If the Zombie family were to relocate somewhere between Jackson and Atlanta, what's the move? Open to central TN, anything in AL, or FL panhandle. Work remotely, but need reasonable access to an airport. Want reasonable house prices, decent schools, safety + the aforementioned reasonable airport access (i.e., small airport w/i 45 minutes or big airport w/i 1.5h). wouldn't mind getting to watch some mississippi state games in person again, either
edit: but I’m coming from more expensive places, so most house prices other than expensive areas or Nashville are probably going to seem “reasonable”. Still would like to get more for my money, though
All tater joking aside, you have a lot of good options in that geographic area. Having gone through the where are we going to put our roots down exercise myself not too long ago, there was one overarching thing to think about that we worked through a little slower than I wish we had.
Where do you want the kids to be from?
A suburb?
In the suburbs of DFW my kids had great schools and tons of sports options. And they like sports, but don't love them. They loved going down to the little nasty ditch the city called a creek and splashing around. We also noticed our friends with more than one kid, hardly ever spent time together as a family. One parent took the daughter to volleyball and the other took the son to baseball. 3 nights a week. The sports changed with the calendar, but the divide and conquer approach remained. Youth sports was all consuming for most of them.
We had access to all kinds of other activities within an hour... Pro sports, amusement parks, every restaurant imaginable, all the shopping etc. Airport was close. DFW sucks more than most cities for access to outdoors though. It was basically a 5+ day vacation to go anywhere other than a crappy 2 acre state park on a muddy reservoir for an outdoor experience. I would think suburbs around Nashville, Atlanta, Birmingham, and Huntsville are much closer to good outdoor recreation.
A city?
Before the suburbs we lived in Dallas proper and it was also very scheduled in a different way. It was too damn dangerous to let kids go anywhere on their own so my poor wife was constantly scheduling play dates at parks, museums, dog parks.. I hardly ever went because I was the only man there in a park full of moms and little kids. We also found ourselves just staying home... way too much. We lived a half mile from the biggest park in the city with a 1000 acre lake in the middle of it... But it became unusable. During the weekends it was packed with wannabe Lance Armstrongs on their road bikes and a million runners. During the week it was a good place for women to get raped and one poor guy got killed by a lunatic ex Aggie football player with a machete on the trail right by my house. While we loved the city before kids, you have kids and you notice those gunshots at night aren't that far away, the floater in the lake was some poor dude out for an eventing jog, and then you get to make that choice between terrible public schools or forking out private school tuition. For 99% of us the burbs are by far the lesser of 2 evils.
A small town?
Finally we have landed in a small town. We get to do lots of outdoor things as a family and with other families, but the kids also get to go places on their own by riding the bus home with friends or just hopping on the bike and cruising across town. They get to play all the sports, but they don't have to be consumed with private pitching lessons for an 8 year old all summer. Schools are great and seem to be lacking the helicopter parents that were over-involved in the burbs.
It's the right fit for us, but it's not for everybody. If I had a kid that was into baseball as much as I was a kid, we would maybe prefer the suburbs. If I had 2 girls instead of 2 boys they might prefer the suburbs or maybe even the city.
Ultimately the kids will grow up and head off to college or whatever. When they hit the dorms that freshman year everyone is going to ask where are you from? The answer to that question is going to be a few syllables that represent nearly all of their childhood experiences. When I think about my friends around the country, the vast majority have never moved since taking that first job out of college and many just went back to their hometowns. They just live where they live and the opportunity to mold that childhood experience for their kids is limited in a lot of ways. I was personally always jealous of that, because I grew up as an itinerant. But the nice thing about your situation is you get to pick the experience you want for the kids and put roots down. Not a lot of people get to do that, so make the most of it.
So whether you decided the Florida panhandle or greater Nashville is where you want to be, you still need to figure out if that means in the city, a suburb 30 minutes away, or a small town 1.5 hours away. There is no wrong answer, but just don't be a dubmass like me and move 3 times before you figure it out. Work through the type of place first and it will probably help you pick which metro area/airport you want to be near.
Pro Tip... If you decide its a suburb in Nashville... Scout the shít out of those subdivisions and school districts before you pull the trigger. It's as hot as any place in the country right now for CA refugees and you don't want to deal with that mess. They're like locusts, they swarm entire communities and neighborhoods and leave others untouched. My warning is not about politics either... Left, right, or agnostic, they are all àssholes to the ninth degree.
