Hi and thanks for reading. First off, this is a great site, and I am looking forward to exploring it further. The forum guidelines say to give as much info as possible on the intro so here goes. I am 44, wife is 34 and we have three healthy beautiful kids ages 6, 4 and 2. We are very family oriented and education and child development is everything to us. We live in a suburb of southwestern CT near NYC and the real estate market has never recovered. We paid 1.7mm for our house in 2010 and we would be lucky to get 1.6 now, netting 1.5 after commission fees. We have great schools but everyone does the commute and has a high stress high expense lifestyle, country clubs, au pairs, etc. we belong to a club too and we would not get our 70k initiation back if we moved. In two years, our 5/1 arm is set to float on our $1mm mortgage. We have $6,950,000 in stocks and bonds, 80% stock 20% bonds with real estate, international, small cap mid cap but primarily large cap dividend stocks. Our portfolio yield is 3.3% or $225,000. We also have $1.1mm saved for our kids college so with 125 k cars and personal assets, our net worth is 8.7 to 8.8mm. What I like about CT are the schools and programs, our high school ranked 330 in the country by U.S. News and we have one of the top swimming programs which has produced Olympic quality swimmers. Our real estate taxes are 32k and we live a comfortable life in CT w 22k for vacations, 3 cars, country club etc on 21k per month. I am at a point where I am sort of burned out on the grind and already working limited hours but the pace and the expenses still go on. I don't want to take a huge hit on the house and eat my country club initiation only 4 years ago, but I am beginning to think seriously of taking a loss on the house and moving to Fort Collins or Portland Oregon area. My wife's family is from Eugene and Portland has good schools but some of the suburbs are expensive there too and the weather stinks in the winter. I am thinking of a $900 k house. I am also thinking about Portland Maine and Burlington VT area but the winters here are so brutal and my wife is not a skier. It's a real dilemma but a good problem to have. Any suggestions appreciated. I also plan to work part time or even start a business to stay busy and meet people as well as earn some extra money. Thanks again for your thoughts.
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