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just wanted to know your thoughts...
So the hubby and I have been having trying to figure out if we want to continue living in San Francisco or plan on moving closer to our parents down to the southern cities of the bay area (pluses will be bigger place to live and free daycare from the parentals). It's not for a while since we don't have any kids yet...but we are trying to figure when and if we are going to sell our condo in city. Oh, and since the economy still sucks, we'd have to commute up to the city still.
Anyways, I love my city and am not fond of the idea of leaving it. The hubby loves it too but he made a point to say this yesterday...
"When we have kids, it's not going to be about you or me anymore...it's going to be about what's best for them."
Sooo...is he right? Hehe, he probably is. Thoughts?
:-)
halekulani 02.02.08
my kickass bio :P
Re: just wanted to know your thoughts...
I do agree with his statement.
That said, even when you have a baby, you probably won't need to move for a while, assuming your condo has more than 1 bedroom - so even though kids are still a while off, I don't think you need to make any decision right away. I'd sit tight, see how the real estate market does, etc. It's good that the discussion is on the table, but I'm not sure that you need to make a solid decision (e.g., "We'll move in Feb 2010") at this point - you never know, it might end up making more financial sense to stay in the city for a year after your first child is born.
And I know you didn't ask for advice about this, but I'm a busybody so I thought I'd throw it out there re: free daycare from the parentals. I know this works for a lot of people, and I know our situation is different to yours, but even though we live 5 min from Ben's parents (who have mentioned several times that they'd like to do it), we're trying very hard to avoid having them for daycare.
It's not that they're bad people or anything like that, but having a single person (or even two people) act as the carers can be tricky. In our situation, his dad has health problems and they're both retired and enjoy traveling to visit other family members - so the reasons we don't want them to do it is because if his dad has to go into the hospital, or if they decide that they want to go somewhere, we'd have absolutely nothing for a backup plan because it's impossible to get into a daycare on short notice here so one of us would have to take a week (or two, or three) off work. This is why we want a daycare where there is a team of people, so if one of them calls in sick or something, there will still be someone available to look after our children.
The other objections I have are that their house is not child-safe (not just household items, but two bitey Jack Russells) and they don't have any first aid training for dealing with emergencies with children - these are mostly things that can be fixed, but when you add it on top of the other stuff, it's just a great big NO situation from my point of view. So I just thought I'd throw it out there (and if none of this is relevant, then totally ignore me lol).
ETA: The other thing about parents as daycare that I was thinking about is a friend of mine whose mother-in-law watches her little daughter - the MIL isn't a nice person to begin with and refuses to do anything my friend's way because MIL "knows best" and it's an immensely frustrating situation for my friend. Now I'm absolutely NOT saying your parents would be like this at all, but I know that my MIL probably would be to some extent...and it's easier to tell people to do something your way when you're paying them lol, which is another reason we're looking at a regular daycare. And I'm sorry this was so long and probably seems like a big rant...it's really not, it's just something I've been thinking about a LOT lately, so I really really hope I didn't offend you (or your parents, who I'm sure are awesome!) by any of this!
My opinion... stay in the city as long as you can! If you have a big enough place (2-3 br) then you don't reallly have to move until they start school... assuming you want to send them to a good public school and the better ones are in the burbs.
We loooove the city and decided to stay as long as we could... We had a 1br tho so we needed more room for baby. Plus there are much better schools outside the city. If we had a 2br we would have stayed another couple years.
That said, we LOVE our house and new location! So...... Things can surprise you.
Keep in mind that it might be less stressful to move before you are pregnant and have a deadline. But what if you move and it takes a while to have kids... You could have had more time in the city!
There is no right answer... Move when you're ready. HTH!
Malia & Dave & Alexa
Happily married since 2-17-08! Three since 9-9-09!
Baby Blog
I was born and raised in San Francisco and am so glad that I was! I had a wonderful childhood in the City! In fact, I was devestated when I went off to college and my mom and younger brother moved to Alameda (closer to extended family since my mom was going through a divorce). In time though, I began to appreciate the greater Bay Area, especially the weather and lower(ish) cost of living than SF.
