IMDB describes the movie Winter’s Bone as “An unflinching Ozark Mountain girl hacks through dangerous social terrain as she hunts down her drug-dealing father while trying to keep her family intact.” It is a great movie, and definitely one worth seeing. It shows a teenager who struggles through a wide variety of problems just in an effort to keep the family and the family’s house all together in one piece. I definitely understand the motivation behind the character, though there was always one little nagging thought in the back of my mind. If this place is so tough, and so rough, and doesn’t provide any semblance of help for the family – why do they stay there?
In my own life, I’ve recently been struggling with a very similar question. When we moved to our current place, we had jobs that we liked, plenty of friends nearby, and it was where we knew we wanted to spend a couple of years “just living”. No bigger goal or purpose than enjoy life and the first year or two of our marriage. That time, however, has passed. Our jobs have been stagnant, and we can’t see a way to make them work for our needs in the future. Our friends have moved away or moved on. And I think we are coming to the end of our “just living” phase, and we need a plan and a direction for something more. Whether that be saving money for a vacation, or so that we can buy a house, we don’t know. We do know, however, that our goals are in conflict with our current place of residence.
The reality of our current living situation is that we live in a city that has the second highest cost of living in the country. Our housing costs more, our food costs more, our transportation costs more. This definitely clashes with our plan to save money. It is worth it, for a time, to spend that money in order to live here, but seeing as our motivation for staying is dwindling, and our motivation for leaving is growing, I am not too sure how much longer we are going to stay here. Sometime financial reasons trump personal reasons, and sometimes personal reasons trump financial ones. In this case, I am thinking that it is a little bit of both.
What shocks me the most, I think, is how rarely people consider just leaving. There seems to be dominant instinct to stay where one is most comfortable. People grow up in a city, go to school in that same city, and settle down in the city. Perhaps they move from district to district, but they won’t move out of province, or even across the province. And I don’t understand why that is. Some friends of ours moved to another province, far away from the majority of their friends and family, just so that they could take advantage of a better job economy. They are planning on getting out of debt, so they made a necessary sacrifice to do what they needed to do. If you have a financial problem that could be solved by simply relocating, why wouldn’t you?
In BC, for example, there are plenty of jobs up north that pay significantly more than their counterpart in the “nicer” parts of the province. Yet, even if it was temporarily, no one seems willing to go up there and do that work. It is not like you have to stay there for the rest of your life, but if you could, in 3 years, pay off all your debt and be able to afford a house, would you? If not, why not? Are you really so attached to your local supermarket that you aren’t willing to abandon it for a better future for yourself or your family? There are plenty of people who moved from a different country to Canada just for the opportunity to make more money than they could back home. A lot of them live as cheap as possible in this incredibly expensive city so that they can send money back home and support their extended family. That is a huge sacrifice and dedication to a better future, and yet so many Canadians of my generation seem unwilling to put up with temporary hardship in order to make for a better future – myself included. Why is that?
If you are having some financial difficulty, or even if you have a plan or a dream you don’t think is otherwise possible, have you considered relocating? Why or why not? Do you feel like the personal sacrifice would be worth the financial gain? Why or why not?
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Alan Schram writes about personal finance and his encounters with it in his everyday life. Alan is recently married and is looking to save money on expenses and reduce his debts.
I can give you one reason. For some of us, we have children. The kids are established in their schools and have made all their friends. These are some important personal considerations that trump financial ones. I met a few people who said they grew up with a dad or mom in the military and how they had to move all the time. It was tough for them but their family didn’t have a choice. So, moving for kids is not an easy thing and I wouldn’t want to tear my kids from their friends unless I absolutely have to.
Moving is certainly a sacrifice, but so is making changes difficult. Moving should be one of the choices you consider, but there are other changes that may equal the sacrifice of moving. If I were not willing to move, it means I must make other changes to reach my goal. If I am not willing to do that, I really do not want to achieve that goal.
It is easy to compare Canadian provinces to each other on different economic, social, and other metrics. On the other side, it is never easy to move away from the place you were born in or to leave your family and friends. I think it depends from person to person whether they are able to sacrifice all of this or not.
Moving is more than just a finacial decision. If you have kids, it’s a decision about how much the grandparents will be involved in supporting you and bonding with the munchkins. If you have a house or condo, it’s whether you can afford to move away and come back later if the real estate prices rise. And it’s about the relationship between what you can earn and what you must pay because typically you make more in a high-cost city like Vancouver than you do in a lower-cost spot. If you buy in a higher-cost place and can pay off your mortgage over 10-20 years, you’ll be better off than if you end up owning a $250,000 house in a small town because your higher income will have bought you a bigger investment.
I’ve felt the same about moving countries. I’ve always had rather a pipe dream to up and move to France.
I’ve moved countries 4 times and every time a had to learn the language all over again. besides that it was a great experience.