IT IS NOT MIDDLE AGE!!!!!

Make sure you have enough money for at least 6 months to a year.

Try to line up a job for at least one of you.

My parents moved from UK to Australia when I was 3. They had a lot of push back but went anyway, lasted 6 months as my dad couldnt find work, so they went back home. Give it a try if you can.

Slower paced state like California? That's what I think of when I think of west coast. I'm not sure it's any slower in LA than anywhere in Virginia unless maybe you live right by Washington DC.

Do you want to leave VA or is it just your husband? It doesn't sound like you came up with this idea. It is a big deal to move somewhere if you don't know anyone there. It's a lot easier if you have family or friends, or is that the reason you want to move? I moved away from Indiana but the only ones there were my mom and dad. My brother and sister had both already moved out of state. Finding new friends that I could trust like the kids I grew up with was the hardest part for me.

But yeah I wouldn't move out west without a job for sure. Are you like a nurse or a teacher who can get a job in any place in the world? Or maybe you just have enough money to last a year, did you hit the lottery for $100,000? That would help. I'd have a job and a place to live before I packed my stuff. Maybe not 25 years ago when I was your age though. Well I had 5 kids under 8 years old when I was 32, I wasn't going anywhere. I needed all the in-laws I could find just to babysit, ha.

Do you have no kids just you and your old man? Yeah buy a psychedelic VW microbus and drive cross country until you find some place you like. Listen to the vibes. Don't pay attention to the first answer... live off the land.

Virginia is a slower paced state, except NoVA.

My suggestion is you rent a van and make a grand driving tour of the entire United States, then decide.

I grew up in WV, but have lived in quiet parts of VA almost all of my adult life.

Virginia always was home to me.. i grew up there for the most part of my life. its almost like the perfect place for 4 seasons.. and rarely anything of weather extremes. taxes are cheap ( except car tax lol ). roads are well maintained ( northern va far as i know ) .. i have lived in upstate NY, and California at other times in my life and recently became a new resident of MD due to job relocation.. i'll say I Fuggin hate MD - wont go into details atm.

as far as.. relocating.. if i was willing.. i'd go for something mid-range in weather extremes. For instance, when i was living in NY.. little did i know about how cold and windy (wind chills!) it got.. it really wore me down no matter how hard i tried to tough it out.

anyhow good luck with making your best decision!

West Virginia is beautiful, and a lovely place to visit, and cost of living is low, but the entire state suffers from poor economy, lack of good jobs, rampant drug and alcohol addictions and tragedies associated with that, and environmental abuses. Don't go live there unless you are prepared to accept these troubles, preferably including keeping a stockpile of clean water.

There is nothing on the West coast that is "laid back" or "inexpensive," when compared to the East coast - you just get a different version of the same thing, however....
I will say this; I have recently moved from a very expensive State to a State in the deep south. I gotta say, living IS cheaper, traffic is low and if it were anymore laid back, it'd be a cemetery.

haha, well i wasn't living there independently if that's what you were wondering. I lived in the SF bay area on a military base when i was a child. I still remember how the weather was.. cool rainy green winters and warm and dry summers. As for other parts of California i was always told San Diego,CA weather was almost constantly 70 degrees..might need verification on that.

as for cost of living over there these days.. i got curious again.. so i looked up

https://www.extraspace.com/blog/moving/city-gui...

by comparison.. nova/dc/md area is a rip off.

I have travelled a lot in CA and think that it's hard to find anything cheap. The cheaper places in South California are deserty and a constant fire hazard. Northern CA is beautiful, super expensive, and also a fire hazard. You won't find cheaper than you're paying now up there probably. Out of everywhere I've been I got the feeling that the south was the most easy going and it's definitely cheaper if you're not right near DC. Anywhere that's not a big city is easier though, why not just move further from DC?

Gas is outrageously expensive in Southern California--between $4 and $5 per gallon. A cracker box house can cost a million. The cost of living is astronomical. People are very rude in LA.

Of course, in SoCal you have good weather pretty much year-round, and it's supposed to be the "hippest" place in the nation.

I wouldn't move there because of their ridiculous gun laws.

Something that many have told me is make sure you can handle the climate whereever you move.

Nicest weather I've ever lived in was southwestern VA. I lived in Blacksburg (nice college town), Christiansburg (very quiet, but near stuff to do), and Roanoke (pretty nice if you're in a nice section of town). But that was over 10 years ago. I don't know what it's like now.

The best place in the world is Nashville,Tennessee. Y'all come down now, y'hear?

My son is there!

I've been to New York and LA and I wouldn't consider living in either place. Too many people jammed up like sardines. I like to hunt and fish. I'm five minutes from the lake and I can be in a treestand in the middle of nowhere in less than an hour. My kids and I went and played frisbee golf this morning and there were only two other cars in the parking lot when we got there. Wide open spaces for me... good luck.

Ditto for me! Toronto is an aluminum and glass ant hill!

I am a huge planner type of person. I start to plan a trip six or seven months in advance. I use a binder for each trip and have copies of calendar pages with potential daily destinations. It changes a lot over the course of the planning, based on prices, amount of driving, break days, etc. So I have lots of calendar pages copied. I also have a daily plan and an envelope for each day. I start to put cash in the envelopes up to a year in advance. Every time I go to the store, I get cash back.
That goes in the envelopes. I try to pay cash for everything that doesn't need a reservation held on a credit card.

