When you have children, your life is mostly about the kids. It really doesn’t matter if you live in rural America.
As empty nesters, at 51 and 50, there is nothing interesting about rural America. I’m in South GA now visiting my parents with my wife. They spend all of the their time between yard work doing things around the house and church. My cousins who still live here and their lives are just as boring - unless they go out of town.
> They spend all of the their time between yard work
I do find it a tiny bit offensive the idea that kind of thing is boring because it's not your hobby. I live semi rural (not America) and gardening became a hobby, there are garden shows etc.
Everyone has the same amount of time to fill every day. When it comes to "things to do" I don't really see one optional lifestyle as more fulfilling or hollow than another. I could live in a city, which would open more options, more than I could possibly consume, but at the same time it would also constrain my resources so I wouldn't be able to do as much of one thing.. or have a big garden and a studio for painting.
I have two female cousins who are divorced and whose children are grown or nearly so. They are both in their late 40s, early 50s. They still live in my hometown. Guess how much they hate it here (I’m home for the holidays)?
I would be fine here as a married man. But I can’t imagine being single here instead of my two times being a single adult in Atlanta (22-28 and 32 through 35).
I “retired my wife” at 46 halfway so we could travel more (I work remotely) and halfway so she could pursue her hobbies. I would be okay here because most of what I do is on the weekend and there is an airport here that has two flights a day back and forth to the Atlanta Delta hub. She would absolutely hate it.
My resources were far from constrained making even $150K before 2020 living in a 3200 square foot house I had built in the northern burbs of Atlanta for $335K in 2016.
They are a lot less constrained now though making in the low $200s in state tax free Florida living outside of Orlando. That 200K is nothing to brag about in tech. As o said before that’s what a former intern I mentored at AWS is making as a mid level SA
I... didn't really understand most of what you wrote in context of my post. Yes, if I were single I'd probably go for a city. My wife hasn't had a job since we had kids when I was 25, and I think we're in a much better financial state because it meant we had an easier time shifting our lives around the world for my job. I've never earnt big tech salary but I make more than was possible with the jobs I could access in New Zealand.
I (admitedly much younger than you) would think that assuming there's good internet and decent road connectivity, you could spend a lot of time on your interests and hobbies, no? My biggest hobbies (photography, diy audio) don't really need urban environments after the manufactured camera/woofer leaves the warehouse and ships to your home. Even easier perhaps if your interest is purely coding/laptop work (like writing a novel), I would think?
(For what it's worth - I myself am a city guy, but only because that's where I grew up in and have spent all my life. A town of 100k people feels desolate for me on Sunday evening, but I also don't live with family.)
The two times in my adult life that I was single (22-28 and 32-35), I would have been miserable in my hometown - as are almost everyone I talk to who is stuck here and single.
When I was single and younger, my hobbies were teaching fitness classes around the metro area and participating in group charity races with friends. We use to do one every month.
Yes. A lot of properties in a small town well outside a major city limit can feel pretty rural (and may not be super-expensive). You're probably not walking to a grocery store but you can likely drive to one in 15 minutes or so.
I'm about 50 miles outside of Boston/Cambridge and have easy access to all the shopping I care about and even driving into the city for theater etc. isn't an undue burden. Between myself and a couple other neighbors we're on about 75 acres and adjacent to conservation land.
I don't know exactly. Maybe $400K; haven't had appraised recently. One neighbor has a Christmas tree farm. The other has a pasture with horses. I don't personally have a huge amount of land--a bit over 4 acres. Don't do anything personally with my land.
But, basically, while Bay Area CA is complicated (because of the geography) you can generally get away from walking to things in a city and there are a lot cheaper options in other cases. Lot of exurbs even around generally expensive cities--and even when lots of companies are out there as well.
Probably shaped by Bay area narratives, a lot of people assume that you're either living in the city or you're living in some remote rural location.
