>You have a high paying job that gives you no security. You have a big house that gives you no shelter. You live in an upscale suburb that gives you no community. Soon you will have children, dress them up in designer clothing and send them to expensive schools and yet they won't feel like family.<

It's scary that this probably describes 3/4ths of the people in this country. I hate to think how many people live like this--and have no idea why they are miserable. Or figure they should just "suck it up" and "grow up." :P

If I were you, I wouldn't be in that much of a hurry to eat 50K on my house, I know it's not all about money but really... (hey - you're the finance guy, does it make sense to you). I am not sure where you are writing from, but you did mention Florida which is where I live. My wife and I own a couple of properties here. Not that that makes me any expert, but just as an idea - you might try renting your house out for a year or two until the market recovers, and it will eventually recover. We have found that the rental market has held up fairly well here, at least in South Florida. You and your wife could go somewhere else and try a different lifestyle for awhile to see if you like it, then down the road you still could return to the house in the suburbs, or sell it without taking a bath. Good luck to you both!!

McMansionville is like agricultural monoculture: Certain death.

Re: The superiority of suburban schools which seems to be the big reason otherwise reasonable people move to the 'burbs. Yes, some of them turn out wonderful, well-educated kids with character, but only after those kids navigate their way through an overwhelmingly self-absorbed, isolated, probably racist and certainly arrogant peer group. The vast majority of them simply won't get any real experience with people who are different from them, and it makes them, in equal parts, dismissive and fearful of all those "others" the real world is populated with. I can't imagine that, as a dual-earning couple who can afford a McMansion, you couldn't find a decent in-city public OR private school that's committed to diversity

I know, I know: there will be folks in high dudgeon about THEIR suburban schools, but, sorry: the vast majority of schools in high-end suburbs are lily-white and just not representative, on so many levels, of today's world. You will find yourself becoming appalled at the fruit of your open-minded, progressive loins echoing the ignorant, self-absorbed smallmindedness of their isolated peers, no matter how much you force them to volunteer at soup kitchens and foodbanks and choose to "vacation" in developing countries - and not as gawping toursits safely ensconced in gated resorts but as Lonely Planet-type travelers.

After you do the self-analysis you need to do to get to the bottom of the deeper personal reasons for "why this, why now?" (AND you actually value the kinds of things I've discussed above) you're still left in a really sterile, increasingly anachronistic lifestyle that will become even more so every year that passes. IF you have even a small spark of resentment now, and if you don't allow yourself to become numbed to the fatuous features evident all around you, you will only fan a flame that is sure to diminish you, bit by bit by bit.

I say get the hell out while you can.

I know of which I speak.

We moved to a post-war suburb that is gradually being taken into the city again, although public transit still is not adequate out here.

I love it here because... the people who bought and are buying here are cool! Sure, lots of new immigrants and poor artists of childrearing age, because we needed the space but had to "drive 'til you can buy." We are creating our own "new urbanism" right on the block. I do miss the coffee shops but I actually find I spend and shop less and that's a good thing.

If only we had better transit, it'd be bliss.

And it's not that far to downtown on the weekends.

My wife and I met at workin a large eastern metropolis with a an idiosyncratic urban core that has gradually 'gentrified". When, four years and one divorce later, we married, we agreed to never live farther than a $15 cab ride from work. We raised a kid in the city (horror of horrors). We lived in a highrise apartment with a doorman, and my stepson's backyard was a six acre park that fronted our building. He walked to school, took a cab or biked to his father's and had memberships in the museum (walking distance) and the science institute (within walking distance). we bought our first home, a 12-wide Victorian worker's row home, when my stepson went to college. After my wife's health crashed, we moved into a highrise condo, where her acupuncturist, her physical therapy coach and the orchestra are within two blocks of our home, and she can walk or cab to any location she needs access to, a major convenience as she no longer drives. She can, and does, attend magnificant free lectures at the public library, about a mile from our home. The building we live in is its own voting district and has eight sub-zipcodes attached to it. It is its own small villiage, one where my wife, healing from the ravages of a ruptured brain aneurysm, has fashioned useful friendships and healing alliances.

The tradeoff? The private school for my stepson prepared us well for college tuition, but public shools were, simply, out of the question. Period. Three cars were stolen from in front of our quaint Victorian row home, the backyard was ransacked, and on one special evening, we returned from a charity ball to find an inebriated street person using our vestpocket backyard as a pissoir. we had a security system that would wake the dead, and we had lights on syncronized timers at all times. Our "safe" condo, with a three person security team at the front desk 24/7, was ransacked for jewelry during a long weekend away, the burglers brazenly using my wife's shopping cart to make their getaway with the loot, moving, apparently, thorugh the fire stairs, as the omniscient security cameras revealed - nothing. I grow accustomed to conveying, with the nuance of the simplest body English, that I am unavailable for being an "easy hit' for the persistent panhandlers that work our affluent urban neighborhood, especially late at night......The nearest non-trendy supermarket (the ones that do NOT offer bargain prices on the pate of the week....) is miles out of our neighborhood, and we plot accessing it with extreme advanced planning. As an alternative, we shop at "convenience stores" were the price of toilet paper represents a commodity investment, not a utility purchase. We pay for parking for friends who visit us, as we live in a part of the city where the concept of onstreet parking is utterly laughable. It is all 20-minute dwell zones.... Our condo has at least one false alarm a week, and we live on the "quiet side" of the building, where the only street sounds are police and ambulance sirens....... constantly.

So it all has tradeoffs. I wouldn't live anyplace else, especially now, given my wife's limitations of mobility. We now keep one car, I walk to work, she walks and cabs everywhere, and we have innumerable resources delivered to our door. Living in the suburbs would imprison her, pragmatically speaking. But - it comes at a price.

So, HFM, think carefully about the tradeoffs. There are always, always tradeoffs. In the suburbs, you will be trapped by the automobile, in the city, you will be trapped by high costs, proximity to crime and the challenge of living in a densepack.