I plan out stops every 2.5 or 3 hours. I plan it out so that we get fuel, walk around, find a park for the kids, walk around a mall or a Target store. Sometimes half an hour breaks every 2.5 to 3 hours. Sometimes hour long breaks or longer.

I map it all out and print out the google maps so I can see the "bigger picture." I will figure out about 3 hours and look at which town that puts us in and start to research parks/playgrounds. I also research Target/malls in case we drive up to a park in a strange new place and it doesn't seem safe.

Each kid has a different colored plastic tub for their souvenirs, but before we leave, I put in a few gifts that are cheap. Activity books, little kits, etc. I wrap them all, so they have something to "unwrap." every other stop or so....

The older kids who are 14, 16 and 18 don't really get many dollar "toys," and they will pick out a chapter book or something for the trip.

But my oldest who is 18 has always loved those sticky guys/bugs/etc that you throw at glass and it sticks and then "walks" down the glass. I wrapped a package of those for him this year, and it was funny for him. We joked and had a good time about it and he enjoyed them for a little while. Also, my daughter who is 16 likes Bob Ross, so one of her wrapped things is a Bob Ross bobble head...it will be sooooo funny when she unwraps that. It's all about memories

Last year's trip was $23k. But we spent 13 nights and 14 days at Disney World, which cost over half of that amount. Also my youngest got pneumonia on last year's trip and we visited Emergency Rooms 3x, and had to get meds, and that was pretty expensive.

I do the envelope thing: figure out how much I will need per day and putting it aside for a year prior....but we are still paying off last year's trip. I got 0% credit cards.

We hardly ever eat in restaurants (once every 3 days)....we go to grocery stores and have a cooler

This year's trip was far cheaper. I researched free stuff to do. We drove through the night (saving hotel cost) to St. Louis and saw the Arch. Then we went to a hotel and the next day, we saw City Museum, which was inexpensive but fabulous

Then we drove to Lynchburg and spent the night in a one star cheap hotel (because it's a tiny town) that was actually a really nice place. Did the tour of the Jack Daniels distillery. After that, we drove to Asheville and saw Biltmore. That was pretty expensive, but my husb has always wanted to see Biltmore, so we splurged. Then to Charlotte where we walked in city parks and had a picnic near a lake (FREE stuff). Drove on to Columbia and then to Charleston, where we did a bunch of walking around (FREE) but also saw some historical sites such as Fort Sumpter, which is a national park, so it was inexpensive...etc. Beaching is always free except for the occasional parking lot fee. We went to a national park and paid $5 for the car load and got in and spent several hours one day walking in the national forest area. We had a picnic lunch there too.

The only real major souvenir I get at most places is a book (or picture or post card) about the places (animals in the area////history////buildings///etc) All the kids agree to "less" for Christmas/birthdays in exchange to take the trips. Last year, their only Christmas present was a t shirt I'd gotten each on the trip and a photo album I'd made for each that commemorated the trip.

As I plan out my days, I get on websites and figure out entrance fees and put the money aside

I google hotels in the area and check to be sure they aren't on the bed bug registry. I find the cheapest one I can that is nice and in a safe neighborhood. I research neighborhoods....lol. I put the money aside for them. Sometimes, I save money by staying a little further out. For instance, instead of staying in St. Louis, we stayed in St. Charles. The hotel was far cheaper and it was a 30 min drive into St. Louis. Instead of staying in Savannah, we stayed on a barrier island, Tybee Island, and the hotel was far cheaper that the ones in the city....and we loved being on the beach, so it worked out well.

Last year, the fuel cost $940.00 and we put almost 4,000 miles on the van. This year, fuel is a little higher and we are putting more miles on the van. I know that it takes about $50 to fill up my van and that gives me a little over 300 miles. So I over budgeted and for the trip, broke things down into 100-200-300 mile segments. I figured $60 for 300 miles and $40 for 200; $20 for 100. I put cash aside in an envelope. I have a binder for my trip and I use one of those plastic pencil "envelopes" that go in binders. I wrote "CASH OVERFLOW" on it and whenever gas, etc doesn't cost as much, I put the cash in there. That is what we use to have an extra meal here and there at a restaurant, or to do an extra "thing," that we might have wanted to do but didn't "plan" for.

Also, at some hotels, I forgo housekeeping for a day or two. The hotels will often give you a bit of a discount if you do that. And even if they don't, I save on the housekeeping tip when I forgo housekeeping. I ALSO :) :) :) take ALL of the shampoo, conditioner, soap, lotion that they leave.... :)

@PepperJ that sounds nice for everyone - and stressful for you!

Honestly, not at all. I think I'm a planner. I have binders galore on bookshelves in our house. There are ones for trips, for business, and for lessons K-12. I home educate the kids and make up my own curriculum. I looked at my thumb drive the other day and the number of pages I have for one subject alone is over 10,000.

I'm ALWAYS busy and I'm a planner, researcher, thinker--as in big picture to details...and an organizer. I usually have several projects going at once. Those things make me happy.

People have told me that I'm TOO organized and TOO much of a planner/creator/busy type of person, and that I was too "busy" all the time. So there was a time period where I was self conscious about it and tried to slow it down.

Then I decided to embrace it :)