Are we being unimaginative with our life options?

[MidlifeWondering]

Maybe having a midlife crisis 😂
DH and I are both in our mid/late 40s with 4 children, we earn good salaries and have decent equity in our house.
Sometimes I think we’re being unimaginative and just living the societal norm rather than thinking of other options.
Examples -

1. We live in the SE and if we sold up we would have over £500k equity. If we lived somewhere cheaper, we could be mortgage free rather than have our current £2k monthly payment. Travel, invest for the future etc
2. DH works from home and I work in healthcare in a role that has vacancies in every trust. We’re very portable and yet stay where we both grew up. Kids would be ok to move and although we have friends and family here, we’re not committed to staying close by.
3. As mentioned, I work in healthcare and earn £55pa. I could earn more than double that if I moved into agency work. I could either work less hours, or we could be better off financially. But I’m always wary due to pension, sick pay etc. DH earns considerably more than me and we’d be ok if I had periods where I couldn’t get a contract (which is unlikely anyway)

Has anyone made any of these changes?

YABU - midlife crisis, stop moaning and accept the status quo
YANBU - you could be more imaginative/daring with your work/location/finances

What kind of jobs are your kids likely to have? Would you like to have easy access to any grandchildren?

If the kids are likely to end up in London I would've delighted to be living on a convenient line even if I am not using it much now.

How exciting 😁, what area are you moving to?

We wouldn’t want to live in the middle of nowhere… we’d want to be close to a town and a station for work and logistics

Yes, wherever we moved would have to be convenient. We wouldn’t move to the middle of nowhere.
My job is extremely secure, DHs seems to be. Although to be honest, his job security would be less of a concern without our fat mortgage.
We’d look to be within commuting distance of a city for kids future careers (but it wouldn’t be London)

Not just me then 😁
I watch TV shows where 5 beds are £500k in these green, picturesque areas. Where we live, you’d be lucky to get a 3 bed for that and you can’t get away from road noise

Good point, I feel we need to spend some time in different places at colder times of the year. Most of our experience is during summer hols!
One of my friends has moved to south coast and she finds the weather better there than where we live.

When you put it like that…. 😂

We’d look at downsizing, but the children each have their own rooms now. Round here, we could probably knock £150k off our mortgage if we wanted to move to a 4 bed with a smaller garden and a less nice location. But I’m not convinced it would be a big enough change to warrant the bedroom sharing and other compromises….
Excellent you got to travel more and take a sabbatical 😁

That’s depressing 🥴, thanks for pension info - I find them confusing
I wonder if I should look at 50/50 NHS and agency work, bit of a compromise between extra money but maintain job security/pension.
I could do that whether we stayed or moved, all trusts advertise for my role frequently.

Don't move somewhere just to get out of a mortgage. Maybe you feel stuck because you work is mundane and lacks meaning. So I'd do more soul searching about what exactly is bothering you.

If you do decide to move, look at places crying out for your skill set (NHS) rather than house prices.

I'd also strongly suggest you think about volunteering to give life purpose.

I completely disagree with wow because being mortgage free (we are close to it) is so liberating. Lots of people move to reduce a mortgage or to be free of one altogether.

I live in Yorkshire but have lived in several places and I wasn't born here so I wasn't returning home or anything. We are here for jobs. Housing costs vary massively due to local schools, amenities, transport links etc.

Things to consider, will you be wanting to travel back to your current area to see friends and family? Think about the travelling needed to accomplish that, so how close to a motorway do you want to be? How much support do they currently provide, can you go without it?

The school search may be the hardest part in all of this especially ones with places for in year admissions.

What do you currently spend your free time doing? Would you want to do more cycling and hiking?

I think you should consider staying up here, have a holiday and work out what you will miss from where you are now if you do decide to take the plunge and do it. Work out the logistics.

I really like my actual job, it’s not at all boring. And pretty much every trust has vacancies in my role, so that wouldn’t narrow it down 😁
The main appeal of agency work (as well as doubling my wage) is the flexibility. We get generous annual leave allowance but it’s hard to actually take it when we want.
We have to request our AL early (all booked up now until March ‘26), it has to be divided equally across the year and I can only take 3 weeks off out of the 13 weeks of school holidays. Why do I want time off when my kids are at school?!
Half our department are agency workers and they just say when they’re available, just gets a bit frustrating at times.
I think that would be similar in any dept for my role though.
Mortgage wise, would be nice not to have a £2k payment every month

Thank you, really helpful.
We don’t rely on family at all, pretty self sufficient. We’d like to be able to travel back, but wouldn’t be often.
We holiday in Peak District and Yorkshire yearly and love it. When we’re up in the summer, we’ll use it as an opportunity to explore as a potential resident rather than a holiday maker.
Was talking to DH about some of these responses and we’ve decided to go up for a weekend in a colder month too, so we see what it’s like when it’s not at it’s shiniest 😁

I don’t think you’re being unimaginative, but you do sound (somewhat) unhappy. So that’s the main factor, and it sounds as if you have choices to make changes to combat that. What you don’t want to do is ‘run away’ somewhere only for it to be your new normal and be dealing with a different set of unhappy circumstances in a few years time, despite the money.

A word of warning on NHS agency work – my brother is high up in finance in NHS and they are slashing agency workers to deal with the redundancy targets.

Thanks… I wouldn’t say I’m unhappy, more disillusioned 😂. That classic midlife pondering of ‘is this what I want to be doing for the next 20 years of work’ and do we want to live here or are we just being lazy.
I’m happy in the actual role I’m trained in, but I find our outgoings a bit painful (and the mortgage is a big chunk of that)
Yes, they’re eying up cutting back on agency. They have a drive every few years to do so and then realise they can’t staff departments without them. Our trust recently capped agency rates for my role and within 2 weeks had backtracked.
I think I’d rather have a smaller mortgage and then agency work would hold less appeal!