Relocating is in the future for me & hubby, the near future even, and we’re almost at the point of narrowing down the list of destinations. For now? Information gathering stage.

The last post, I wrote about the possibility of moving out of the city to a suburb.

Today I thought, ‘what about a smaller city?’

I think smaller city is a subjective term. When people think about cities, most think about Chicago, Los Angeles, NYC, etc.

What about smaller cities, like Knoxville, TN? Asheville, NC? Kileen TX?

Hubby and I are particular about where we’d like to eventually settle down and raise a family, buy a house and all of that.

First and foremost, for us, it needs to be a city. And possibly, we need to define, how big or small that would be for us. And would it be a suburb considered as a smaller city? Or a stand alone city with the nearest bigger city 30+ minutes away? Or would it be any city above 500,000+ people?

Also important to us is nightlife. What is the nightlife like in some of these smaller cities? Would we be bored relatively quick? College towns such as Knoxville, or Ann Arbor, or even State College, PA, have vibrant nightlife, even though it’s primarily geared towards college students.

Diversity is HUGE. And again, some of these college towns, are diverse. We like interacting with people of different cultures, religions, socioeconomic backgrounds.

Walkable downtowns especially, are everything. We also need to be able to go grocery shopping, run necessary errands without having to drive 30 miles to reach the nearest Target/Walmart.

Being that we’re both sports fans, being near professional sports teams is kind of priority for us, since we love going to baseball games. Minor league games? Eh, I’ve never been to one. I prefer pro sports. I do love college sports too, but this is where we’d have to narrow down how big or small of a city would we prefer. If we were to relocate to a smaller city, how close is a bigger city that has professional sports teams?

Affordable housing is key too. Coming from Cleveland, we’re used to reasonable housing prices, and as we look forward to buying a house someday, I think I’d be a bit hesitant to move away to a metro area that has ridiculous real estate prices. I understand that many metro areas are more expensive than Cleveland, but incomes should be in line with real estate. Buying a $500K house (and that’s a basic house at that) if we’re only bringing in 100K/yr, is not something I’m interested in doing. The cost of living shouldn’t be too crazy, since we do want to enjoy life without worrying about money.

If we define small(er) cites as cities the size of Kansas City and maybe smaller, then it might be doable. It’s a dense city with pro sports teams. It’s probably completely different from say, Ventura, CA, where it’s alot smaller as a city, but has no professional sports teams of its’ own.

Or maybe a suburb might be the compromise for us both, as long as it’s diverse and provides easy access to the city.

Many millenials are choosing to skip New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago for smaller cities such as Portland, Milwaukee, Detroit, Memphis even. I wonder if we will follow that trend and join them?

I think ultimately, we’ll end up doing whatever is the best decision for our family. If I can find a smaller city that meets all our criteria? Great. But who knows where life will take us…