10 ms·

Out of curiosity: why did you choose to live in such a remote/rural place?

stevehawk 7y ago
As a nerd who also married a doctor and went rural - 1) Doctors tend to make more money in rural areas. Hospitals/practices tend to offer higher salaries/bonuses/etc in order to draw talent. My wife makes roughly 50% more in an area of 30,000 people (mind you, we're talking a pretty large geographic area) than she would in Miami. 2) Money goes further. My 4500sq ft home on 1.2 acres of land is worth considerably less than my previous 1700sq ft townhome on .1 acre of land back in northern Virginia near DC. personal opinion: 3) Some of us just don't want to live in a city. A weekend trip to a city a couple of times a year is enough for me.
- hockeybias 7y ago
  I'm told nature is beautiful.
- Aperocky 7y ago
  Glad it worked out for you, currently still stuck (near) a city. But at least it's an hour from downtown and parking a truck is not a problem at all. I wouldn't mind at all to live in the remotest of nature, as long as there is internet. My SO would probably be bored shitless.
- repiret 7y ago
  As yet another nerd married to a doc in a rural area (Hines, OR, 90 min south of GP's John Day, and similarly remote), I'll also point out that rural docs have a broader scope of practice - to some extend they make more money because they do some work that is done by specialists in urban and suburban areas.
nmcfarl 7y ago
stevehawk's reasons are not far off. I'd add that my wife really loves the scope of practice - she does literally everything from delivering babies (w/an occasional C-section) to gerontology, from addiction medicine to ER. This just doesn't happen elsewhere. And we like the space. The road we live on ends in a wilderness area, the hiking and X-C skiing and so on is amazing. And both us and our 6 year old love having sheep and alpacas and a dozen chickens and a greenhouse. Hobby farming like this just doesn't work in Seattle. We miss live shows and restaurants and all the city stuff, but for now at least we like this more.
- genieyclo 7y ago
  Thank you both for your answers!
- PopeDotNinja 7y ago
  I just looked at the dining options in John Day, OR. I see a pizza place, a Subway, and a Dairy Queen. That covers my needs :)
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
eaandkw 7y ago
It seems a lot of people “suffer” from the problem of wanting to live in a nice rural area without a lot of people or hassles but then want most of the same amenities of large cities. And by working remotely and exploiting the situation it never occurs to them to open up their own business/ grocery store. I’m sure other people that live in those areas would love to have a well stocked grocery store as well.
- CalRobert 7y ago
  It occurs to us, but doing tech work remote is much more lucrative and reliable. Also, are you sure people want it? If so why do these stores close?
  - techsupporter 7y ago
    > If so why do these stores close? Because for every one or two fantastically wealthy-beyond-all-belief-for-the-area technologist who moves in, five people who don't have a job like that leave the region in search of something that pays an income. A lot of these bucolic rural areas with a few thousand people in a county exist because of an industry that was present decades ago that has now collapsed. So, sure, the property is cheap and the town is relatively uncomplicated...but people who don't make six figures (and, thus, can pretty much choose to live wherever we want) are leaving because the opportunities are gone. One or two tech-paycheck-family households can't sustain a set of businesses that had 7,000 potential customers before. I've watched this happen with where my parents grew up and in my grandparents' hometowns before them. Everyone I know in Seattle who isn't in tech didn't move to Seattle to get a tech job; they moved from Idaho and Utah and eastern Oregon and eastern Washington to find work because their sub-10,000-person towns are (in some cases literally) drying up and blowing away yet, even here, they're being pushed out because of salaries. Yes, I'm leading into wealth inequality and it having gotten so bad that people are squeezed on the starting end because the towns where they grew up are collapsing and squeezed on the destination end because trying to live where the jobs are increasingly doesn't result in the level of income required to actually live there. But those of us in tech can simply decamp to our 5,000sqft houses on three acres of land and pull in Silicon Valley wages in a Montana property market and feel quite clever. I don't blame the individual who makes this decision but it still seems quite perverse.
briffle 7y ago
John Day and the area around it are gorgeous. For the price of a nice home in Portland, you can have a home and acreage. Room to garden, enjoy the outdoors, and nice people. I visit there every spring, and think about it. Then I see how horrible 4g coverage is with the hills and valleys, and how slow most of the wisp are... Starlink might really change things for rural internet

