Peachtree City

I moved from Miami, FL three years ago with my daughter and my wife.  The cost of living in Miami was skyrocketing and the housing market was beginning to crumble silently around us.  Homes in our quiet, gated community had been sitting on the market for months; one or two were in foreclosure, and at least one had been abandonded and weeds were growing rampant in the yard.  We moved now or faced the same fate. 

So I grabbed the bull by the horns and faced my fears of moving beyong our comfort zone, leaving our friends, family, and community; and I asked my wife to do a little research.  After all, moving doesn’t mean just moving…  It means relocating.  Relocating is finding a new school for our young daughter, navigating the DMV, locating our closest grocery stores and other amenities, choosing a community that was the right fit for the lifestyle we wanted– not a task for the light of heart!

With Google as her best ally, my wife tackled the task of whittling down potential candidates.  Our criteria was simple: we had to be close to a major airport as my commutes led me abroad for two weeks out of the month; the cost of living had to be cheap or at least cheaper than what we were experiencing in Miami; and the public school system had to be excellent as we no longer would be able to afford paying for a private school for much longer at the rate our finances and the economy were going.  One of our first choices was Austin, Texas.  Affordable, quirky but trendy, close to an airport, and schools seemed great.  Then I threw a monkey wrench into the works.  Why not Atlanta, Georgia? 

http://www.atlanta.net/

My wife gave me one of those all-suffering looks after researching down to ballet schools for our daughter in Austin, contacting real estate agents, and even tracking down a friend who lived in Texas.  I played it off as one of those ‘let’s be spontaneous’ moments and hoped she’d fall for it.  Being the personality type that she is, she went back to the drawing board and pulled up pages of research, including cost of living comparisons, on the Atlanta metro area as well as the rest of Georgia.

http://www.costofliving.net/index.cfm?fuseaction=BrowseCOL.Georgia-cost-of-living-data-by-location&state=GA&Show=state

Needless to say, we were duly impressed…  But an affordable cost of living couldn’t be all we would move for. 

More next week on what else drew us to this beautiful corner of the south…  Come back, y’all!