So I grew up in Boston, the third most expensive city in the US. I always planned on moving somewhere cheaper, but life happened. I managed to build a solid business here, along with a good job, got some huge contacts, plus I met a girl who is determined to stay here no matter what.
When my dad was my age, he made as much money as me, that coasted through his 30’s, and then when the great recession hit (I was a teenager) he lost it all. And I mean everything. That caused him to have a nervous breakdown, and now he dedicates every waking moment of the day to getting back what he lost, which is mostly done through huge gambles on business ideas. He swears his downfall was because of how expensive Boston is. And he drilled that into my head-expensive cities will make you go broke.
Looking back, he never saved a dime of it. Instead, my parents had matching Mercedes, and he also had a Mustang. We had a 3,500 square foot house that was mortgaged to 95% (the pre-crash days). They took first class vacations to the Bahamas every year. I wouldn’t be surprised if after everything was paid, he had a few hundred bucks in his savings account every month. And trust me, he was making a crapton of money for over a decade.
I’m really, really torn. On the one hand, I’ve build a pretty successful professional life for being in my 20’s, and my fiance wants to stay here no matter what. But I’ve had it drilled in my head that if I stay in an expensive city, the exact same thing will happen to me.
Am I crazy? Can living in an expensive city, on it’s own, drive a fiscally sound person broke, or was it all in how my dad blew all his money? Could he have lost all his money in a less expensive place like Dallas and it be easier for him to recover? If it makes any difference, I consider myself pretty fiscally sound. I carry no credit card debt (I have cards-pay them off every month), my side business has afforded me a good sized investment portfolio that produces a respectable income, which all gets reinvested. One day, maybe in the next decade, I do hope to live a life similar to how I grew up, but my hope is that I can afford it several times over, so that I don’t have to worry about losing it all. I just have this mental block from years of “expensive city=financial doom.”
Submitted May 30, 2019 at 09:51AM by GroundbreakingName1 http://bit.ly/2HLyjYU
