Where should I live in the US?

[USADilemma]

I've been offered a job in the US. I need to be available to go to meetings at offices in either Boston, LA or Detroit (head office) every few weeks, but could live anywhere, as everyone is allowed to work from home (forever, not just during covid).

I've got no idea where to start! I've only been to the US a few times (Boston/New York/LA).

Where would you live if you could start anywhere? I'd love to be near a largish city for good restaurants/ events / airport links etc. Good schools and ideally a good university if we stay long-term. I'd love to be near water (lake, river or sea). I'd like decent weather, but it doesnt have to be hot and sunny every day, just no brutal winters.

It would be me and my DD (11 years old), so family friendly. I'd have a housing allowance, so budget isn't too much of an issue.

Any suggestions so I can start to narrow it down?!

@BarkingUpTheWrongRoseBush

I love Arizona...great climate, walking and some quite liberal towns. Colorado, never been but looks amazing and liberal again. I couldn’t live in LA the traffic would get me down.

It's 118F/ 47C in Phoenix this week...

I was going to say Asheville NC but I see someone else already has.

Charleston, South Carolina
Savannah, Georgia
Boston, Massachusetts

Cape Cod is lovely!

But Portland, Oregon, has mountains, rivers, lakes and its 1.30 to the beach. It's also a mild climate. No heavy winters and v pleasant summers. Yes, it rains a fair bit and Nov to Feb is generally wet and grey. But you can go skiing easily and Hawaii is a relatively short flight away! The seasons are absolutely glorious and central Oregon has a great vibe too plus amazing sunshine most of the year! And in normal times Portland has a great food and theatre and live music scene.

The main downside though is education. It's not the best, sadly. I think the east coast has a better reputation for good schools.

Nashville! Nowhere near the water nut looks amazing!

@USADilemma

I've been offered a job in the US. I need to be available to go to meetings at offices in either Boston, LA or Detroit (head office) every few weeks, but could live anywhere, as everyone is allowed to work from home (forever, not just during covid).

I've got no idea where to start! I've only been to the US a few times (Boston/New York/LA).

Where would you live if you could start anywhere? I'd love to be near a largish city for good restaurants/ events / airport links etc. Good schools and ideally a good university if we stay long-term. I'd love to be near water (lake, river or sea). I'd like decent weather, but it doesnt have to be hot and sunny every day, just no brutal winters.

It would be me and my DD (11 years old), so family friendly. I'd have a housing allowance, so budget isn't too much of an issue.

Any suggestions so I can start to narrow it down?!

I'd have a housing allowance, so budget isn't too much of an issue.

Budget not being too much of an issue really depends on where you live. Most school districts are financed by property tax. Therefore you will pay either a high(ish) rent/purchase price OR low rent/purchase price and school fees. Either way you will pay for school.
Therefore the amount of your housing allowance will determine the quality of your stay. If your budget is high and you do not have to be in a main city then it could be brilliant.
America is expensive. I do not know why because on paper it is all so reasonable but actually, it is very expensive.

@dudsville

If you factor in that most towns that have commuter airports with flights that will connect with big hubs then you've got too much to choose from. And if this is potentially a base for many years... it sounds like a dream and also just too big! How long do you have to do your research? Portland oregan sounds really cool and will be commutable to your destinations.

Weather in Portland Oregon is shite

You need to go through a filter. What is important to you? Regular flight back to the UK? Look at East coast, weather? Sea or mountains? Liberal or conservative,

What a great opportunity OP - good luck with wherever you decide!

Working for a major company should help with visas, they probably have an allocation which makes things a lot easier. Make sure that they are going to do all the (tedious and lengthy) admin for both you and your daughter so that they come through at the same time. Look hard at your budget before you end your salary negotiation. From a Boston perspective everything is more expensive. Food definitely is. Things like museums and the theatre are too. The MFA in Boston is $25 a visit, we’re used to things like that being free in the U.K. Medical and dental insurance doesn’t cover everything, there will usually be a co-pay. The one that struck me was the cost of toiletries, the cheapest deodorant is $5 in CVS, I use a 99p one from Sainsbury’s here. Once you are settled you can find the cheaper stores (we never had a car, living downtown, it’s not necessary day to day and parking cost a fortune in our building, so we never went out of town shopping). I have no idea how much it costs to run a car, I imagine that is one thing that is less expensive there.
I don’t think furnished apartments are common, so if you’re not shipping your furniture you may need to factor in a trip to IKEA!
I’m sure you will enjoy our time there wherever you decide to live. Make sure you keep your U.K. holidays and explore, internal flights can be cheap as chips and road trips are fun, driving is so easy (once you get used to the total absence of lane discipline on the highway). I should say driving in Boston is insane, absolute mayhem all the time, but the rest of the US seems fine.

