This revolves around a big house/ area move (sorry it’s a long one). I do realise we are in a good position in lots of ways and this is probably a low ranking problem on a world scale, but it’s doing my head in!
I’ve pretty much always lived in the same area, where my parents are about half an hour away and we see them a lot, and many friends from school plus others made along the way. My OH has lived around here for 30 years but didn’t grow up here. It’s a famously expensive and unaffordable town for buying houses but because we have both been on the property ladder for years and had some help from parents do own a house which is worth quite a lot though it is a fairly small terraced house with a small garden (it’s a nice looking house in a nice area). We have two children who go to a really good local primary school, though secondary school options are iffy but we’re not there yet.
About a decade ago, my husband and I started a quite unusual ‘rural’ business. It was hard work and is never going to be massively lucrative but we have been successful and enjoy what we do, and now do earn enough for things not to feel really tight. However we need a very specific kind of premises to run the business - most people who have this kind of business live there. We started ours by renting somewhere else to run it at, which is 20 minutes drive away, but we have really outgrown the place we rent and for other reasons too it increasingly feels like time to move on from there. However because of the area we’re living in, buying or even renting somewhere else to do the business is proving totally unviable (believe me we have looked!) - there aren’t many properties that would work and when there are they go for way way over our budget.
For the amount we have in our current house and savings plus what we can get for a mortgage we COULD completely relocate and buy a bigger house/ property where we could live and run the business, but it would mean moving far away: realistically Wales or Scotland (which would be 4-6+ hours from where we are now and my parents) to get the size of house we’d want to be able to have people to stay.
However my parents came into some money a few years ago and have offered to give us quite a large sum out of that to help us make this move possible. If we accepted this money, our budget still wouldn’t be enough to stay in the area we live now but would mean we could probably be more like an hour or two away. They have said this would be effectively me getting my inheritance early (and in fact they will change their will if we do it). They want to be supportive of our business which we’ve worked hard to get where it is now and say they’d like to see us enjoy the money while they’re still around.
However I feel very uncomfortable about taking the money. I have three siblings and while they have all had help in the past to buy houses etc I know my parents couldn’t afford to give us all the same amount of money they are talking about giving me before they die. My siblings seem fine with the idea of us getting the money now but I worry about what might happen in a few years time if something changed (and are they REALLY fine with it deep down? I’m not sure I would be). My dad has also alluded in passing to other projects/ charity contributions they won’t be able to do if they give us this money . I also think it just ‘feels wrong’ and would make me feel like I should get them to approve wherever it is we choose or want to move to and that we owed them too much, and really I’d much rather feel like we’d done the move standing on our own two feet.
I feel quite torn though. Moving that far away when my parents are getting older feels a bit wrong and while a big part of me feels it would be a really exciting adventure to start a new life somewhere else (I never thought I’d be the kind of person to live all my life where I grew up!), part of me also worries about things like making new friends and what impact this might have on the children.
The third option is to stay put but then we couldn’t carry on with the business long term so it would mean dreaming up a new career for both of us. I’ve put a lot into studying and building up networks etc for the job I’m doing now and it is something I’m passionate about. Plus I love the flexibility of having our own business. But maybe the sacrifice of moving far away is too much for a job, however much you like it!