Question of the week #10

Can you elaborate on your perspective on raising a family in NYC? Do you regret leaving the city for the suburbs prior to being in your current financial position?

I love this question.  You can think of us as ahead of the curve or crazy for moving our kids back to the city at 8, 6 and 3 years old.  For us it was a dream come true. 

Since moving back, there is not a day where I am not grateful for living in NYC.  For our kids there are a million reasons why it has been a wonderful place to raise them.  Here are just a few. 

They have been exposed to a diverse culture of people, food, religions, economic differences and life choices living in downtown NYC and going to Little Red Elisabeth Irwin.  They have been empowered and independent since they began walking to school on their own from end of 5th grade.  They learned to be street smart when it comes to making decisions when one has to navigate a city.  They were able to embrace the cultural events, the latest store, movie or restaurant because they were curious about what was happening in their own town and the streets they were walking every day.  They have watched a neighborhood transform and with that comes a better understanding of how economies change and capitalism works. 

If we never returned from the suburbs then all 3 of them would probably have been different kids.  I can always find the good in anything and we would have been just fine in the suburbs but regardless of our financial success, which allowed us to make the move back, I am not so sure we would have survived there.  We probably would have figured a way back before anyone ever graduated from high school.  It wasn’t for us.  When I look back at that time period, although we made some incredible friends and those were wonderful years with the kids, I was probably depressed.  I just was not that happy being me. 

Perhaps they grew up quicker because of living in NYC.  Perhaps they are more sophisticated at a young age because they grew up in NYC.  But the bottom line is, happy parents make happy kids.  We are happy here.  We love this town like no other and if you ask our kids what is the best decision we ever made for them in their entire lives it would be making the move back to NYC.