To not want to move to Wales?

[dgarcia85]

My OH and I live in SE London and we are about to start TTC. We both agree we need to decide where we want to live as we want our kids to have a stable home and not move around. I work at a council and earn £35K. It’s a great place to work and I don’t want to leave. I also will be starting a second consulting job soon earning an additional £10K. My OH is studying p/t and earns £20K. I want to move closer to work most likely Purley renting first and then buying when we can afford too. OH doesn’t think we will ever be able to buy anything in Croydon/London and he wants to move to Wales where his parents are as it’s cheaper and they can help out with any kids. I’m from the Caribbean originally and I’ve been living in London for 15 years and made it my home and I don’t really want to start over in another new plus. Hi Plus I feel like our mixed race kids would fit in better in London and I love my job. I know Wales makes more sense financially but I can’t bring myself to agree to it and its now causing arguments....

Which is why she should not even entertain the idea of moving to Abercarn. He can't make her.

Exactly!

All I can focus on right now is rising up the ladder in my current role while keeping an eye out for similar opportunities in Bristol or Cardiff and hopefully buying there. Or accept that I’m just another London millennial will never be able to afford to buy.

This sounds like a good plan though. Moving to Bristol or Cardiff for a role with a similar salary, where your housing money can go further and he can build a career. Or, I know loads of families in London who are renting long term - it's ok to prioritise staying in London over buying a property, if that's your choice. Maybe your priorities will shift after you have a child, maybe not. I also wouldn't fix on having to be settled in one place when they start school - lots of kids happily move during primary years. You don't need to make your 'forever move' now.

What I wouldn't do is commit to a situation where you will have to be the FT working parent and he have to be a SAHD. I've seen many women's attitudes to their career and working change during their first mat leave (obviously not all, some are very happy to return to FT work). Don't choose to get into a situation where you don't have options before having your first baby.

I'd personally be more concerned about his lack of earning power and career drive than your housing situation. If you both can earn money, that opens up so many options.

Six years is a long time to invest in his OU degree - will it really help him get an IT job? Are there shorter more focused IT courses that he could take? Employment in related areas to move up? Or a different career path with promotion prospects? I would try and think outside the box here. I know someone who forged a successful IT career by teaching themselves programming, selling apps (in a niche area they had knowledge of, so could charge money for), and then was offered highly paid IT work as they had a track record of successfully developing products. Zero IT qualifications, and they learnt in their spare time and only gave up their previous job once they were seeing success with the app sales. I'm not saying he should necessarily take this route, but just to illustrate that there are multiple routes into IT work, and six years on a degree may not open the doors he thinks it will. Showing what he can actually do may be more useful than a degree - perhaps a shorter qualification and then work his way up from a more basic IT role?

I would be wary of moving to his village for all the reasons other posters have given. It would seem to be reducing the earning power for both of you, for a lifestyle that you don't want. I think it is strange when retired grandparents expect their working-age children to relocate to their village away from employment options - if the retired grandparents want to live close to their grandchildren, it makes sense for the retired person to move, not the people trying to earn a living!

What about this? - it’s walking distance from Wimbledon Village which will never lose value. One of the most desirable areas of South London. Fantastic area to have a baby. Safe and literally everything within walking distance. You would never be isolated or bored with a baby. Rain or shine, you can just walk out your door and it’s all there on on your doorstep, Fantastic shops and cafes all around. Ground floor for buggy and outside space. Wimbledon Common on your doorstep, Kingston in the other side for all the larger shops, but you’ve got all the boutiques in the village too. Commute to work wouldn’t be too bad and probably worth it. I think there is a tram that connects Wimbledon to Croydon? You could get a fixed mortgage for something like this at a super-low interest rate. Put in a low offer because now is the time. Sit through the recession and then cash in and use you profits to upsize for the second baby or head to the SW.

OP, this price is for 30% shared ownership. He're the full-price listing - for £700k.

www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-69205215.html

Oliversmumsarmy, cut your shit. You know full well what you are doing here, and it is out of order.

Oh my god apologies. I did think it looked remarkably good value for a two-bed in that area. I’m currently trying to sell a one-bed with no outside space in a more central, but very green, well connected “village” location and that’s for £500k min, so I was a bit surprised. It didn’t say anything about shared ownership though in the page I looked on. My apologies!
Could shared ownership be an option though? I’m not even sure how that works?

No problem monkeycats

Given you, oliversumsarmy, and I expect a few other posters on this thread are property professionals, I'm quite surprised you don't know how shared ownership works! Perhaps it's a different part of the market from that which you work in.

