Anybody successfully convinced your surburbia loving wife to move away from the city?

I plan to stop working in 6 years, wife and I will be in late 40s.  She likes suburbia and all that goes with it.  I would prefer to not live within sight of other people.  

I own a small farm in rural PA (900 miles away unfortunately) and, within reason, money isn't a concern.  I'd love to move there, but a more feasible course of action would be to buy a rural spot between Nashville and Huntsville, keeping our suburban jail house and have a place within an hour drive.  

Our Youngest kid is 6 and I've got her fishing, shooting, and maintaining our garden.  I'm trying to ensure she doesn't become accustomed to or reliant on city life and will be eager to move out of the city if/when the time comes.  

Help me arfcom, you're my only hope.

Sometimes there is no changing people, sorry.

You can play on heart strings and a "for the kids" thing, but that only usually works if she is sort of on the fence anyway.

I dunno, but if you figure a way let me know......    Mine will compromise and let me move to Siberia (lake Baikal area), but russian gun laws suck :(    I would kill to live >20 miles to my next neighbor.........    Good luck! 

I doubt you can change her and make her happy.
My wife is same...she likes urban life so we have both worlds for our kids.  We have a house in the city where we work and kids go to school during the week.  We also have a property/farm 100 miles away in the sticks where there are no roads.  I go to the farm after work Friday and spend the weekend there hunting, shooting, etc.  Sometimes I go alone and sometimes kids come with me.  On rare occasion my wife come too.  Usually I go alone Friday so I can hunt Saturday morning and my wife will bring kids on Saturday late morning so we can spend the day together and then wife will go back home on Saturday evening sometimes with kids and sometimes alone.  Then I come back home Sunday evening or night. On occasional weekend I'll stay in the city because I have to take care of something around the house or because of social obligations.

Highly unlikely you can pull it off OP. I only managed a move to subrural development on acreage lots after the last child headed to college, but still way too crowded for me. As long as you're still married to her, it'll be no dice as she'll always find a reason to stay in or near the city. . Be glad you've got the farm for a getaway. Wish I had a farm...

You say "youngest", how many ya got?  Look at big house prices in the country vs city

If she's fishing and shooting you're doing well.  Same as above with the garden, "honey, wouldn't it be nice to have a bigger yard?".  Hit up some farmers markets, talk to the people, most of the time just interacting with some of these folks you're going to feel more comfortable than the city...unless you hear banjo's

Your only option to do what you wish is eject. I doubt that is reality in your situation. 

Good Luck! Some women warm to the rural life style and others just plain defy it. All I know is start introducing her slowly to the rural lifestyle and Hope. My wife dreamed of the farm life and fallowed me home and I have not been successful at running her off yet. Then again you may just have to purchase sanity property and spend the weekends like a poster above does.

There are always small towns. Think of it as a Gateway drug

Every time we move her first question is "How far to the mall?".  Good luck.

Yeah screw that. I live on a 700 acre ranch 25 miles from every town and I'll do cartwheels and laugh like an insane crazy person when we sell this bitch and I see it in the rear view mirror on the way to the coast. FSBO. Will Finance. Screw "country living". Green Acres ain't the place for me.

She's very deep into the spend money to save time wormhole, i.e. We have no time to do XYZ so we should buy something or pay somebody to do it.  But she doesn't work and does too much stuff that is ultimately optional.  i prefer a simple life where you do things yourself and don't slave away to make money so you can spend it on things to save your time because you spend all your time making money.  Does that make sense?  

Ironically her parents lived on a small farm until sometime in elementary school, then surburbia from then on.  

My retirement pension will pay bills and buy groceries with a bit to spare, I've told her I'm probably done working in 6 years and she thinks I'll just get another job and make even more money(i.e. Pension plus a paycheck).  All the guys at the best local gunshop are retired and just work there for fun, I'll do that before I get a stressful job again.  The owner lets you put guns on lay away and pay out of your paycheck, so it's a good way to get more guns.  

Unfortunately I can't just sell the farm in PA because I jointly own it with my sister and brother.  He lives down south too and visits it every year or two.  She lives in upstate NY a few hours away but never goes because she has toddlers, her own 100+ acres of land, and she commutes 2+ hours to make money since she's a sugar momma.  I can't convince her to sell, brother will consider depending on how much we'd get.

