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Originally Posted by NAF1138
Well, that's the question isn't it? Can a family of 3 reasonably afford to live in New York City? What is the difference between that and New Jersey, and where in New Jersey can a family with a small child (and hopefully another on the way in the near future) live and still commute to Summit reasonably if Summit itself is out of the question (don't know if it is or not, but it's nice to have other options).
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I live in New York City with my wife and two kids on roughly $80k per year.
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We rent a 2 bedroom in Los Angeles right now. For $1,800 a month we get a very short commute to our offices 900 sq feet of living space, a relatively safe and family friendly neighborhood, and the joys of living in a duplex rather than an apartment complex. I don't know what, if anything is comparable to that in the New York City area, but I think we can probably find something comparable to that in New Jersey. Maybe with a dishwasher as a bonus?
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It takes us a little while to commute to downtown from where we are at the north end of Manhattan. For $ 2000 we have about 900sf in a 1.75 bath 2.5 bedroom apartment. Meaning that we have one bathroom with a shower-bath and another bathroom with just a shower. We have two bedrooms, one is billed as an office because it is not much larger than a walk-in closet out in the burbs.
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I don't know if New Jersey is really going to be a forever home or just a part of a five year plan to get us to our forever home. She grew up in Philly and lived in Brooklyn for about 2 years, so I am not worried about her adjusting. But I know exactly nothing about living back east. I do expect some culture shock.
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Yeah, there will be some of that. If you're talking about work in Summit, you can actually live half an hour south of Summit and be about half an hour from Philly if there is family in Philly. Princeton is the halfway point for NYC and Philly.
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If she gets the job we are taking it, that isn't really in question. It's far too good an opportunity, and opens up far to many doors for her to pass it up. I just don't know what happens then.
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Well, New Jersey is a great place. If you look around you can find really nice coffee shops and bars with live music. There are farmers markets, pretty much everything you'd find in a major city as long as you spread your net wider than just one town. Which isn't that hard considering a town like Summit is less than 5 square miles and you have that fabulous Jersey thing where you can drive in a straight line into a town out into another town back into the first town, into yet another town and back into the first town again. In otherwords, the towns are small but they are back to back.
Farleigh Dickinson University is in Madison NJ which is close to Summit and that's a cool town. It's pretty easy to get to New Brunswick and Boundbrook which are both college towns and get lots of rock shows and that sort of thing if you're into that.
For me New Jersey has a vibrant artist community, and unlike the big cities it tends to be less pretentious, more laid back. One of the nicer arts communities I've been involved with. That matters to me a lot. Might not matter to you at all.
And New Jersey is fairly central to the entire northeast. 4 hours to DC, less than an hour to Philly less than an hour to NYC, 4.5 hours to Boston.
How old is your little one? I live in Inwood, and if you have a little one, it's probably the best neighborhood in the city to raise a small child.
I think the biggest drawback to me of living in the part of NJ that you talk about living in, is that it's super white collar commuter town style. I can't stress enough that it's the wealthiest part of the entire country. Sure there are places like the Hamptons or Beverly Hills that concentrate mega-wealth into a tiny area, but that area of New Jersey has something like half a dozen of the wealthiest zip codes all abutting each other. If you're not rolling large in that area, it can be alienating for your child. And by that I mean like if you have a family income of $ 100k per year, your kid will be one of the poor kids in Summit.