DH, I and DC live in the NE 2-3 hours from both sides of our extended family who are in the greater Manchester area. We have moved to this area for work but aside from our jobs there is not much tying is here. It is quite a transitory university town so many of our friends have moved away and we have no truly close friends here now. We really can't decide whether to move to be nearer family or not and would like to make the decision soon as if we are moving would like to do this in time for primary school applications for dc.
Pros of where we are:
-Very cheap cost of living. We could have or mortgage paid off within a year which would give us more options in the future to have a nice lifestyle and maybe cut down hours at work or have one of us be a sahp for a few years. House prices in Manchester in nice areas with good schools are significantly more as far as I can see, so we would need a much bigger mortgage that would require us both to keep working for the foreseeable, less holidays etc.
-DC settled at nursery.
-Lovely area with easy access to beaches, city, beautiful countryside all nearby. Lots of nice places to take DC growing up. I'm not as in love with Manchester and find it maybe a bit too big.
-good schools and not as competitive entry as some areas of Manchester.
Pros of moving
-better support network. We would have 2 sets of grandparents, aunties etc all fairly close by depending where we moved which would be nice to get more support with DC and DC to have better relationship with them. At the moment DC sees grandparents every 1-2 months. Also we would be able to support parents more easily if they need as they get older.
-Our jobs here mean we both have significant commutes, we would hopefully be able to reduce this if we moved to Manchester and could potentially use public transport to get to work.
-i think my husband in particular would be happier as he is very close to his family.
Would we be unreasonable to move given the pros of starting where we are? Worried we could regret it either way.