OP,,,just come spend a couple of days at our place. You`ll need a tractor to drag her back. Eagles on the lake, 12lb black bass , bob cats walking up the drive, shoot skeet out of the pool, fawns in the front yard. No sounds except the wild life.

Not complete Change, but a large one.  

I wouldn't say "minimalist", I would say "simplistic".  Not gonna give up Internet and washing machine!  And I'm poster boy for the "your possessions own you" thing - I really don't have that many guns.  I run out of clothes because I have so few so they can't sit in the laundry or I run out.  

Don't bogart the knowledge, share for all!

And it's possible... She likes the garden and likes mowing the grass.  When we used to live close enough to visit the farm she loved going there.  She mowed the fields and all sorts of other stuff. She's just sucked in by surburbia life and I need to get her out of it!

Buy her a fucking horse. Best decision you'll make! EVAR!

In reality though. Just fucking move the family like you want to in 6 years.

You do have a set of balls on you still? Right OP ?

I'm just curious, what is your experience with marriage exactly? 

That kind of attitude doesn't make for a long lasting marriage...

Hard to make people like what they don't.  All you can do is hope she sees how toxic the rat race is. Subscribe to things like homesteader magazine and leave those things laying around. I join my check of the month club in 12yrs and my wife is already starting to move into areas of her career field that can convert to home bases telework.

My wife was a farm girl from northern Ohio and wanted nothing to do with the country life anymore.   Over the years things changed as she found fun in some outdoor things I like to do.
After about 6 years of being married we moved to a 42 acre tract that is about 30min from downtown Greenville.   Honestly find a area that has some rural land but not so far from the city that she has nothing to do.

Have you looked at land with your wife?  You have to let her fall in love with a piece of property.  

When we looked at the umpteenth piece of land for sale, my wife was still on the fence on living 30 minutes from work.  We walked the land we would end up buying after a record snow storm.  Perfect sunny day, cold, but we walked the property and said very little.  (I was going nuts, deer sign everywhere, lots of old apple trees, good edge and cover, etc and etc.)   On the way home, my wife said, "we had better make an offer Monday morning...".  That was that.  I saw that it was exactly what I wanted, but I knew when she picked a place for the house, garden, fruit trees, and what way the kitchen would face, it was a done deal.

Well the burbs are better than living inside the city downtown. Living on the outskirts are usually pretty good. But yeah after you retire and have money, then you can buy a ranch and build a house and get some cows and horses. You can save a lot of money if it's a working ranch, thus a few cows. Horses for the wife. Peace and quiet for you, ha

Do you really want to listen to your wife cry, piss, and moan for the rest of your life. Making you so fucking miserable you want a divorce, and are willing to lose half of everything you own. You don't convince her of anyhing. If she don't like rural, the bitching will never stop. How you "FORCED" her to move, you self centered son of a bitch. You have been warned!!!!!!

Buy her goats.

Buy her chickens.

There are two types of goat people. Those who have never had goats and those who have had goats and swear to never be around those god-forsaken creatures again.

Get both. Baby goats are precious. By the time they're grown and she's sick of them and the stupid chickens, she's in the country.

Getting a person who sincerely prefers the suburbs to move out to the country requires trickery. The baby goat/adult goat bait and switch is a perfect example of "farm fantasy" vs "farm life". Farm life sucks. Baby goats and the idea of goats is awesome.

You can sell her on a goat milk soap and candle fantasy too.

ETA: I don't know what to do if she argues that even farmers move to town as they age and OP's plan is bass ackwards. Maybe sell it as a temporary move?

I think I just hurt myself laughing.

Tada da da da "The chores!"...

bait 'n switch 


nice 

My wife grew up in the city (outskirts of Boston). I grew up on 40 acres in a rural area in NH.

During dating I learned pretty quick that that she liked the idea of the city comforts.   Based on that and knowing I wanted to live rural when I left the army I deliberately set out to introduce her to the joys/benefits of rural living.

We've lived in some relatively remote areas and purposefully rented in rural areas around the bases.  After a decade my wife has come to love rural living, with some access to civilization (30 minutes to 1.5 hours away)

My plan has evidently worked as we just bought 100 acres in rural area that's still only an hour from a major city.

