No and no. I now live in a different region of the country from where I grew up. My hometown is in a major metropolitan area, and is a very sought-after location, but the whole vibe there is so different from where we are now.
No and no, although the reason I wouldn’t come back is mostly due to the lack of sunshine and cold weather.
I grew up in a southeastern suburb of boston, and it was a nice little town. It’s still a nice little town.
We’re raising our kids in a nice little town outside of Atlanta that is quickly becoming a clogged nightmare of snarled suburban traffic due to the popularity of the school system. We’ll leave here as soon as the kids graduate, and I doubt any of us will come back. We don’t hate it (I love my house and my neighborhood), but it’s served its purpose as a nice place to raise kids and it’s time to move on.
Ironically, older D is looking at colleges mainly in Boston-she LOVES it there. So that’s a bit of a full circle for you.
Re leaving the area where you grew up because of economic conditions: Folks may leave an area because it has fallen on hard economic times (which is ansolutely true of the small steeltown where my H lived) but that situation isn’t universal. In fact, the town where I live (outside of Boston) has home prices that have increased so much that many of the kids who grew up in town and want to return aren’t able to do so because housing is too expensive. Just looked it up and saw that median price of a house in my town is $618K and the only place under $400K is a 1bedroom teardown on 4 acres for $399K.
BTW the valley is very nice. The north valley has homes that are nice and affordable for many families. The southern valley (Encino, Tarzana, Sherman Oaks) are VERY nice…and expensive. I don’t think that homes that start in the low millions to many millions of dollars are a compromise, or a shame and/or stain on the family. Oh, and the homes have land…
My kiddo is in one of those crazy Boston areas, Bromfield, an easy-commute location, relatively safe, becoming somewhat trendy. She’s living with a friend, in an independent part of the family home- same house where the father was also raised. Other college friends of hers live in that particular part of the extended city and talk about crazy rents.
Yes and am I happy I live here - yes & no. I love my community and felt like it was the right decision to stay here after I divorced so kids could stay connected to their dad and because I had a support network here. While I like the way my community is growing and it is very affordable for me on a teacher’s salary, I have seen quite an exodus of friends and neighbors as they move to be close to their children during retirement. I am 98% certain that neither of my children will ever move back here, so I would like to move to Nashville to be close to D & SIL once I retire. However, the difference in real estate values is overwhelming, so we’ll see how that works out when the time comes.
Yes,
San Diego.
Pleeeeze, do I need to go into details as to why?
No and no. I love Austin, but it’s just too hot for me. And the traffic has gotten ridiculous.
I often tell people if I had to move back to Texas (where I grew up), the only place I’d live would be Austin! But I really have little desire to even go back to Texas anymore, even for visits. My parents have been gone 15 and 12 years now.
No and no. I ended up where I went to college. I grew up in an area that has consistently grown for decades (some would say exploded) with no sign of it slowing down. It would have been easy to go back, but it wasn’t for me. I love the fast paced energy of big cities, warm weather, the ocean, and chose a college where I could have all those things. It felt like more like “home” from day one than where I grew up and I found myself wanting to stay even on breaks. I always thought I’d stay in the area forever, but I’m not sure now.
I moved about an hour outside the city on the coast to work with my best friend. We met at college orientation, became inseparable almost instantly, ended up deciding to try to conquer the world together after I finished grad school, and were busy working our tails off to build our empire when he was diagnosed with a rare form of (incurable) cancer and passed away. That was life changing for me and some dark days followed that forced me to do a lot of soul searching.
Losing someone who had become like a brother at that stage in our lives really put things into perspective as to what’s really important in the grand scheme of things – and what’s not. “Life is short” suddenly had a lot more meaning. I lost interest in the dream empire. Working toward it together was fun despite the stress, long hours and travel. Alone? Not so much. I care a lot less about possessions and weigh their worth against maintaining good health and a work/life balance that allows me to live more “in the moment,” because tomorrow is never guaranteed.
I reinvented myself doing something completely different that allowed me to work from home and still make a good living. I won’t get rich this way, but I don’t care. I’m comfortable, healthy and happy. I also sold my house, downsized to a condo back in the city with great restaurants, grocery stores, and everything else I might want or need within easy walking distance, and got rid of everything except for sentimental things and enough furniture to fill the condo. Letting go of the first few things was difficult. Then I got on a roll and it was hard to stop. It’s hard to describe what a freeing experience it was. My folks live in the same house they had built when I was 5, and it’s packed to the rafters with “stuff.” I know I’m going to have to figure out what to do with all of it someday and the thought overwhelms me. They keep asking if I want this or that, and I keep saying NO! 
