Looking to move to the Seattle area (Tacoma, Bellevue: day care, houses)

[RANDRE]

My family and I are looking into a possible move to the Seattle area. We are in the early stages of looking--we are looking for jobs in Seattle and Tacoma area. I have been reading some of the postings and am a little worried about the cost of living in the area---are there suburbs that are a little less expensive? My husband is in IT and I am in marketing/broadcasting. Since we have just started looking it is hard to say what our combined income will be, but we are hoping it will be $80K or more. Any advice on areas that would be good to live. We have 2 kids (ages 3 and 1) so we need good day care and good schools soon.

[Ira500]

Closer to Tacoma, the Steilacoom area and Gig Harbor have lower priced houses than Seattle/Bellevue and have good schools. Closer to Seattle, areas that cost a little less but have good schools:
Maple Valley has the Tahoma school district, and Bothell, Kenmore, and Woodinville share the Northshore school district. Shoreline also has a good school district.

[englewoodmum]

80K can get you pretty far, the tough part is the kids.
Just stay out of the inner-city, not the best place to raise a child.

[obsidian97]

Originally Posted by RANDRE

My family and I are looking into a possible move to the Seattle area.

[snip]

We have 2 kids (ages 3 and 1) so we need good day care and good schools soon.

Oh buddy, you would do very well to try calling around on the daycare before you get here. We were shocked when we got here at the lack of capacity the area has for daycare (at least on eastside, including Woodinville).

I don't know where you're moving from, but we were also shocked at the costs of daycare here. The daycare that we were able to lineup in Dallas that was about $600/mo wound up costing anywhere from $1200-$1800 a month here (for infant care). It's not exactly an apples to apples comparison in the setting/what was offered, but it wasn't 2 to 3 times better than what we had in Dallas. We had a 3-to-1 ratio in Dallas, and a 4-to-1 ratio here, for one.

Some of the places we looked at had 2 year waiting lists for infants. Since your kids are all over 1 year old, that will probably help as the ratios go up, but it may still be tough to find a spot you'll be happy with. In fact, depending on what you wind up doing, it may be cheaper to just get a nanny to watch all three kids at home. I know of a number of people who do this once they have more than one kid to take care of because it works out in their favor in the end.

We thought we had planned everything out in advance, had a lot of information and assistance, and still got caught by this... bigtime. And since you can't work and watch kids at the same time, it can really screw up income plans.

All that said, you shouldn't look at this as a deal-breaker to coming here. This area can be a great place to raise kids. You just have to really call around and plan ahead because of the lack of adequate capacity in daycare services around here.

I still say anyone who opens a Tex-Mex Restaurant/Daycare will make a mint here.