WIBU to jack it all the hell in and run away (with DD and DH)?

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I've been running a business since 2012. We've had some good years and had a good lifestyle, but now we're in a hard patch, and despite a lot of work on the horizon, none of it is being approved. I haven't been paid for four months.

I had to return to work when DD was 5mo because I couldn't afford to keep paying my (very pricey) maternity cover any longer.

We rent in one of the most expensive areas of the UK. We can't afford to buy anywhere near here, if we bought a home we'd have to move far out of town, making my commute longer and reducing my time with DD (and DH).

DD is due to start nursery next month (currently with family), which is another £1,500 per month.

I own the business with two friends/ex-colleagues. They could probably continue without me (it'd be harder, and they probably couldn't afford to replace me immediately).

DH and I have £55K in savings.

Our rental agreement expires in September.

I'm sorely tempted to cut and run. To find a cheap place to live (I'm inspired by all the people I hear about spending under £1K pm on rent), work part time in a job (not a 'career job').

Yes, I'd piss off my co-directors, yes I'd probably piss off my clients, and yes I'd piss off both sets of grandparents by moving far away.

But at the moment I'm watching myself hemorrhaging thousands of pounds a month and only seeing my baby for a couple of hours a day during the week (I know this is normal, but it's bloody hard).

I'm almost 40, I've built up a career, I love my job, but my priorities have completely changed and I just want a nice life, and to see my little girl more.

What would you do?

PS you'd definitely need to learn to drive!

I wouldn't care about any of it apart from moving far away from grandparents. Do they see DD often? It would be a shame to put a distance between you if they are close. If not, then definitely go!

I think you should do it regardless, by the way. It's your time now. I have known grandparents move to be nearer their grandchildren.

Is your business tied to this particular area? What about your expertise? If you could move and still earn decently, but have a better quality of life and cheaper housing and childcare costs, I'd absolutely go for it!

Bear in mind that you might find somewhere very rural a huge shock after a big metropolis :-D

Omg get out and move somewhere cheaper and nicer with a better quality of life like Costa Rica.

Don't look back, don't feel guilty. Be freeeeeee!

In terms of cities with lower living costs, decent schools and better quality of life (I like the sea too!) I have always liked Bristol and Brighton. This is a bit off topic, but I also love Amsterdam for very similar reasons and it is super-family-friendly.

York is VERY quiet but lovely. I think I prefer Manchester in terms of having a bit more going on and a bit more diversity. Birmingham could also be reasonably commutable for occasional London work.

Dannygirl thanks so much, I look into that, DH has friends in Manchester, and I have very fond memories of York/Yorkshire. I'll have a good chat with DH about it tonight, and see how he's feeling. As I said, he was very pro/excited by the idea - but I realise that any big move is a bit of a wrench.

Takemedown we currently see the grandparents about once a month, maybe a little more often. It currently takes between 1.5 and 2 hours either way. I know my mother especially would find it really upsetting, that's where I expect the most emotional difficulty to come from. I hope she would see that I want to do the best for DD, give her as much time and freedom as I can.

Penguin I work in media (currently digital, but previously TV, radio and print). My job is: listen to client requirements, propose solution to requirements, deliver solution (could be an advertorial in a magazine, a partnership with another brand/celebrity or a new website), test whether solution worked...etc. All our clients are in London/South East, but I don't have to be. It'd be harder to lead a delivery team (web designers and developers) remotely, but I could get it done, certainly in the short/mid term.

NotWeaving Costa Rica it is. I like coffee.

Penguin I love Amsterdam too, in fact I love a LOT of continental Europe, DH is a great linguist (oo er) and speaks fluent French, Italian and German... I think DM would lose her head if I left the country with DGD though. She might come with us!!!

I've always thought Birmingham was quite underrated, it's worth a thought.

Hi OP, I have experience of working with people who do much the same work as you, and my main piece of advice would be to start familiarising yourself with all the collaborative working software/apps that you possibly can, so that by the time you move (and want to work remotely) you have great examples of projects where you've worked collaboratively but remotely and where it's been successful.

I presume you are already using a lot of this stuff (collaborative editing in Google Drive, Trello, Basecamp, etc etc) but do make sure you have it 'documented' to give yourself the best chance of successfully transitioning clients to a new way of working :-)

IMHO it can work super well in this kind of area!

If your dh would be up for it, do it & don't look back. They're only children once & if you're happy to just have 'job' why not? I had just a 'job' for a while before staying at home full time & I bloody loved it. No the money wasn't as good but I had fab colleagues & was far happier. I'll probably go back in to that industry when dc5 (currently still a bump) starts nursery.

Penguin I am all over Drive, Basecamp, Trello, Jira, Slack... most of my client calls are on Hangout, WebEx or Skype.

The thing I'd miss (aside from their company, I really do love our team and I enjoy visiting clients) is actually being able to sit in a room with people to brainstorm, collaboration software covers about 80% my requirements, but I'd be worried that I'd lose some efficiency by not being in the same room as my team.

Bernard there is a lot to be said for a 'job' job, I lived in Asia for 10 months and completely burned out (I was mid 20's working from Hong Kong but kept my American client base, so I was basically nocturnal for 10 months). I resigned, came home, and spent three months in a retail job. It was so refreshing to just go and do a job, and then come home and not think about the job again until the morning.

margaritasbythesea are you a DFL by any chance?

Good transport links into town/city - for work
Good transport links to the SE
Good schools/nurseries
Cheap rent (for the short term, with a view to buying locally)
A bit progressive/arty/liberal #dontmentionbrexit

Margate. Super cheap house prices too and only approx 1.5 hrs drive back to London, which once you get used to it, is no time at all.