After a year of college in Oregon I transfered to San Jose State and lived in San Jose from 1994-2008. Again, I developed a new appreciation for this part of the Bay Area...great weather...commutable to EVERYTHING (beach, mountains, SF, etc). If we had been able to afford to stay, we would have. But since we wanted to start a family and not be scraping by on artist's salaries in the Silicon Valley we decided to pack it up and move to OK. So I am learning to love our new city of Tulsa....which is not San Francisco but it does have some wonderful assets in its own right.
Since the economy is not fully recovered, if you can sell your condo and not lose money on it, you might be able to get a GREAT deal right now on a place closer to your folks. If you cannot sell your SF condo at a profit right now, I'd say sit tight. You can certainly have baby in SF. Like I said, I was born and raised there...my childhood memories are peppered with life at Ocean Beach and The Cliff House (and mechanical musee), Golden Gate Park (museums, Stowe Lake, Tea Garden, etc.), The Zoo, Ghiradeli Square, Pier 39, and later, as a teen, Haight Street and Clement Streets as well as Union Square, The Castro, Noe Valley and Embarcadero.
By best friend is raising her toddler there without issues...it just depends upon the lifestyle you have in mind for your own children. Suburbia certainly has it's benefits, but I wouldn't change my upbringing in SF for all of the soccer fields and minimalls in the world!
TTC/PG Blog | Mommy Blog
H and I moved back to Denver from Seattle to be closer to family knowing that we were planning on having babies. Now that we have one, for us, it was the. best. decision. ever.
My mom comes over and spends the night (in what we call the Grandma Cave in the basement) once a week so she can watch the baby 2 days in a row while I go to work. If H and I want to go to a concert and know that we won't be home till late, we can drop her off at the grandparents and have her spend the night there without worrying about getting home so the babysitter can leave. We have flexibility and never have to worry about not having childcare. Last month when we did our triathalon, we dropped Ella off at my parents the night before so we didn't have to worry about getting the baby awake, feed, changed and packed up before we had to leave for the race at 7am.
For us, it gives us the freedom to still have a little independence outside of parenthood.
I tell my girlfriend that parenting is a 2 person job...and in my world, it's a 3 person job
Having the support makes a world of difference.
Either way
H and I moved back to Denver from Seattle to be closer to family knowing that we were planning on having babies. Now that we have one, for us, it was the. best. decision. ever.
My mom comes over and spends the night (in what we call the Grandma Cave in the basement) once a week so she can watch the baby 2 days in a row while I go to work. If H and I want to go to a concert and know that we won't be home till late, we can drop her off at the grandparents and have her spend the night there without worrying about getting home so the babysitter can leave. We have flexibility and never have to worry about not having childcare. Last month when we did our triathalon, we dropped Ella off at my parents the night before so we didn't have to worry about getting the baby awake, feed, changed and packed up before we had to leave for the race at 7am.
For us, having family around gives us the freedom to still have a little independence outside of parenthood.
Most people agree that taking care of children is 2 person job, in my world, it's a 3 person job
Cerclage placed @ 21w6d due to CI (IC)
I don't have kids yet but for me, I would say do whatever works for the both of you. I think it's a different case for each person. DH & I lived in our respective condos before we got married. Mine is in Alexandria, VA which is right outside DC and DH's condo is in DC. We can't stay in either place since it's too small for the both of us. Both DH & I work in the city and there is no way I can have him move to the burbs or in VA. It made more sense for us to buy a place in DC. With the current state of the economy, we didn't want to sell our condos so we are currently renting them out. We'll wait for the market to get better before we sell. We ended up buying a 3 bedroom row home in the city. This is enough for what we need in the immediate future. We have the space that we need (although for the price that we bought it for, we could've gotten a much bigger place in the burbs) and the commute to work is great (subway accessible; 10 min by car, 30 mins by foot). We plan to have kids soon but we know that we will move again by the time the kids go to school. DC does not have a good school system so we know we'll either need to send the kids to a private school or move just right outside the city. By that time, hopefully, the economy has turned around and we wouldn't have problems selling our current home. DH's parents live in Southern MD which is about 45 mins away from where we live. It's close enough that we can call them or drive down if in case we need help with babysitting.
