relocating your family ?

shabbyroad

And so it goes... I've posted similar in the South-East forum. I think it's possibly relevant here too. I'm hoping to get some advice from others who have left Dublin and made a new start for themselves.

We (wife, 3 kids) are seriously thinking of selling up in Dublin and moving to Gorey.

By 'serious' we have put in an offer on a house near the town and are meeting an estate agent this friday to put our home on the market.

Our girls are 9 and 8, both doing really well in school and our boy will start school in September. They have a couple of friends in our cul-de-sac and go to music/art/swimming classes.

My wife works from home - occasional consulting work she does for a multinational. Once she has a phone and internet access she can work pretty much anywhere.

Our home is worth enough that we can sell it, move to a 3500 sq. ft 6 bed home on 3/4 acre just outside Gorey town and walk away with a lump of money. The house is almost new and not quite finished - we reckon we can make it our home : if we were to build a house from scratch this would be it pretty much.

We've got a holiday home in Courtown and have become familiar with the area over the last 4 years. Also our friends moved there from Shankill about 4-5 years ago and are very happy. But that's them and everyone's different

We realise it's a big move but I have this gut feeling that the quality of life is better and we will wipe-out our mortgage. I can still commute to Leopardstown (about and hour.. which is what I do anyway within Dublin... and with the upgrades to the N11 it'll only get better).

We've got sore heads thinking it through and it's daunting. We go from being excited to being a little scared. It's a one-way move - once you move out of Dublin there's no going back without getting significantly into debt.

The local facilities are excellent - lots of activities for the kids and parents alike - we're reasonable people and will make new friends I'm sure.

So - advice ? have you done it ? any tips for dealing with the massive changes for the kids ?

ArthurDent

No advice or tips, but wish you all the best. It's certainly something we have thought about over the years. We're still arguing about it, I'm not keen to move kids from school and friends and having grown up with a huge extended family around, would like that for my kids, my husband didn't have same experiences growing up , family not close, went to boarding school and so has no real feelings for living near family. so I'm sure we'll keep arguing and dreaming about this until a job opportunity forces the issue.



AD

Kernel32

It sounds like you have the perfect situation for relocating. We (wife, 20month old son) considered a move back to Ireland last year from the United States. We did spend 6 months there while I was able to work a contract. The issue I have about coming back is that I work in IT and most of the jobs are in Dublin and I don't want to live there. I lived there before and had enough of it. My family lives near Waterford and ideally we would like to be as close to them as possible but there is little or no work there for me. The only work that comes close to paying what I make here is in Dublin but by the sounds of it the roads have been improved enough where you can commute to South Dublin from Wexford? Luckily my skills are very up to date and I have a strong technical background so I can find work easy enough. I am also concerned about the lack of non-demoninational primary schools but thats a whole other story.

As for advice... When I was growing up I went to 5 different schools by the time I was 12 years old. We moved around a lot because my dad was having a hard time finding work. The moving took its toll on me, I had no real friends by my teenage years and I always felt like an outsider. I would not reccomend this level of moving around but a single relocation sounds fine. I would have liked to keep contact with friends I made before having to move again but that never happened. If your kids want to keep contact with their friends in Dublin then I would do everything you can to allow that and it will make the transition easier.

shabbyroad

thanks for all the replies. Last week we spent a lot of time thinking and weighing up all of the issues and spent the weekend going through the pros and cons.

Bottom line was that while I was keen to move my wife wasn't as keen as I and we agreed that if we both weren't 100% happy then we were staying put.

One thing we found very useful was to write down the pros & cons and share them with each other. We each had different concerns (naturally) and it made us think from both sides. Fortunately we didn't argue once about it.

thanks again everyone

Victor

Originally posted by shabbyroad
We've got a holiday home in Courtown

Is this big enough to live in for a year? Rent out your Dublin house and live in Wexford for a year, see how things work out.

MarVeL

Originally posted by Kernel32
I am also concerned about the lack of non-demoninational primary schools but thats a whole other story.

The situation there is improving, albeit slowly. Check out the educate together schools. That being said they do tend to be hugely over subscribed (we put our daughter down for 2 when she was 6 months old and we were nearly into refusals only at that stage) and the processes aren't yet properly in place to facilitate the rapid expansion that seems to be required