"Don't wait until you get ill to change your life ... as many women do" happened to me aged 31. Major car accident followed by serious mental health issues had me re-evaluate everything!

The car accident especially as had my dd been in the car with where I got hit... Doesn't bear thinking about.

I tried to do what I thought was expected of me.

At the time I was at uni with a view to doing teacher training, a single mum with ex playing silly buggers over EVERYTHING no support network, then with the accident - it was just too much.

Even at first I tried when recovered (I thought) to work full time, not be "on benefits" etc nearly had another breakdown and left work.

On paper awful because ill, on benefits, couldn't afford luxuries/holidays in reality allowed me to be there for dd while she was little, and mum when she's been ill.

I think our generation (I'm 45 so a little older) are slowly realising its better to work to live than live to work.

My mum worked full time my whole childhood in retail so had very little time with her and as a result we are not as close as I'd like to be and she has said she regrets it too.

I'm looking at returning to work soon hopefully as health finally properly on mend. New man and some independence as dd doesn't need 'babysitting'.

People you love, your and their health...far more important.

Yes I was going to say there are places not too far from London that are cheap and nice to live in and have jobs etc, Kent Sussex Essex etc

I love Margate, lived there years ago.

If I were you, op, I'd seriously think about moving, and start to do some intense research and get some hard figures down.

We moved out of London twelve years ago. All of DH's family are still down there, but it just got to a point where we realised we would never be able to afford a house or achieve the lives we wanted if we stayed. Weirdly, the thing that made me "wake up" was that, one morning, I woke up and realised that not only would we never be able to afford a house in London, we would probably never be able to afford to rent a property that had room for a dining table. And there was just something about the notion of spending my life without a dining table: nowhere to sit and eat with family and friends, no chance of ever doing a Christmas dinner at a table, nowhere to sit and make a model or cover a table in random bits of paper.

So we moved back to my home area in the North: the place I left at 18 because it was "so boring". It took us a few years to get established, but we eventually bought a large house in a lovely area and pay £700 a month for the mortgage. We have off-road parking and a garden. I now not only have a dining table; I have a dining room! .

Yes, we earn probably a third of what we could down in London but the cost of living here is so much cheaper, we actually have a fair amount of disposable income.

I will not lie though. For the first three years, we did wobble a bit and wonder if we'd done the right thing. My vocation is in a very creative field and the disconnection from creative friends in London was very difficult. But I persevered and found that my work got a lot more "real" and I had far more hours in the day to spend doing it, as well as far more hours to potter about just thinking about it. As a result, my productivity is higher than it has ever been, though my life feels so much easier, and I am now happier than I ever have been.

What I also realised was that because we had more money and time, and the region was less congested, I could get my creative "fixes" elsewhere: more day trips to interesting places, more off-season trips abroad. I've seen far more thrilling modern art in local Greek and Spanish galleries over the last five years than I ever did when I lived in London, despite regular trips to London galleries and museums.

And weirdly, though we could be said to live in a very conservative and traditional area (you would not call it progressive or arty), below the surface, the people in our community are extremely complex and fascinating people with a huge range of experiences, views and interests. The community doesn't "look" particularly diverse on the surface, but when you get to know people, crikey, they are some of the most unusual and eccentric people I have ever met. It's a really rich tapestry of life.

What I would say is that your DC and nursery fees are probably your first "crunch point". The second will be when your DC goes to primary. The third will be when your DC goes to secondary. I suspect at each of these points, the question of whether to move will come up again, and, at each subsequent point, the stakes will seem higher. So it is probably really worth thinking about the future with reference to those life stages for your DC.

£1500 a month for one kid for nursery?! shock you're being done.

About average for SW London under 3s.

£1500 a month for one kid for nursery?! shock you're being done.

That's in London so not all that bad really. Where I live in the NW you are looking at £1200-1300 a month (£65ish a day).

@SteppingOnToes I paid £250 a week for two over four days - ok it was 7 years ago and we got a 10% discount on one of them - in Liverpool.

We paid £80 4 days - 9 years ago large city

The government incentive just increased prices

The going rate around here is £85 per day, for a Good or Outstanding nursery. Ours is actually cheaper than many in the area (it falls into a different, slightly less expensive, borough despite being one road away).

Edinburgh.
Easy to fly to the SE.
Loads of options to live a bit out on a bus or train route.

Hi OP I'm in London and did a semi- intensive driving course one summer with LDC. www.learnerdriving.com
I don't know if it was just my particular instructor but he was brilliant, the structured method was good, and I passed first time (well, had failed twice years before with other instructors.. If you're in north London I'll pm you his name.

Hi! We live in Northamptonshire and it's only 50 minutes to Kings X from our nearest station. I am happy to give you more specific financial details if you can PM, as we moved from Paddington over a year ago and even though i lost my job recently we are able to get by. I learned to drive when here etc. If your hubz is in employment and your savings are good you can get a small house for the 3 of you. Am happy to tell you how we did it financially and how great and affordable our child care is too you can plan a budget.

Good look with whatever you choose!!! :-)

Luton is relatively cheap housing-wise, has good public transport, nice schools and is as little as 22 minutes to St Pancras on the train. There's loads going on for little ones, a good nursery is £750 a month-ish and it's surrounded by lovely countryside.

Bangor isn't within easy reach of Surrey but again, lots going on and really cheap housing. Snowdonia is on the doorstep, as are nice beaches, historical sites and lots of sports.