Mountains, Suburbs, City or Country?

raisingarizona wrote

It is a lot more laid back in the west and even more so in mountain towns. People live to live, not to work.

nepa wrote

Cheers to that RA!  When we were back East, my wife's office was run like an f'n prison.  Out here, when there is good snow, she rolls into work at noon.  Nobody says a thing because most of her office mates were out playing in the snow too.

Ah yes, "the East sucks" -- I was wondering how much time would go by before someone took that out for a spin.

In my daily interactions I meet many more people who are preoccupied with life outside of work to the point where you can't get people to even focus on work, much. (Honestly that's ok with me, makes it easier to disappear to ski).  Maybe there is more pretending going on in the east? In any case we are generalizing about 100 million people so it's pretty likely that there are many exceptions to whatever rule is being postulated.

I'm sort off in between. Yea I'm living in the suburbs. But if I was willing to work in the city (I'm not) I could make more, have a big house and never see my family. In the last 20 years I've probably left a million on the table in wages.  If I was single, or could sell the concept to my girls, I'd move to the mountains.

Maybe someone could start a separate thread.

My wife keeps breaking my balls that I keep taking off Thursdays in the winter to fish or ski.  I could care less!  

On my death bed I won't be wishing that I had spent more time at work, but I'll probably wish I had more time with family and friends and doing the things I love!  

Harvey wrote

In my daily interactions I meet many more people who are preoccupied with life outside of work to the point where you can't get people to even focus on work, much.

God I wish I could do that.  I have clients who expect me to be laser-focused at a moment's notice.

Harvey wrote

I'm sort off in between. Yea I'm living in the suburbs. But if I was willing to work in the city (I'm not) I could make more, have a big house and never see my family. In the last 20 years I've probably left a million on the table in wages.  If I was single, or could sell the concept to my girls, I'd move to the mountains.

As my daughters like to say "True 'dat".  I live in Poughkeepsie and schlep down to Manhattan b/c that's where all the Wall Street law firms are, and that's what I know how to do.  Sometimes the stress really is a downer and I think about quitting and trying to find work up here, but then every time I look at the income differential it makes no sense to quit.

Petronio

Jamesdeluxe wrote

Ah yes, "the East sucks" -- I was wondering how much time would go by before someone took that out for a spin.

After I re-read my post, I can see how it could be interpreted that way.  Let me step back... apologize, and correct myself.  Honestly, I love both coasts.  I don't think it's necessarily correlated with East/West.  It's more about urban environment vs. mountain town.  We lived in an urbanish area before moving West.  We now live in a small mountain town.  Before coming out here, I was actually living in a few blocks from downtown Scranton PA.  IMO: There is "good" urban and "bad" urban.  Scranton is the text book definition of "bad" urban.  From where we were, to where we are now, the cultures and lifestyles across the board are radically different.  

Petronio wrote

I live in Poughkeepsie and schlep down to Manhattan......

We've probably passed each other on the train.  I've got it a little better than you.......I go out of Beacon and only have to get to One Penn.

I don't care how much you pay me.  I don't want to visit the city let alone live or work in the city.

JTG4eva! wrote

Petronio wrote

I live in Poughkeepsie and schlep down to Manhattan......

We've probably passed each other on the train.  I've got it a little better than you.......I go out of Beacon and only have to get to One Penn.

Well, if you see someone with a "Gore Mountain" bumper sticker on his laptop, that's me.

Luckily, my office is in midtown.  For a year in 2005 I had to do the additional trek down to Wall Street and it was too much.  (On top of business travel to South America and Asia . . . I actually quit that job b/c it was too much time away from home.)

Petronio

Grew up in Queens and like to visit the city, but if family was not there, probably wouldn't make the effort.  If I lived there, I probably would be making more money, but rounding at multiple hospitals, dealing with traffic as I did that, etc., etc..  Here I'm five minutes from work, just over an hour from Gore, three hours from salmon and steelhead fishing and hear my daughters say things like, "I want to live here when I grow up" or "I love this place".  Music to my ears!  When you find a place like that, you stay!  

Sounds like you found your place.

gebbyfish wrote

Grew up in Queens and like to visit the city, but if family was not there, probably wouldn't make the effort.  

Hey, I grew up in Queens, too.  Howard Beach and South Ozone Park.  The family moved out there in the 1950s when they were converting all the old farms around Idlewild airport.

Petronio

Born in an upstate city , chose my profession in higher education to keep a lifestyle environment that focused on staying young attiudinally , offered degrees of freedom and a decent living that afforded a leisure lifestyle in the college university towns of Northern NY region along the St Lawrence River and  1000 Islands regions . In my mid twenties i developed a yr by yr investment strategy with a goal to be retired in my early fifties .