But I live in one of the most expensive areas of the city (and country) and it’s still difficult to really slow down here as much as I now think I want to at some point. So we’ll see.
H and I both were born in Honolulu and have lived here with our extended families for most of our lives. I did go away to get my degrees and then returned. I like northern CA where I went to law school and Eugene, where I attended college. We are mostly happy in Honolulu.
I’m not sure whether we may relocate or at least have long term rentals if our kids settle and start families far from us. They are currently 2500 and 5000 miles from us.
No and no. There was a time not so long ago that I dreamed of retiring to my hometown, but now that area seems much more socially conservative than I would be comfortable with.
It’s funny, too, because my hometown has morphed into a huge retirement destination. (There’s not a single store downtown that remains the same as that from my childhood.) The weather there is great, the lifestyle is laid-back, but the politics (and the homophobia) give me pause.
My H and I aren’t staying here when we retire - I’m sure we’ll move much closer to D, even if that means brutally cold winters.
No and no. Too cold, not enough sunlight hours in the winter, felt confining. Been in Texas for over 30 years, and am very tied to the house we helped to build. We may retire elsewhere if this continues to be such a boomtown and the traffics continues to deteriorate, but we are still 6 years or so away from retirement.
Kinda and no. I live in a suburb of the big city I grew up in. I would not live in the city I grew up in for anything.
Yes, I lived in several different states and returned home at 30 when I married a guy from my hometown. Love it and feel very fortunate that I had both experiences of living in big cities but now back in a great place.
I guess I am just lucky - my hometown is consistently highly ranked on assorted “best places to live” lists.
I was born at the old Jewish Memorial Hospital at 196th and Broadway in Manhattan, and now live not far away at 187th and Cabrini. Across the street from the apartment building on Cabrini where my maternal grandparents first lived when they came to this country from Berlin in 1941. (As did one of my grandmother’s brothers and three of my grandfather’s first cousins, at various times in the same apartment.) So, yes, although I haven’t lived here continuously – I grew up in midtown (in an apartment where my father’s widow still lives), and spent 23 years living in northern New Jersey until I moved back to Manhattan in 2010. But I always worked in Manhattan. I wish I had never moved to New Jersey (living in a house in the suburbs wasn’t really for me), and I don’t ever want to live anywhere else but here again, assuming I can continue to afford living here. This is where I belong.
Yep, I live in the town I grew up in, actually in the house I grew up in. If I had to do it again I wouldn’t mind living in the town, it has low taxes, the schools are decent (though for a variety of reasons we never used them), though I likely would not have done what I did with the family house, it was part of a time that was one of the roughest I have ever been through (though it also led me to getting help working with a therapist to work through some pretty serious issues, same with my wife, and my son benefitted tremendously from it). However, over the last 20 years the house has become increasingly ours in the sense fo the kind of place it is, we have beautiful beds and gardens, it is a good place for our two hooligan puppies (and my wife is even more grateful, a Wegman’s market is opening up in our town, and another new shopping plaza has Ulta cosmetics and a new TJ Maxx lol). The town is well run, it is quiet, the services are good, and it is fairly convenient to NYC as well (my commute could be better, but you can’t have everything), and there is a lot in the area to do not far away.
Both my hometown and the town I live now are featured regularly on the Money Magazine list. I still wouldn’t want to live in my hometown (and my D wouldn’t want to live where we live now) for the same general reason: nothing to do unless you fit a certain professional or demographic set. There is no one-size-fits-all perfect place (true of colleges as well). The value of an amenity is subjective.
However ‘hometown’ is defined, no.
I haven’t lived in the town where I was born, since I was 2 or 3, although I still have relatives there and visit a couple times a year
I don’t live in what I feel is my ‘hometown’ where I attended elementary school
I don’t live in the town where I graduated high school and would NEVER consider moving back there
I do live about 40 miles away from the college I attended
Although my son wasn’t born here, we moved here when he was 7 after his father and I split up, I consider this to be his ‘hometown’. He’s now 500 miles away attending college and due to the limited jobs available I do not want him to return when he graduates.