As a nerd who also married a doctor and went rural - 1) Doctors tend to make more money in rural areas. Hospitals/practices tend to offer higher salaries/bonuses/etc in order to draw talent. My wife makes roughly 50% more in an area of 30,000 people (mind you, we're talking a pretty large geographic area) than she would in Miami. 2) Money goes further. My 4500sq ft home on 1.2 acres of land is worth considerably less than my previous 1700sq ft townhome on .1 acre of land back in northern Virginia near DC. personal opinion: 3) Some of us just don't want to live in a city. A weekend trip to a city a couple of times a year is enough for me.

hockeybias 7y ago
I'm told nature is beautiful.
Aperocky 7y ago
Glad it worked out for you, currently still stuck (near) a city. But at least it's an hour from downtown and parking a truck is not a problem at all. I wouldn't mind at all to live in the remotest of nature, as long as there is internet. My SO would probably be bored shitless.
repiret 7y ago
As yet another nerd married to a doc in a rural area (Hines, OR, 90 min south of GP's John Day, and similarly remote), I'll also point out that rural docs have a broader scope of practice - to some extend they make more money because they do some work that is done by specialists in urban and suburban areas.

nmcfarl 7y ago

stevehawk's reasons are not far off. I'd add that my wife really loves the scope of practice - she does literally everything from delivering babies (w/an occasional C-section) to gerontology, from addiction medicine to ER. This just doesn't happen elsewhere. And we like the space. The road we live on ends in a wilderness area, the hiking and X-C skiing and so on is amazing. And both us and our 6 year old love having sheep and alpacas and a dozen chickens and a greenhouse. Hobby farming like this just doesn't work in Seattle. We miss live shows and restaurants and all the city stuff, but for now at least we like this more.

genieyclo 7y ago
Thank you both for your answers!
PopeDotNinja 7y ago
I just looked at the dining options in John Day, OR. I see a pizza place, a Subway, and a Dairy Queen. That covers my needs :)

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

eaandkw 7y ago

It seems a lot of people “suffer” from the problem of wanting to live in a nice rural area without a lot of people or hassles but then want most of the same amenities of large cities. And by working remotely and exploiting the situation it never occurs to them to open up their own business/ grocery store. I’m sure other people that live in those areas would love to have a well stocked grocery store as well.

CalRobert 7y ago
It occurs to us, but doing tech work remote is much more lucrative and reliable. Also, are you sure people want it? If so why do these stores close?
- techsupporter 7y ago
  > If so why do these stores close? Because for every one or two fantastically wealthy-beyond-all-belief-for-the-area technologist who moves in, five people who don't have a job like that leave the region in search of something that pays an income. A lot of these bucolic rural areas with a few thousand people in a county exist because of an industry that was present decades ago that has now collapsed. So, sure, the property is cheap and the town is relatively uncomplicated...but people who don't make six figures (and, thus, can pretty much choose to live wherever we want) are leaving because the opportunities are gone. One or two tech-paycheck-family households can't sustain a set of businesses that had 7,000 potential customers before. I've watched this happen with where my parents grew up and in my grandparents' hometowns before them. Everyone I know in Seattle who isn't in tech didn't move to Seattle to get a tech job; they moved from Idaho and Utah and eastern Oregon and eastern Washington to find work because their sub-10,000-person towns are (in some cases literally) drying up and blowing away yet, even here, they're being pushed out because of salaries. Yes, I'm leading into wealth inequality and it having gotten so bad that people are squeezed on the starting end because the towns where they grew up are collapsing and squeezed on the destination end because trying to live where the jobs are increasingly doesn't result in the level of income required to actually live there. But those of us in tech can simply decamp to our 5,000sqft houses on three acres of land and pull in Silicon Valley wages in a Montana property market and feel quite clever. I don't blame the individual who makes this decision but it still seems quite perverse.

briffle 7y ago

John Day and the area around it are gorgeous. For the price of a nice home in Portland, you can have a home and acreage. Room to garden, enjoy the outdoors, and nice people. I visit there every spring, and think about it. Then I see how horrible 4g coverage is with the hills and valleys, and how slow most of the wisp are... Starlink might really change things for rural internet