| DC’s a great mid-size city surrounded by a sea of suburban hell. A few things to consider: - there are more neighborhoods to DC than just DuPont and Logan Circle. - traffic’s terrible. Engineer your life around not commuting by car. If you need a car, get off-street parking, especially if you live in DuPont/Logan and nearby neighborhoods. - the food scene was meh 20 years ago, but no longer. - there are many smart people here in all sorts of domains from all over the world; take advantage of this diversity of expertise. - winter’s gray but spring and fall are glorious. High summer is miserable. You will want central air conditioning and lightweight clothes. - tech is good here, and not just fedgov/defense, but it does not dominate everything the way it does in Silly Valley. Uncle Sam does dominate life here. - Baltimore, Philly, and New York are an easy AmTrak train away. The Chesapeake and Delmarva peninsula is great. Shenandoah, the Alleghenies, and Smokies are not so far away. Flights to Europe aren’t bad, flights to Florida, Mexico, and the Caribbean are easy. The big downside to DC is that it’s amazingly expensive to have a family. I’ve got two young kids in a 1200 square foot rowhome. I spend $25K on private preschool for the younger and the older one goes to the neighborhood elementary school… which becomes less able to serve her academically with each year. If you want to live in DC and send your kids to private school, you’re looking at needing a $400k-$500K annual income. There are a lot of dual-lawyer families with incomes in that range which don’t feel “rich.” So if your life plans include having kids, I would absolutely build equity and savings in the mean time, so that you can strike on houses when opportunity presents itself, and not break the bank on nannies and private school. Or… plan a retreat to the burbs. |