Has anyone moved far away?

[Aeolienne]

My first proper job out of university was in Crowthorne in Berkshire, which was 44 miles / 71 km from my parents' house in London. Not a huge distance, but I admit I made a bit of a mess-up of the move. I think I had assumed that my employer would help me find somewhere to live, but all they did was send me the property supplement from the local paper and put me in touch with a local landlady. I say "local" but unfortunately they had assumed that I would be driving to work, which was not the case; the aforementioned landlady (who lived 30 minutes' walk from the nearest railway station, Earley) put me up for a week before passing me on to a friend of hers who was in a slightly more convenient location for travelling by public transport (Wokingham): it was on a direct bus route, albeit infrequent and much delayed by traffic congestion and later floods. The stark contrast between public transport provision in Greater London and that in the Home Counties (the counties immediately bordering the capital) came as quite a shock. Another thing that came as a surprise to me was that both landladies were only willing to accommodate me between Monday and Friday. This is actually standard practice for workers doing what's called a "weekly commute" but it was all new to me, and I found it unsettling having to go back to London at weekends and not be able to explore my new area. I continued to look for more permanent lodgings, and eventually (5 weeks into the job) found a houseshare in Bracknell but on literally the day after signing the contract I was dismissed. "Lacking initiative" and "not a team player" were the reasons I was given. I strongly believe that I would have performed far better in the job if I hadn't been so distracted by my domestic affairs. Then again, I would say that...

I guess the old Victorian philanthropist ideal of so-called "model villages" for employees (like Bournville and Saltaire) inevitably died out with the decline of jobs for life. However I have heard of one leading IT company who, in their own words: "provide subsidised accommodation in a company house at our Enfield location [and] also offer company-arranged accommodation in Edinburgh, Chester, Coventry and Cambridge."
Metaswitch

I presume this is just to enable new graduate recruits to settle in rather than for the longer term, but I could be wrong.​

 

[NothingToSeeHere]

Well I lived in New Zealand for a couple of years, which is on the opposite side of the planet from UK. I enjoyed living there but it was just too far from home and family for me to want to stay there long term. I knew I would be able to get a job there so my main concern was just making sure I had enough money to live until I did.

Now I'm back in the UK I live in Bournemouth, which is quite far (for the UK) from 'home' (Norfolk). I moved here specifically for the work, in my career you have to go where the jobs are, not the other way around. Next year I'm going to be moving again, but I'm not going to sell my home, I'm going to rent it out, makes moving often (which I'm probably going to be doing for the next decade or so) far easier than selling and buying every time I move.

Getting a job should be your first priority. Just make sure you are moving for the right reasons... do you expect you lives to change because you're in a different place? Chances are they won't in any real way, wherever you go one thing will never change - you. Having spent time on forums for people who have moved countries they are FULL of people complaining about how they thought there lives would be so much better once they'd moved to their dream location, when actually after the first few months they just settled back into exactly the same routines as they had always lived before.

 

[Ezra]

I grew up in Nevada. Then moved Western Washington which is like another planet in comparison. I like it here much better.

 

[Aeolienne]

Next year I'm going to be moving again, but I'm not going to sell my home, I'm going to rent it out, makes moving often (which I'm probably going to be doing for the next decade or so) far easier than selling and buying every time I move.

One caveat for UK forum members … If you have a mortgage on a property but are not living in it, the level of equity remaining is counted as equivalent to savings re eligibility for means-tested benefits. So if you move to another part of the country for a new job, but lose the said job before you've traded in your property for something more local, you could be find yourself seriously out of pocket.

 

[tlc]

I would LOVE to live in the Rockies. I have several relatives who packed up from Michigan and did just that.

The hardest and most important thing would be the job. You'd have to not only make sure you've got a good secure job first, but make sure you've got a plan B and C and good job-finding potential if it falls through.

 

[oregano]

When I was 18, right after high school, I moved from the distant suburbs of Sacramento to downtown, right in the middle of the "Victorian ghetto", a really bad area that had a lot of cool old "Victorian" houses. After the guy on the bottom floor got into a gunfight with the guy next to my apartment (this was an old high water Victorian house converted to four apartments, two on the bottom and two on the top), my folks told me to get out of there. So I moved to Fremont Park about a half mile away, slightly better area but still downtown and a controlled access building.

Then the following May I moved to San Francisco, on the edge of the infamous Tenderloin ghetto, right next to a methadone clinic. I stupidly signed a year lease, then spent nine months trying to figure out how to break it. So then I moved to a building near Union Square that looked awesome but turned out to be full of roaches and mice. I finally moved back to Sacramento, in the Fremont Park area.

Then I finally moved to my grandfather's acreage outside of town because I'd spent too much time on the internet and got sucked into the Y2K survivalist conspiracy black hole and was convinced that the world would end. When it didn't, the rents were too high for me to leave. So I've only lived maybe 110 miles from home during my life.

My land in far north California is 250 miles away, and my mom doesn't think I can handle it. But there's such a bad housing shortage in the USA that I really have no choice. At least it's in an area where there are more cows than people. But yeah, if you want to move from one distinct neighborhood/city to another you really need to do the research that I was too young and stupid to do at 18, so you don't get caught in a really bad situation.