“I can’t remember if I started thinking because Los Angeles left me, or if Los Angeles left me because I started thinking.”

~an obscure reference to Leaving Las Vegas.

Well here we are, this article is almost 4 years old now. I remember it when it first came out, because back then we were already thinking about leaving, where, when, how and everyone was posting this and we related. We had already struggled through the Great Recession, almost losing our condo we were so underwater (and that’s a whole other story in and of itself!).

We kind of left Los Angeles then. The town was expensive yes. But we were a growing family living in a Condo in hip Silver Lake with no tenable, playable outlook for our kids. And our work was stifling us. Then an opportunity arose that we just had to take. We were still in Los Angles county, but commuting hours each way each day. The soul crushing kind of commute.

Now here we are again, we had been planning, hoping to move back into Los Angeles. But a years long search and we have yet to find a decent house in a decent neighborhood that we could decently afford. It seems the only way to afford Los Angeles and have a decent, good (albeit, not great) neighborhood for our children to grow up in is to actually live outside of Los Angeles and suffer the hours of commuting, the aforementioned soul crushing kind.

At the same time, all along, we have been researching elsewhere out there. The top 10 places to raise a family. The top 10 places to afford the most, best house. The top 10 places to do things, see things, experience things. Life is about experiences. We were done struggling, trying to find a place we could afford in a place we enjoyed, I mean really enjoyed on a daily basis instead of coming home exhausted and beat down and only an hour left to spend with the kids as we shuffle them off to bed.

So, here we are, Scott Timberg’s LA Mag article once again popping up. But this time we’re not just reading, we’re doing it.