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Have been finding your posts v. interesting but I have a specific question. We are hoping to move from the UK to the US for many reasons - better quality of life, more mertitocratic, better schools but also in the hope of escaping terrible UK snobs - basically state schools in UK are so bad on the whole that we have had to educate our son in private school where there are too many terrible snobs. We hear that US state schools can be v. good, so hope that our academic, sporty 9 yr old son can get a good education there whilst at the same time escaping snobs. At the same time, we'd like my husband's commute to be less than the current 2 hours - in fact closer to 40 mins - 1hr max. We hear taking the ferry from NJ is good for this as husband will work on Wall Street (sadly not in mega bucks job!) - question is: Which NJ area is best for schools, brief commute whilst still having affordable (c. under $500,000) homes in nice safe neighbourhoods with lots of greenery / fields ideally (we have a dog which I can currently allow free rein of Suffolk UK fields). Is this possible even or am I looking at expensive neighbourhood which is therefore snobby (as would be the case in the UK usually outside of London)? Is NJ best area for having neighbours which tend to be nice non-snobby people - I assume commutable Connecticut is more snobby or am I wrong? I'd love to hear your thoughts on this! Thank you.
Last edited by BritishEscapee; 07-02-2013 at 03:07 AM..
Reason: adding some info
Aren't the snobs in the "public" schools in England?
The basics are as follows. You can live in an area of Hudson Cty on a PATH train line (Hoboken, Jersey City) and be 20-30 minutes from Wall St. It's the most urban part of NJ with more crime and avg. to crummy schools. Great for singles.in their 20s. Nj Snob Factor = 5
Now move out to the counties just beyond Hudson/Essex and you get suburbs with fine school systems - Westfield, Madison, Ridgewood. At your price range it might be hard to find decent houses in those towns. The commute is more like 1 hour to 1 hour 15. WARNING! HIGH SNOB FACTOR! 8-9. You having a relative shack in these towns and no Mercedes may cause shunning and/or whispering that you're "too poor" for the town.
If you look further south in Middlesex County (East/North Brunswick, Old Bridge) you'll get much more for your money but commute is a bit further still, although lots of people do it daily. Towns & schools still good but not like Ridgewood or Westfield. NJ snob factor = 4-5.
I wouldn't stress about making friends. Ppl here are very direct but if they like you they've got your back for life. Never had a problem meeting nice neighbors wherever we've lived in NJ.
big thing to remember is NJ is most definitely a rat race place. Keep that in mind if that's what you're escaping from In England. Densely populated, lots of traffic & ppl have to work their asses off just to pay the bills. Very high property taxes, esp in the nice burbs of northern NJ.
Dear EBWick - that's such a helpful reply - rating areas on snob-factor! I'm sad to hear there are 8-9 rated snobs out there - but that's being naive I guess. I did hear about WASP types and I guess it's a world-wide issue that the rich stick together.
Yes over here public schools are your version of high schools and in fact private. It's definitely similar here by the sounds of it - nice 'normal' people often have to live in less yummy neighbourhoods where crime and schools are worse, so here we chose to move to a nice green leafy area to protect our son we thought from pollution and crime, (though it being UK we still had to pay for private school as state system so bad) - but as you say, having no merc. or smart house we get a lot less interest from those that have in terms of proper friendship which was fine, until now. However now our son is 9 I can see the snobbery seeping out from parents to his classmates and I don't want that sense they give out that 'poorer' people are rubbish to taint his sense of self worth.
It sounds like we might have to stretch our budget on the house and to buy a better car to stop our son feeling left out, which would be annoying, but perhaps necessary to live in area which avoids crime and worse schools, but then if we're saving £15,000 a year on school fees and £5,000 a year on terrible UK train commute, we may in fact manage it!
Your last para does give me the jitters though I guess we're used to it over here already to work so hard just to say afloat and yet I think perhaps we might manage a better quality of life (here, hubby earns c. £150,000 yet we are broke at the end of each month, have a 9yr old car, and have to budget really hard to afford one holiday a year and can't afford cost of £500,000 and up for any half decent house in nice areas). My husband says all the guys who work for his firm's NY division are lovely down to earth Italian Americans or Jewish guys and they live in NJ and take the ferry across to Wall St, so I might see where they live and take it from there.
We're also thinking of Denver Colorado to try and get away from the hustle, and it sounds really nice out there but I bet it's similar in that jobs are in the city and to live nearby the same issues will arise.
Thanks again for your funny smart response - one great New Jersey-ite!
Monmouth county is wonderful if you like the outdoors. The ferries here that go to Manhattan leave from either Belford or Atlantic Highlands and you can definitely find something under $500,000. For the Belford ferry you would look at Middletown, parts of Holmdel (but that's more expensive). I live in Hazlet and it was an easy drive to the ferry. Atltantic Highlands is a little more South so you would look at that town or parts of Middletown. The ferry commute is fantastic, but it is expensive.
Agreed that Monmouth County sounds like it might be a good fit. Some less snobby areas with good schools( not non-snobby because I truly believe they do not exist in NNJ) are Leonia, Midland Park, Springfield and Fair Lawn. Most would be a little over an hour door to door to wall st. Further out towns like Parsippany would also fit the bill but you'd probably be looking at more like a 1.5 hour commute to Wall st.
Interesting tdstyles, i grew up in Springfield and found it to be both snobby and not very good schools, not sure why you feel the opposite is true. When i say snobby i'm still talking about maybe a 25% minority, i don't believe anywhere the vast majority of people are snobs (well maybe Short Hills).
You can try the Boro of Leonia. There are no snobs. And there is the large park called Overpeck. Your pet can run around for as long and far as he like.
Or you can try Rockland County NY, and take the train in. It should not be too bad a commute. Less Snobs than Bergen County NJ, and I believe you are close to much wilderness.
Fair Haven in Monmouth County take the ferry right to Wall st
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