Sometimes during the job hunt you might come across a fantastic position that offers excellent pay, great benefits and the type of work that you would absolutely love to do but that is located, well, much further from home than you first anticipated.
Relocating can be the best thing that has ever happened to you or the worse, depending upon your specific situation. If you are young and single, moving from one town to the next can be as easy as changing your shoes. If you have a family, and particularly if you have a family and live near extended family, relocating to a different part of the country may be difficult if not close to impossible.
So what should you consider if you are looking at a job that requires relocation?
First, what is the pay? May seem like an obvious question, but what you are paid in one state may not equal out to what you will be paid in the next. And even if pay is higher in the new area than it is in the area in which you currently live, consider cost of living. I’m sure that it goes without saying that the cost of living here in California is extremely high; one can’t find a three-bedroom two-bath home below $650,000 in the town that I live. So even if your salary doubles, will it make a difference if you can’t afford to purchase a home?
Consider your family situation. We live out here on our own; our entire family resides in Florida. We have two young children, and we do everything ourselves. We don’t have help on the weekends, we can’ t have family at the girls’ birthday parties, and we haven’t had a date night in months, if not years. If you are close to your family, if you require your family’s assistance, if you have a lot of children or if you just don’t see your Sundays spent without your parents and extended family, relocating to a place sans family may be a difficult task.
Consider the job carefully. We are always excited about new positions, but at times we get into those positions and then discover they are not all that we thought they would be. If you are relocating for the job only, and not for the city or some other experience, and then the job turns out to be something that you really aren’t happy with, you’re going to be stuck in a new town far away from home. If you are going to relocate, you need to be doing so not just because you want to take a job away from where you are living now, but because you are also interested in exploring a new city or moving closer to something, be it friends, family or a sense of adventure. My husband and I came to California because we wanted to explore the west coast, and over the past six years we have done extensive traveling. For us, relocating has worked well. We love the area and can’t imagine our lives had we not moved. But before we came, we knew that this was something we wanted to do even if the job didn’t work out well (which, I’m happy to report, it did).
Relocating can be an excellent new-job perk or it can be something that isn’t feasible for your family. Before making a big decision like packing up the family and taking them across the country to live in a new state, weigh the pros and cons carefully. Once you are in the new place, going back home may not be an option for a long time.