OP, if you're still here, for the property in question, you'd have to pay (substantial) rent on the other £500k+ bit of the property that you would own. There may well also be a service charge. I know this because the first place we bought in London (key worker shared-ownership) worked the same way. You can buy a bigger chunk of property when you're earning more (and the process is easy - they ultimately want to sell the thing, not rent it out forever).

I’m not a property professional. Just trying to sell a flat we bought for someone else some years ago but now they don’t want it.

As far as I'm aware you're not allowed to rent out shared ownership properties. So if the OP and her partner bought one of those in London they'd have to keep living in it until they were ready and able to sell it. Of course, this might suit the OP perfectly because it would make moving out of London more difficult.

Exactly what is shit about my post thedancingbear

That deegee85’s dh will be quite satisfied to move to Bristol instead of what he wants which is to move in with or very close to his mother.

Or that deegee85 didn’t come to this country and make a really good life for herself. Didn’t get a good job, wasn’t working till 11pm at night and didn’t manage to put away £50,000 in savings.

Or that deegee85’s dh didn’t get her to give up a £60k job and swap it for a £35k job.

That it was her that came up with the idea to move to Wales all by herself. That even without her dh she would be looking at jobs in Cardiff

That all my BAME friends are hankering after a life in the Cotswolds/Wales/the highlands of Scotland, anywhere out of London.

That the OU 6 year IT degree which is going to take the dh to 38 and with no experience in IT isn’t going to struggle to walk into some high flying, high paying job in IT or even just any job in IT where he would use his degree.

That the OU isn’t for those wanting to hold down f/T jobs whilst studying in the evenings and weekends

That the OU doesn’t cost money either now or in the long term for them,

That there aren’t any nice houses or flats in deegee85’s budget on Rightmove

I have recommended HTB when I thought Deegee85 didn’t have a deposit. Or much cheaper flats that were part ownership. (I am aware the rental part of part ownership can be quite steep)
But with a £240,000 mortgage, £50,000 in cash and even without help from her parents, there are 2 and even 3 bedroom flats close to her work out there which don’t look like bad areas and are quite nice inside
And if Deegee85 did manage to get the £279000 mortgage then they could be looking at houses.

Fwiw a £240,000 mortgage at 1.89% is £1004 per month and at £279,000 it is £1250 per month.

Given rents in those areas I would think there wasn’t that much difference.

I live very close of abercarn and after reading a lot of these posts describing valleys as grotty, filthy backward holes you can stay away ! How rude. Valley living may not be for everyone, but it's certainly not full of unmotivated , uneducated cave people. If you come here with the attitude of looking down your nose at everyone then what do you expect.

I’m from north wales, live near Purley so feel I can answer your question / sympathise. It is so expensive around here, I am going back to wales eventuality to buy my own place. I have mixed race children too and I absolutely wouldn’t take them to wales to live, they would stick out and people are racist there. Believe me I know.

Darbs - I'm also from north Wales, but live in Cardiff, and with respect, north Wales is nowhere near Abercarn and the Cardiff area. Cardiff is very multi-cultural and mixed race children would definitely not stand out. Because of the docks, there have been mixed race people in Cardiff for many generations.

"Valley living may not be for everyone, but it's certainly not full of unmotivated , uneducated cave people."

I think there are social problems in some valleys towns and even in Newport. I had a colleague who lived in Ynysybwl and who said that there was a menacing atmosphere there from 4pm.

However, we're talking about either moving to Cardiff or moving near Cardiff and that's a completely different thing to moving somewhere further away like the outer reaches of the Rhondda. Valleys people extremely friendly from what I've seen, though I do think it can take time to fit in as it would anywhere with a strong community.

The thing is though Gwen, If your son was married and living in London with his wife who was a higher earner and doing a (5 year)! degree while also TTC, what would you be saying to him?

I very much doubt it would be, “Tell your wife to quit that job and bring her home to mummy in Wales.”

I’m sure you’re can appreciate that most women would rather eat their own arm than mo r from a world city to a small, rural town to live under the roof of their MIL. We’re not talking about 18 year-olds here. These people are heading for 40!

This is not about Wales. It would be exactly the same if the OP was being asked to move in with her MIL anywhere that took her away from her job. Particularly somewhere rural - eg if we were talking about Cornwall or Norfolk or Shropshire or Cumbria or huge swathes of Scotland, it would have been exactly the same thread.

" most women would rather eat their own arm than mo r from a world city to a small, rural town to live under the roof of their MIL. "

I wouldn't want to do that, no, but I might not be against living in Cardiff (as the real me does!) or even in Abercarn and commute to Cardiff. if Abercarn is 10 miles away from Cardiff, then I wouldn't consider it particularly rural either.

"eg if we were talking about Cornwall or Norfolk or Shropshire or Cumbria or huge swathes of Scotland, it would have been exactly the same thread."

Not for the person who said don't move because the Welsh education system is inferior.

