<p>Not to mention the price of Timothy hay- For what a “good” show horse costs you could buy a house in some areas of the country. It is a very expensive sport and my D only does local shows. We have only leased horses. Haven’t been able to bit the bullet to buy one yet.
But it is a healthy activity. My D spends 5 to 6 days a week at her barn.</p>
<p>So what is the price of boarding for you? I pay $200 per month per mule, I pay the farrier $35 per mule, and worming. Even in the winter they aren’t in stalls. They just need a run in.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Personally, I’d rather live in a place (namely, metro Boston) with the city life and conveniences, even if housing prices are outrageous. I’ve lived in suburbs, rural areas, small towns, medium-sized cities, and large cities, and I’m definitely happier in the more urban areas. Sure, I’ll gripe about how much I pay in rent for my (not exactly luxurious, to put it mildly, though it’s in a nice neighborhood) apartment, but it’s the sort of griping that you do about home (I also gripe a lot about the weather).</p>
<p>But it’s all an issue of personal preference. I don’t see any need to set it up as us vs. them.</p>
<p>Boarding for our horse is $725 a month, but this is at the higher end of the range in our area. The horse is at a very nice show barn with excellant care, but you can find less expensive places, just not in the area we want the horse to be in.</p>
<p>We have owned several ponies and horses and have also leased over the years my DDs have been riding. My D shows both at the high level A shows and the lower county level shows which are actually very competitive in the San Diego area. </p>
<p>We decided to buy a horse recently as my DD has 4 more years of showing left and is trying to reach some specific high level goals and leasing would have been more expensive for us with nothing to sell at the end. The horse market has of course taken a big hit so we were able to get our new horse that is young, but has done well at some big shows for much less than we would have been able to last year at this time. Of course we have to hope this horse will not get hurt and that my daughter will be able to do well when she begins showing him next month!</p>
<p>I love our small town. We moved here 11 years ago and it’s the longest we’ve ever lived on one place. Fendergirl and I are about 15 minutes from each other but in different school districts. I like the change in seasons and the rolling hills. I like our small schools and especially the HS that has just the right amount of competitive classes without great expectations for ivy league attendance. There is a lack of diversity that I don’t like, but even that is changing as more people move in. </p>
<p>It’s just outside of easy commuting for people from NYC and Philadelphia and for that I’m grateful because it’s kept this area from exploding. The good news/bad news is that there is no public rail - keeps the commuters from moving here but make a trip to a big city a big deal.</p>
<p>Edad, we’ve been waiting until our youngest was in college to leave NYC and he left in September. We’re native Californians but we looked all over the Country. Boy is it hard! We wanted good weather, some culture, somewhere the kids would be willing to come for vacations and a good college because I hoped to teach.</p>
<p>We too crossed off Arizona pretty quickly, also looked around the South and while we kind of like Savannah we didn’t like any place in Fla. or any other Southern state. In the end, CA became the only real consideration for us. </p>
<p>If we were on a tighter budget I would have considered the central part of the state where real estate has come way down and the outskirts of SD or Napa where it also has. Still not cheap, but I figure if your needs are modest you could buy something for half what the equivalent would cost in Manhattan.</p>
<p>yes yes, kathiep and i are right near each other! just right up the street really!</p>
<p>Twomules- we pay $500 board for our horse. We could keep it in our yard if D would decide to just be a trail rider.</p>
<p>I’ve had the good fortune to travel through much of the United States. And doubly fortunate that DW and I have similar views on what we’re looking for. Charleston’s very nice, except for the lack of convenient and reasonably priced air travel. Same for other lovely spots like Newport RI and Jackson Hole WY and Sante Fe NM and Fort Collins CO and … and … and … (costly and inconvenient air travel does seem to be a theme with smaller communities.) If money were no object I’d choose San Francisco … or Manhattan. I’m sitting here right now imagining how that conversation with the renting agent might go. </p>
<p>Agent: “How much rent would you consider paying Sir?”<br>
Me: “Oh, I guess I could go $1,200 a month.”<br>
Agent: “Sir, I believe the Manhattan you’re looking for is in Kansas.”</p>
<p>My husband and I are actually considering moving back to NYC when we are older. It is very convenient, you could get everything delivered. You could go grocery shopping and have them deliver to your apartment. In the suburb you have load the bags into your car, then bring them into your house when you get home (try to do that if your garage is not attached). You could take a bus or cab to anywhere - no dependency on anyone to drive you around. Living in an apartment you could get someone to fix anything 24/7 - I had my broken sink pipe fixed on a New Year’s eve (for a nice tip to the super).</p>
<p>I think living in a doorman/super building in NYC as a retiree would be great - IF you had enough money. Unfortunately we won’t. I can see staying where we are for quite a while though eventually we’d probably need a place without stairs.</p>
<p>The year after I graduated from college I went around the country with a friend of mine photographing fire stations. My partner looked at lots of places with an eye to - could I live here. (She wanted to be a museum curator at the time.) There were lots of places in the US we could see ourselves living. Ultimately she ended up in academia in Ann Arbor and I ended up in NYC, but there were a lot of places in the midwest and on the left coast that were fine.</p>
<p>one of my best friends bought an apartment in NYC about a year ago. It’s a really nice place and he has doormen, which is pretty cool. They are all super nice. I’m hoping to take a vacation up there sometime this year to visit. I try to go for about a week every year.</p>
<p>oldfort, I was going to buy a house with 5000 sqft recently but it requires uprooting my kid. She did not approve of the deal because she said she did not like to come back after school to be by herself in that big house. That kind of kill the deal because we wouldn’t want to buy that big of a house for just the two of us.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I thought about moving to the Big Island where you can buy land for dirt cheap and put up a yurt. Not sure how well husband can deal with the lava flow.</p>
<p>hmom, thanks for the input. I think Ca is not going to be in my budget. Plus there are reasons that millions have left Ca in the past few years. I expect to land to the north. Still hard decisions. I will need to consider choices between cold winters or rain.</p>