> Friends within a couple miles Which may or may not exist within 2 miles. Or even 10. Again, you have to be more intentional. In a city you can buy pretty muc

> Friends within a couple miles Which may or may not exist within 2 miles. Or even 10. Again, you have to be more intentional. In a city you can buy pretty much anywhere and the kid will have neighborhood friends. When moving to a rural area you have to think about this a bit more carefully. It's possible but not default. If you buy a place 10 miles away from the nearest house with kids who have a reasonable age overlap, then that's going to have a huge impact on your kid's independence. I am not trolling you. I don't care about you at all. I am addressing the original poster. I am giving them reasonable advice: you have to be more careful about where you buy in rural areas if you want your kid to be independent. There are downsides and things to be careful about when moving to any area. I am not attacking your lifestyle. I am simply pointing out some of the things that you need to think more carefully about when moving to a rural area, especially if you are a city person with no knowledge of rural life. I would give a similar list of downsides and how to mitigate them if OP were a person who has only lived in rural areas and was asking about city life. "Don't buy above a noisy bar; you can cross boundaries between safe and unsafe in a short stroll; research the transit system; having a car will be expensive but essential if you want to get out of the city; school quality can be excellent or terrible; apartment living has many downsides you'll need to be careful about mitigating; etc." None of these things are reasons to live in one place or another, and there are ways to address the problems. But you have to be aware of the problems in order to mitigate them. And the OP has never lives in a rural area, so might not have thought about "oh, if I am 2 miles down a gravel road and the nearest cluster of properties is 12 miles down the road then my kids have a hell of a bike ride if they want to play after school without depending on me shuttling them around. Odds are they'll probably end up on the internet a lot instead of doing the 7-14 mile ride on any given afternoon." Not a reason to move to a rural area! Just something to think about and consider -- cutting that down to 2 miles from 14 changes the game. My posts are not directed at you. They are advice to a different person entirely. But since we're here, another observation about rural life: aggressive and angry people are not unique to cities; they exist everywhere.