Would you move to an undesirable location for career/money?

[alison]

I've never been there before, but my dad went to grad school in Cambridge, MA while my mom worked in Boston at an architectural firm (back in the late 70s). They're both Asian and I don't recall them saying anything about Boston not being a diverse city. Aren't there tons of fabulous universities - that usually draws in people from all over.

[Flynn]

But most private practice specialists make enough money to afford college/retirement, even in desirable areas where physicians make less.

I totally disagree here. That has not been our experience and DH is a heart surgeon -- very specialized. If we had stayed in a major city "area" we would have been PAID LESS and our house would have been less space at twice the sticker price. Add on that in Southern Cal for example private school IS A MUST and add 10,000 at least for one kid to go to kindergarten. Could we have afforded to stay in a place with a city close by? Sure. But at a HUGE cost.

We chose a job in a city two hours from a major city where there are excellent schools and a safe environment for our kids. The job pays almost twice as much as one of the "city jobs" DH was offered and he only has to work out of ONE hospital. 80% of the city jobs offered were two hospital or MORE jobs. That equals crappy hours!!!!!

We can travel at will due to salary at our current job and the schedule for the job is heaven. Great hours. Fantastic. DH gets to do a variety of procedures he wouldn't be able to do at a big institution where the mentality mostly is "find your thing and make a name for yourself doing that ONE procedure."

Have we sacrificed moving here? HELL yes! It's not ideal for me but it's pretty close for my kids and my husband so I'll find some friends eventually.

Life is a compromise.

[PrincessFiona]

DH is also a specialist (Infectious Disease) and like Flynn, the salaries we found in major cities (like Minneapolis/St. Paul) are substantially lower than what he earns here in the more rural area...and the cost of living is much higher in the bigger cities. In addition, dh would have to go to a minimum of 2 hospitals/day. DH also earns nearly twice what the jobs in the twin cities offer with more time off and much less stress. He has more free time now than we know what to do with. It's scarey when you wish your dh could take *call* just so you could finally watch season 2 of desperate housewives on DVD. He is able to attend nearly every school function (including little programs during the day if he knows in advance).

It's good and bad...I really struggle with not being able to put Alex and Aidan in the german immersion school (too far away), with the fact that there isn't much school choice (but our district was ranked one of the top in the state last year) and with the fact that in order for me to go back to school I will really have to make that drive. DH misses being able to teach...it was a big part of residency and fellowship for him.

Safety? A definite plus. Schools? No need for private school tuition. We also have Indian, Romanian and African physicians...

kris

[Vishenka69]

If you've seen any of my previous posts, we've been antagonizing over this decision for some time now. DH is currently looking for a post-training job and we're still not sure where we want to live. At the moment we're leaning more toward a close suburb of a major city (with rich cultural life and an international airport). I'm too much of a city girl to be really happy or even content in a rural area, the most I can handle is a semi-city environment.

We know that by staying close to a big city, we have to sacrifice DH's salary and most likely schedule/time off. But not as much if we stayed in the city itself. The difference in salary, vacation time and call frequency is exactly double between rural and city. Being somewhere in the middle seems to make the most sense.

I've never been there before, but my dad went to grad school in Cambridge, MA while my mom worked in Boston at an architectural firm (back in the late 70s). They're both Asian and I don't recall them saying anything about Boston not being a diverse city. Aren't there tons of fabulous universities - that usually draws in people from all over.

It could be due to the post-9/11 environment, plus them being "Middle Eastern". In addition to universities, Boston also has a large, blue collar population, which tends to be less racially sensitive.

[Sheherezade]

Some areas around Boston are very racially diverse. Others - not so much. I agree that there are regions of Boston in which prejudice is alive and well. You can find a good area, but you have to know what you are picking. Southie? Probably not. Brookline? Yep.