Well I have no idea about the Welsh education system. I imagine schools vary, as anywhere else.

*Deegee85

When you say you are looking for similar paying jobs in Bristol and Cardiff are you looking for ones paying £35000 per year? Or £45000 per year to take account of the extra £10,000 per year job you do or £65000 per year to also take account of your dh’s lack of earnings.

You say you are just getting by living in Croydon area. I would think you might not struggle raising a family with only one income of £35000 outside of London but given how much you have worked for would you be satisfied just getting by and supporting a non working dh

This is not about Wales. It would be exactly the same if the OP was being asked to move in with her MIL anywhere that took her away from her job. Particularly somewhere rural - eg if we were talking about Cornwall or Norfolk or Shropshire or Cumbria or huge swathes of Scotland, it would have been exactly the same thread.

With respect this is just not the case. There have been all kinds of snippy comments about the schooling system, that you'll need to learn welsh to get a job (untrue), that we are all racist and hostile to outsiders, and of course the bundling together of very different places like Cardiff, the valleys and North Wales.

In fact, the last of these is classic 'othering' and is exactly how prejudice works.

I’m from north wales, live near Purley so feel I can answer your question / sympathise. It is so expensive around here, I am going back to wales eventuality to buy my own place. I have mixed race children too and I absolutely wouldn’t take them to wales to live, they would stick out and people are racist there. Believe me I know.

I'm sorry that you've had this experience; it must be shit.

But you just can't bundle rural North Wales (which can be insular) with Cardiff/Barry/Newport, which is the neck of the woods the OP is looking at.

I spent the first 20 years of my life in Cardiff and the next 15 in SE London (Peckham/Forest Hill/Dulwich). There's only so much I can say because I'm not from a BAME background myself. But, hand on heart, I can say that I encountered fewer racist attitudes in Cardiff than London.

Also, whilst the BAME population in Cardiff is proportionately smaller than London, I was always surprised how 'un-integrated' London could often seem. I had less of a sense of 'white' and 'other' areas (though there are some concentrations of Somalis and Bangladeshis) in cardiff than I did in london. It's one of the thing I love about the place.

Do you not think though, dancingbear, your last statement could be turned on its head to apply to London. London is a city of 10 million, three times the population of Wales. Which part of London? Where does London even finish - the end of tube lines; the end of London postcodes; the M25? If you class it as the M25, you’re talking about 13 million. Life in Peckham etc can be very different to Knightsbridge. You know yourself that London doesn’t just have a centre and then the suburbs. It’s more like a cluster of what were once separate towns and villages that have all merged, but each retaining their own characters. Even within SE London, the experience of living in a “naice” street in Dulwich is a world away from life on an estate in Peckham. Though parts of Peckham are becoming gentrified now - its a constantly evolving situation. You can go three miles down the road in London and it’s a different accent! In the school my DC go to, it’s an independent school and students with two white British would be firmly in the minority. “Integration“ takes in a different meaning from one part of London to the other and is related to economic factors quite often.

I doubt if on the incomes you have you will be able to afford to buy someone in London that could be large enough for a family.

I can see though that moving to Wales would be difficult given that your friends in London would probably become friends of the past or only those you contact virtually or by phone. You may be fortunate to be in a part of Wales that is accepting of new people, but there are some where I am sure it is not so good. In part because of second home owners.

I think this is the thing though. You could be in a deprived town in South Wales where the standard of living is poor, or a deprived neighbourhood in London where the standard of living is poor. The difference is that in South Wales, all the towns for miles around might be like that and you'd have to go as far as Cardiff for decent jobs and amenities, whereas in London your particular area might be rough as fuck, but you are still just a tube ride away from nicer parts of the city where there are more jobs and amenities than you can shake a stick at.

For instance, I still have a slight accent and though not BAME, I can’t remember the last time anyone asked me where I’m from. I think this is because it’s very rare where I live for anyone to have been born here. In fact, I can’t think of anyone whatsoever who grew up round here, only a few elderly people maybe who have been in the area for generations and are holding onto their houses that few could afford now in the 30-50s demographic. My kids could literally be from anywhere between Spain and India, but genuinely nobody has ever asked, except for when my third was born and she was quite fair with green eyes and a GP asked if she had a different father . But since then, never. It’s the same with all their friends. Even the non-BAME ones don’t have parents born here and usually one parent is from another European country or Russia and they speak a second language at home. So it’s almost impossible to feel like an outsider in the swathes of London that have a more fluid population because nobody was born here and everyone has come from somewhere.

"The difference is that in South Wales, all the towns for miles around might be like that and you'd have to go as far as Cardiff for decent jobs and amenities"

Yes, but we already know she'd be going to Cardiff or close to Cardiff.