planes, FaceTime, etc.
So now it comes down to whether you need to be close to your family and friends that you have. When you move away your ties with them won't be as close anymore, and you have to evaluate if that's worth it. Even though I only live 2 hours from where I grew up I found out I miss out on a lot of family drama and information. For an example I didn't find out my aunt was getting divorced until five months after she filed and right before I saw her (literally minutes). No one thought to tell me about it before, because they haven't seen me physically and it didn't cross their mind. My friends from Phoenix now have entirely different lives after being away for three years, and we aren't on the same pace anymore. I see them maybe once a year tops, and while it is good catching up our friendships just aren't the same as they used to be. So in order to flourish in a new area you need to evaluate how good you are at making new friends, otherwise you will go insane and probably depressed.
Born and raised in upstate New York , my friends and all my immediate family are here . I have four seasons , beautiful mountains forests and makes . But it's a sad excuse for a capital and the winter is not worth it anymore especially when you work outside . But my job is a lateral transfer to almost every major city in our country so I'm exploring my options and researching but my top 5 I can't afford on my budget . San Diego , la , Bay Area , Austin , Seattle .
Doing research and hopefully Reno or Vegas can be my new home someday
Just a general question. How many people have / are planning to relocate from where they grew up ? Did you move just to go somewhere new or was it mandatory for a job ? I despise Memphis and as soon as the kids are grown I may move. Just trying to get other peoples experience. TIA for the info
I grew up in Riverside, CA.
I moved to Ridgecrest, CA, 6 months after my mother moved there (didn't know anybody else there). Really couldn't afford SoCal on my own (I was 20). Didn't really want to either.
Met my wife there, and we moved to Denver. Didn't know a soul.
2 years later, moved to Spokane, WA. Moved for my job. My boss was staying in a trailer there temporarily, so I knew him until he left.
6 months later, we moved back to Denver. We knew people here from the first time we were here, and have been here ever since (7 years since coming back, as of tomorrow it will be 9 years total since leaving CA).
We moved from Ohio to Montana when we were 20/24 on a whim because it sounded like fun. Packed up what we could fit in our cars and drove west. We didn't have enough gas money to return so we had to make it work. We didn't know a soul, had never been and didn't have jobs lined up. It was the best decision we've ever made. The best 10 years of my life.
We moved from Montana to Michigan because of a job. We knew two people here (friends from Montana). I hate it here. I am currently scheming to get us back to Montana.
I've relocated twice. The first time was a 900-mile move, the second time, a 2200-mile move.
We did the first move because my husband was interested in a specific graduate program that wasn't available in our city. Then he got a full-time job in the new location and we ended up staying for a few more years despite knowing that the location wasn't really a great fit for us. So when a position in his field opened up in our "dream" state, he decided to pursue it and was ultimately hired.
Happy to answer more specific questions.
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