There will definitely be trade offs any decision you make so you just have to weigh the pros and cons. I am sure things will work out great for the both of you :-). GL!
Yeah, YH has a point. I think it's definitely smart to start planning ahead and center plans around future kids if you guys are planning to TTC sometime soon. We didn't really plan to TTC so soon so now I'm pg and we're stuck on a lease on a 3rd fl 1-br apt (no elevators) so we're gonna end up moving probably sometime in the beginning of my 3rd tri (when our lease is up) but we have no room for a nursery or anything and walking up and down 3 stories is gonna suck as I get bigger. So yeah, if you guys have any TTCing thoughts for the near future, I'd probably recommend start preparing for it now
I wish we did!
Going up and down 101 during traffic hours does suck tho! That's the commute I have =P If you guys can carpool, it helps (a little). There's always Caltrain too. My friend commutes back and forth between Palo Alto and the city on it and at least you can sleep on it (which is probably something you'd like more of when you have kids =P).
I love thenest. It always aids in my procrastinating on studying.
Thank you ladies! as always...so helpful. It's funny how it's easier to ask a question here than it is to talk to some of my friends.
Lisa- Yea the whole thing about the parents is a valid point. I have heard both positive and negative things about having the parents take care of the kids. The one good thing is that hubby's mom has been running a daycare in her home for the last 15 years, so that makes me feel better that all these parents have trusted her to help raise their kids. And also, the in-laws never butt into our lives (they even help pay for part of the wedding and didn't demand anything).
Lori- I'd so raise kids in the city if I was rich enough. I grew up in Palo Alto, DH in Milpitas (which is where we'd move to since PA is just as expensive as SF). If I could double my salary, I'd be set!
Malia- I can see why you love your house. It's hella cute!
Kshiz- Grandma cave. haha
Ericka- You're lucky you can rent out your condos. I don't think the rent would cover everything if we tried to rent out ours. btw, if you ever need a tenant for your Alexandria place, my bro lives there and i think he's lease is up soon. hehe. He's clean...freakishly clean.
Inamra- good point about sleeping on Caltrain. I used to take it from PA to the city too. I always feel asleep in both directions. Luckily I always woke up in time on the way back to PA. Where do you live? Could you take 280?
I wish we could keep our condo if we had a baby, but really...it's too expensive. We have a 2 bedrm so space wise we're good. I think we're probably the poorest homeowners in my building. We bought in a brand new building in an upcoming area so we definitely paid $$$ ( i don't even want to tell you ladies cause you'll all think I'm crazy). There's no way we could afford to pay mortgage if I was on a part time basis. I guess I should note that moving to Milpitas would save us about $3k a month (maybe we could buy a vacation condo in Hawaii!!!). It's so sad because we have saved nothing this year. Which brings me to another question....how much should you be saving $$ in preparation for a baby?
Ok back to studying...exam tomorrow. FYI- make sure none of your kids go into architecture!!! we get paid peanuts and have to pay to take all these tests after school too. hehe
In that case, I think it sounds like a good idea! It's a totally different situation to the one with my in-laws, I know.
As to how much $$$ you should save, it really varies depending on your circumstances. Will you have paid maternity leave or unpaid? That makes a huge difference. We're not saving a huge amount (a few thousand, but not a ton) because I'll still be drawing a paycheck while I'm on leave, but if I wasn't, I'd want enough saved to cover ALL our expenses (all living expenses + extra for baby stuff, even if DH will still be bringing in money) for that period of time, plus an additional buffer because potentially running out of money makes me very nervous.
We're also not saving specifically for baby items because we're pretty good savers anyway and are just buying stuff as we go, item by item (so no need for us to save up a lum sum to decorate the nursery as we don't plan on doing it all in one hit).
I live and work *right* off of 101 so it doesn't make sense to take 280 =P But if you can, I totally would.
Hm, the only thing about Milpitas is that the city is built on a dumpster and it smells horrible. I can't stand it, so I personally would never live there but maybe my nose is just too sensitive. For me, it's so strong that I *always* know when we're driving by Milpitas w/o looking. Like I'll be completely reclined in the car, sleeping, while we're on 880...and then I'll wake up to this putrid stench and ask MH, "Ew, are we driving by Milpitas?"