Would you move?

[XDee56]

Our current situation is we live in the South East with two small children in a smallish house but our support network is fantastic here, we grew up here and the majority of friends are here. Dh works from home the majority of the time and I am a sahm. Sometimes I feel like we are mad staying somewhere so expensive when if we were to move 2/3 hours out of london we could afford our dream home with plenty of space for people to stay. Has anyone else made this move and made it work for them?

What would your support network be like if you moved that far away?

Personally I think it’s more important to stay close to your family and friends.

We would have to completely start from scratch as we don’t really know anyone in the area’s we are looking at

We did this three years ago with one child and now have two. It has been really hard. Our house is enormous and beautiful with huge gardens and we have the most stunning scenery on our doorstep, we have a small mortgage. It has however taken almost the whole time to make good friends and my family at home are very tight knit and I still struggle massively with being away from them. We are constantly deliberating whether to move back and whilst we seemingly have everything on paper it feels very hard to be away from the people who know you so well. I know this is pretty useless because I don’t have the answer but I guess my point is it is very difficult and you will likely struggle with it regularly if you do make the move

We did it 21 years ago and never looked back! It was tricky when parents became frail and lots if back and forth, but overall it’s been amazing. Loads of new friends and support. The DC now have said they’ll never want to live in a city.

Having done this before and had to move back, never underestimate how much support and community contributes to your happiness and mental health, sense of belonging. I would stay put.

We did a similar type of move when we had our DS. It was the best thing we ever did. Our quality of life improved immeasurably. We were very much self sufficient before the move though and not really that close to family despite them living on the doorstep so we didn’t feel we were giving up any support network. We didn’t get family support with childcare nor did we see them every week or anything like that so the change wasn’t really that significant from a logistical point of view.

Our DS has got a place at a beautiful village school with outstanding results. His educational experience alone makes the move worthwhile. I couldn’t have imagined living in the city now. Our quality of life would be so much poorer if we did.