My Mum recently retired and is on her own, so wants to help if she can (not sure about visas, how many times a year she could come out).

Your DM will come each time on an ESTA, which allows up to 90 days visa-free travel to the US. AFAIK, there isn't a limit on how many times in a year she could come and go, but if she's coming over every six weeks for two weeks at a time (for instance), she may well get a bit of a grilling at immigration after a time. US immigration is known for being fierce! If she'd come over 1-3 times per year, that wouldn't raise any eyebrows (my own DM used to do that when we lived there and she'd only stay for a week or so at a time).

If your DM will be coming over regularly though and if you and your DD will want to return regularly to the UK, proximity to an airport with regular, direct flights to the UK should be paramount in your search criteria. Flying back and forth regularly from the west coast is a bigger deal than from the east coast, in time, jet lag and cost and I always liked knowing that if anything happened back home and I needed to get back fast, I could jump on a plane and be home the following morning.

Post-Covid, I know a lot of airlines have cut or reduced their timetables, so bear that in mind. Having said that, most major US cities have direct flights to the UK pretty regularly.

I sometimes feel its easier to get through US immigration on an ESTA than a visa. It's definitely a quicker moving queue. Get Global Entry as soon as you qualify, DH has it and he just waltzes through the airport. You also want TSA preapproval if you can get it, to cut the security queues (or lines as you will learn to call them). People will tell you its just for citizens and permanent residents - this is not true.

Thanks so much everyone. This has been incredibly helpful.

I'm going to try and pin them down on exactly how often I'd need to travel, but I'm really liking the look of Denver so far.

It's just missing being on the coast, but I think I can live without that, as there's so much else to do.

Charleston SC is lovely! Beautiful old buildings, great restaurants, on the water, nice weather and it’s east coast too.
I also love New York, really love it, but it would depend on how much money you had for a house and schools budget etc.

I don't think you can rely on your UK-based mother for childcare if you have to travel regularly? There could be immigration issues, covid issues, she could develop health issues. You will need to have a backup every time anyway. So if you think you will mostly have to go to Ann Arbor, it makes sense to base yourself around there. It's a nice place!

Air travel in the US is often unpleasant, takes forever, the distances are huge. I think you would regret putting yourself in a situation where you had to do it a lot more often than you needed to.

For perspective, it's like saying you need to be in London often, with occasional trips to Paris and Athens, so you've decided to live in Lithuania. I mean, you could, but why would you make things more difficult than they need to be, as a single parent?

The education in the Boston suburb of Cambridge is out of this world. Plus it is an easy commute into Boston. I would move there in a heartbeat.

Ann Arbor is lovely I hear, but it also has cold snowy winters. 43 inches of snow on average per year! That's a lot of shovelling.

This is a handy looking website for comparisons - www.bestplaces.net/climate/city/michigan/ann_arbor

I am most familiar with Boston out of those you've listed and would say Boston! I spent time each year in Portsmouth, New Hampshire which was only 45 mins drive north of Boston. Portsmouth locale great for access to skiing in the weekend, beaches in the summer and Boston for culture/ big city/ university/ airport.

Also, if you will be coming back the UK regularly (family etc), you want to be on the East coast due to flight times so Boston or near would be my choice again!

@Thethingswedoforlove

The education in the Boston suburb of Cambridge is out of this world. Plus it is an easy commute into Boston. I would move there in a heartbeat.

So would I. Also so liberal leaning. People in Boston apologised to us for having Trump as President. I felt like I'd found my people!

OP, I would also be looking at more historically left leaning places plus tighter gun laws.

New Orleans is the best city in America, although probably not suitable for several reasons. Seattle also nice, but a bit rainy.

Ha! Used to live on a pond in Cambridge Mass and then Winchester. Good times. Cold winters. Snow !

43" isn't really too bad--the really snowy places can get over 200"! If she's thinking Denver looks nice, I would say that is fine. Denver certainly has cold winters.

Cities like Charleston and New Orleans are lovely to visit but it's something else altogether to live there. Public services aren't particularly good and it gets very tiring to have so many tourists all the time.

Direct flights back to the U.K. make a big difference, inward connections in the US can be a nightmare. Having said that we most often fly with Ryan Air, so that we clear US immigration in Ireland and avoid the queues on arrival.

Not Ryan Air, Aer Lingus, of course.