The ultimate in saving

Trent over at The Simple Dollar wrote a great article on the cost of childcare. It's a hefty article but well worth the read, especially if you have rugrats of your own.

But I want to focus on one area that caught my attention
I quit my job, she changes her job, and we move This is an option we’ve been looking at to target next spring. The advantage here is that we both have parents who live very near each other, but several hours away from us. My parents are both retired at this point and they would love to be free daycare for us a couple days a week. So, our plan here would be that my wife would seek a teaching position in that area and if one was located, we simply move back there. This would also likely involve me converting to a stay-at-home dad. Why do this, you ask? The biggest factor is housing costs. The area where we would move to has homes that cost 40 to 50% less than the homes do in this area, because not only is it rural, but there are no major cities anywhere close to the area at all. This option eliminates child care costs and reduces housing costs, but has the greatest salary reduction and causes the greatest change by far to our lives.
To me, the third option is the one that is the most pleasant, but it’s also the one that is going to require the most careful planning and probably require the biggest amount of cash in hand to make it happen. It also happens to be one that my wife is most uncertain about in terms of her own feelings.

As many of us know, moving from a city area to a rural area can be the most effective savings technique. We know this from The Millionaire Next Door (required reading for the aspiring millionaire) and from common sense! The reason Trent's post caught my eye is because the reason why I am saving $10,000 in 6 months is similar to Trent's situation.

In October 2007, I along with my girlfriend will step on board a budget flight to Orlando from Dublin Airport, it will be a one way flight.

I love the UK, I love the people, the climate, the feeling I get here. But there is one annoying factor. It's damn well expensive. In terms of taxes I pay the equivalent of almost $10,000 per year. In terms of consumer goods, everything is double the price that it is in The States. House prices are incredible. For a 2 bedroom 1 bathroom terraced house, you're looking at the equivalent of $350,00 - $600,000.

As you can imagine, the final straw came when my girlfriend decided we would look into buying a home. Upon realization that there was no possible way of getting a mortgage without falling into massive debt for many years, I broached the subject of moving back to Florida and buying a home there. When I say Florida, I'm not talking Miami or Orlando. I'm talking rural. After many weeks of research I finally convinced my girlfriend (a city girl) that this was the best position for us financially.

It's a difficult decision to just pack up and move to another city, state, or in my case country. There are different factors in each situation, in my case I have family to think about. But when you sit down and weigh out the differences, the situation becomes clear. In the end of it all, I didn't convince my girlfriend, the facts did.

I'll look forward to updating you on that chapter of our lives when we get there. Until then lets focus on this $10,000