The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
How to choose neighbourhoods
I live in a big city with a HCOL. My wife and I work demanding jobs, are in our early 30s, and we have 2 very young kids. We are starting to look for houses to buy and are trying to rationally weight the considerations to narrow down neighbourhoods. We used commute time, crime, and school quality to rule out most places, but for those that remain, what would you consider when planting roots for the next 10+ years?
So far, in addition to schools and commute, we've got:
Decent food (walkable groceries and take out restaurants). We spent some time without these amenities and it was rough.
Drive time out of the city. Its important to us to be near-ish to nature.
Census derived demographic data (income, race, poverty rate). I want the majority of our neighbours to be my race, class, and to the extent possible, my age and life circumstances (young families).
Distance from friends
What are we missing?
You can get groceries delivered. This realization eliminated a big time sink and stressor from my family life.
Is quiet important to your family? When my wife and I were house hunting there were large sections of the city that were intolerable because of traffic noise. Conversely, if you don't care about noise you can get a cheaper/better place by tolerating some.
More options
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More options
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