[ides]

I would like to say no. That we will stay in the megalopolis after residency (which is what we both want to do), get a medium two bedroom place and live a cozy metro life. However we are not sure that dh will get a fellowship here or after finnishing residency we'd be able to afford living here. True, theoretically we will be making a lot more money, however we will have greater than 200k in education debt and almost no savings for retirement, etc. We have said we will stay here, but we've got to take all matters into consideration including possibly having a child. Whether or not we stay in the city, we will not go rural. We'd both :! before that even if they agreed to wipe out our edu debt. We're both city people and learned that well over a miserable five years of med school in the opposite kind of location.

UM....do we have a choice?
I guess I missed that part.....cuz that's all we do -
Move every 2 years to undesirable, ridiculously expensive places so DH can be a pediatric surgeon. -

[houseelf]

Wow, I see both sides of this. Cherie, don't hate me, but I would have probably committed suicide if we ended up in Rochester. (Sorry that my version of hell is your version of ideal).

There just ain't a lot going on in Rochester. I could deal with Duluth or maybe even St. Cloud (with a vulgar amount of money...I'm talking stinking, obscenely rich so that we could travel and buy some toys like snow mobiles and jet skis to create our own fun).

I just don't think I could do 7 months of winter in small town Minnesota. DH is gone so much. I would be stuck indoors alone with small children with nowhere to go. I could do ONE crappy factor: small town with no where to go OR long winters, but I probably couldn't survive both.

DH is specialized enough that we will be at least living in a mid-sized city. Oh, and I don't kid myself, DH will probably always have a crappy schedule because of his personality and profession. Our choice is more: "Where we are on the continuum of crappy hours?". That is our reality.

Kelly

[SuzySunshine]

Kelly - I won't shoot you, I know this place isn't for everyone. I also know that our perspective is a little different. DH grew up in a KC suburb, I grew up in a small town of 3,000. Between then and now we lived in Lawrence, KS which is about the same size as Rochester and we lived in big cities like Denver (I did) and the SF bay area of Palo Alto.

We chose to live in a smaller (albeit sleepier) town because after living in Denver and Palo Alto and we didn't want to sit on highways in traffic for hours, we didn't want to deal with the hub bub and rush of a big city. We also wanted to be close enough, but not too close, to our families.

We don't "do" much. We prefer to spend our time together curled up on the couch watching a movie or out hiking with the dog. When we have kids I'm sure it will be very much the same.

The only comment I don't understand about your post is the comparison to St. Cloud. I realize they have a university and we don't but other than that our towns are very similar, yes they are a little closer to the twin cities but their demographics, incomes, malls, etc. are all VERY similar. I can't compare us to Duluth as I've never been there.

Now Rochester is definitely NOT the place for single residents, IMO. Because I'm told the young, single life STINKS here. Very hard to meet people.

I'm rambling now but I will say that we can very comfortably live here on a consultant neurosurgery salary. Have a fabulous house, put our kids in the private schools, and travel at will. THAT is what we want out of our after training life, we don't need the city pace to go with that.

We considered moving to an undesirable area after residency to take a job that paid an insane amount of money. But, we were pretty sure we would dislike the town, hate the weather, hate the location (too far from the ocean and too far from the mountains), and we had a feeling that we wouldn't quite fit in....BUT, the money was tempting. Who cares if you're miserable if you are making big $$, right?? We figured with the extra money, we would be able to take lots of vacations and forget about how much we hated living there (at least until we returned.)

In the end, we decided the money just wasn't worth it. We didn't want to spend our lives looking forward to vacations...we wanted EVERY day to feel like a vacation. We couldn't be happier with where we live and we haven't thought twice about passing up the other job.

[anwanie99]

Right now in my life, I have to say that I don't think we would move to an undesirable location for the money. After living in two very large cities, and then moving to this (smaller) town in Georgia for med school, I have not been super happy. There are not many jobs for me and the atmosphere is just not what we're looking for. Granted, we didn't have much choice in location for medical school, but I'm hoping that we'll have more of a choice for our career (you know...in 7 years...)

[cylverdust]

Nope would not move to an undesirable location for money or career.