Ask HN: People who moved from HCOL cities to the country. What was that like?

[armenarmen]

- What was your job in the city, and what is your job now? Any positive or negative impact professionally?

- What was you last living situation in the city like?

- What is your new place like?

- How long ago did you move?

- Why did you opt to move?

- What do you like most about life in the country compared to life in the city?

- What was hard about about adjusting to rural life?

- How did you pick your location/property?

- What would you tell others looking to relocate from HCOL cities to the country?

if you'd prefer not post publicly, I've got a google form here: https://forms.gle/1oivSS3jBUTXguMq9

[uberman]

Same job. I did once a week in the office but now remote only.

Lived in a row house (full house to ourselves) on a downtown city block.

large ranch on a big property

about 10 years ago

moved to send kids to school of choice

naked hot tubbing (aka privacy), quiet and nature

everyone knows everyone and is related to everyone (but us).

chose the location for proximity to school for our kids. chose the property because it had the facilities/buildings we wanted

WARNING:

Small town politics is "a thing". If you can accept that the guy who runs the local diner is the brother of the mayor and she is also sisters with the head of the school board and married to the public works guy and cousin to the zoning guy and they all are children of the editor of the local paper and you can accept that this one extended family will control all aspects of governance, then you will be fine. It was kind of a rude shock to us and a PITA to fix things after my wife had a fight with the zoning guy before realizing the network ramifications. If you have asperations for your kids, make sure they align with the social reality of community. We have a community of friends where it is expected that the kids will go to college but the "town over" from us had one kid in the entire graduating class who went on to higher ed.

BAD:

It cost us 20k to run cable to our ranch. Restaurants are sparse (if there actually are any at all) and will likely close by 8pm or sooner (9pm if it has a bar). In the city we rarely ate out before 9pm. Our kids complain about how far it is to get to an actual friend's house. Be prepared to do a lot of driving. Forget about uber, grubhub and whatnot. The gig economy is that one guy who bartends at the burger joint and the bowling ally.

GOOD:

We were able to purchased our ranch outright from the proceeds of the sale of our city house that we had only managed to payoff 50%. When we lived in the city, we did not know even the person who lived next door to us. Now I know basically know everyone for miles around and they know us. You can't swing a stick without hitting a trail head, fishing hole, park, or sports field. People might be slow to accept you but once they do you will feel like family. I coach several competitive youth sports programs and people call me "coach" when I am in town. All my kids have great friends. My home office looks out over our ranch from a high point and we are surrounded by state protected land on 3 sides.

[dopeboy → uberman]

Could you share more about the cable situation?

[uberman → dopeboy]

The house came with low quality DSL access but I knew that was not going to be enough for us. The closest cable run was about about two miles away. I guess if I was patient, the low speed DSL would have been fine until the virus hit and now everyone is at home watching zoom.

We limped by at first while we connected with the cable company's engineering division. They scoped out a project to run cable the remaining way to our place down an existing set of power poles.

We paid for the project and if any of our neighbors tied into "our" run in the first few years they would have been forced to help offset the cost of our install. Once they started stringing line, the project was done in a few days including trenching near our house.

We get good internet now and we also run an AT&T mini access point to boost our cell signal. We kept the DSL access as a backup. I have also put in for the StarLink beta program but have not been called.

[giantg2 → dopeboy]

In most places you have to pay the installation cost of utilities from the road to your house. I assume that's what's he's talking about. Sewer and water are even more expensive to install.

[uberman → giantg2]

Yes, the cost quoted was for the cable provider's "project" to string an cable a mile and a half or two from the nearest public road to our house along existing poles.

Our water is a well and sewer is a sceptic tank (we have pumped out every other year) there is also no public garbage collection so we pay a private service to pick up once a week.

[chrismacolor]

- Developer in San Francisco (a rare bird I was),now a developer not in San Francisco.

- A beautiful expensive poop dodging masterpiece, equip with an ambience of liberal virtue signaling socialists.

- A beautiful cheap poop disposing masterpiece, surrounded by honest hard working colonists.

- Bigger. Cheaper. Not often you get more, for less.

- 10 months

- To realize my dream of owning something other than debt.

- Big. Cheap. Guns. Land.

- Learning to walk with my chest held high, embracing plaid, and the increased size of my chin.

- It picked me, with calloused hands and honest gaze.

- Do it. Save your chin.

[armenarmen]

I've been scouting rural properties myself for awhile. And I'm looking to hear from people that already made the transition. And see if there are any landmines that I might be able to miss.

For example, decent internet is a must have from me (and probably all of us here) but anything else come to mind?