Could have made more $$$ had i opted for the corporate world, But i knew what i wanted out of life .  As an  economist i understood the miracle of compounding interest  by investing early in life while maintaining  financial disciple .

We had the great fortune to advance nicely in the career and moved through all the senior management positions in my field . In addition to my University career, started a parallel career developing Executive Leadership  Development Programs for  the private sector. I

I  operated This business over a twenty year  span and was able to retire at 52 from full time University employment and  draw full pension from the University and enjoy life .  I worked in the business  did just 25. , 2 day training programs a yr after that for 5 more yrs and then pulled the plug , sold the business to my partners .And we both fully retired .

We love the River lifestyle and are close to Placid , ottawa and Montreal so the best of the mountains , the River and the Islands

 Being a guy who thought differently , I always thought i would rather be busy making a LIFE rather than just settle for making a Living . Luckily my life plan worked and i am Very grateful and  taught that kind of financial discipline with my now professional offspring and my grandkids . DID I ALSO SAY I MARRIED THE RIGHT WOMAN , WHO LET ME BE ME ;)

My advice, make your bucks early and then get out. Don't be greedy, the goal is not to be rich, the goal is to be happy.

Here's my dream scenario.

Get rich and become a member at the Yellowstone Club and have a big fancy house there.  Every weekend, fly on my private jet from wherever I live to there and ski untracked powder and fresh corduroy all day every day I'm there.

FWIW:   I don't exactly think the title of this thread (which is my doing) is right, but I didn't want to drift in the thread about the hiker who perished. I wanted to stay away from some variation of "East vs West" as we can go there anytime. Someone proposed "Half Measures" maybe that is more accurate.

Too late for me to get out early... 56 years old with an eight-year-old, doesn't seem responsible to retire just yet. That and the first ten years of my working career spent as a starving artist.

Retirement for me would be continuing to work, but working for myself without concern for making less than the cost of living.

i live in the albany area so skiing is easy. 20 years ago i lived on long island and had a chance for a job in saranac lake. my wife said wrong F&^*ing direction. would have loved to spend the last 20 years living in the adk's. but my wife would have gone stir crazy. if i could go back in time, being a minimalist ski bum does not sound bad.

This thread has a real mis-mash of posts, hard to figure out the angle here. But I'm going off the title of the thread...

...I've lived in the suburbs and frequented the city quite a bit, used to be in Boston a few times a week living 20-30 minutes north. Had a tough decision to make... I wrote it all out on a sheet of paper: Friends and family and community or move to the mountains (with a similar paying job as I had in the suburbs) and live a life of adventure in the mountains.

Without knowing for sure if it was the right or wrong choice, I decided to go for it. Adventure won out. The thing was... I was already living the life of adventure, I just lived 2 hours further away. Now I am in purgatory. No friends or family or community or social scene.

I say the question is all wrong. As long as you can get to the mountains and the drive is acceptable, it matters more where you have a sense of community and purpose. While what we do on the mountain is fun and thrilling, what we do off the mountain with others is the most important. The mountains will always be there but fitting ourselves into a culture... that is what is really important.

Be careful of what you wish for. I'm pretty happy to have had an interesting career that paid well and allowed me to save for my present retirement/semi retirement or whatever it is. If I was 20 and discovered ski town life, I'd be broke and working something low paying in the industry until the end, I guess, unless I got hip to RE sales or something.

I like where I permanently live, which is a high end NYC burb far enough away from the city to have good road biking, but close enough for visits to the culture. At present I'm out in Colorado for two months, which is enough for me. I could not stand living here permanently. Way too vacuous, transitory, and self congratulatory. Dude. Kinda place you wake up in in ten years and wonder where your life went. And where you parked your car.

Mountains, Suburbs or City?   How about adding living  in the country, that where I live. Dirt road, trees and wildlife, 10 mile bike ride early in the morning without seeing a car. Walking the dog without  a leash.  Several lakes and streams near by and thousands of acreas of game lands available. Ninety minutes to the Catskills ,four hrs to Gore.
    Down side ,low paying jobs in the area ,friends and children move away when they graduate. I usually drive 35 to 40 thousand miles a year. If I ever did move (same house 28 years) it would only be to a more remote location!

It costs so much more to live down in those suburbs than it does to live up here in the Daks.  There are some sacrifices like having to drive 30 mins to go shopping to make but the quality of living us worth it.