jesselangdon

I enjoyed your story too. Good on you for going for it! At the very least, you tried!

Another major factor you didn't mention is urban housing prices. Before kids, we lived near downtown Seattle in a walkable, urban neighborhood. It was great, and is where I would have preferred to stay long-term. When we decided to have kids, we knew that buying a large condo or decent-sized detached home within the Seattle city limits would be way out of our price range (housing prices in Seattle have almost reached San Francisco/Silicon Valley level).

So we moved out to the burbs, where we could afford a starter home big enough for our two kids and a mother-in-law.