Personally I'd love to live in the middle of nowhere Montana or Alaska, but this is a pretty good compromise.

Funny, because my whole military time since we got married was urban minus one Podunk small city.  

I've come to accept that my dream of living on my family farm in PA is highly unlikely, working on convincing my sister to sell.  

I'm going to shoot for at least a few dozen acres within a 90 minute drive of the burbs.  There's some decent land available around here, but if there's even a dumpy house on it its $$$$.

We lived on post twice, once in Irwin and once at Riley.  Both were due to a lack of options off post.  However in both cases it proved a great way to show my wife all the downsides to urban/city living.  I was never pushy about it, but she pretty quickly came to love our off post houses on multiple acres at other duty stations.  We purposely didn't rent in the clusters of sub divisions around the bases, but rather picked homes 20-30 minutes away on 3-5 acres.  Cost more in gas and time but it's paying off.

ETA: it is difficult to find non-urban rentals around a base as they create their own suburbs. We usually had to go 20-30 minutes from the gate. Or know of hard to find dirt roads that folks didn't want to rent on.  But I got more house for my money that way.  It did make the 0345 wake up suck to get to PT

Yes it's very rural.  30 minutes to a  grocery store.  And groceries are $$$.  

The main reason I want to move there is because I already own it.  

I'm good with selling it and so is my brother.  Strangely, our sister is the youngest and never spent time there growing up yet she is the one emotionally attached to it.  Ironically, She also lives 2 hours away in NY and only visits there 1-2 times a year.  

Anybody want to buy it?  Arfcom discount!  You can shoot off the deck!

I know it sounds obvious but have you proposed the idea of selling your share to her?

As far as what to do, I have some experience. My wife, while she didn't grow up in suburbia, she wasn't a farmer, she was anti-gun when we first met, etc. It has been a VERY slow lifestyle change over the years. Out of college we bought a house in a "rural" subdivision. It's about 1/2 way between 2 towns, one smaller, one larger with a mall and shopping oppurtunities (15 min to either town). We lived there for 7 years. Her loose & free spending slowly converted to penny-pinching as she was able to witness and see how much power money has when you don't blow it all. I wanted chickens, she didn't, then on one of my trips overseas to the sandbox she miraculously wanted chickens and she got them. I always longed for farm life (I grew up on a farm), not only for me, but for my kids. We eventually found our ticket to farm life. We found a beautiful house on 53 acres. Of course, she HAS to like the house and there HAS to be something there for her; in this case she liked the pool for the kids and was ok with the house. The master suite was a big seller too! I didn't care about that stuff, I like the 53 acres of deer, turkey, & quail heaven. The downside (there is always a downside) is that instead of being 20 minutes from the mall, she's 45 minutes from the mall now. She can handle that. She NEVER would have been ok with this house 8 years ago when we were looking for our first house. It's a slow change-over in mentality and I really can't pinpoint any one thing you can do. However I can give you a few tips, in most cases big decisions regarding big changes will likely have to be "her idea" even if you held that idea several years before she did. Try to find ways to slowly and gently steer her thinking so that she comes up with the ideas so she feels as if it's part of her dream as well. Don't try to go too far too fast, she is going to want to still be close to suburbia; but "it's only another 20 minutes away and it unlocks this huge possibility" will be much more palatable than going out into the middle of nowhere. I still fight some "battles" IE, she wants a pot-bellied pig because they're so cute, I'm sticking to the hard rule that we won't have animals that don't serve a purpose and pigs only serve 1 purpose and that's food. She has come full circle country girl in my opinion though. She used to refuse to eat deer, because it was deer. Now she is excited for this fall (first hunting season at the new place) so we can fill the freezers with deer.

I would recommend this.  If you want to sell and have the opportunity to get out of a jointly owned property do it at first opportunity!  Use the proceeds to buy a more suitable place or pay off a current mortgage.

seriously, you are not going to.

Find another wife or embrace the burbs.

Sister can't buy me out anytime soon.  

Our deed is "joint rights of survivorship" in PA.  All owners must agree for anything to happen, there is no overriding any 1 owner.  I know for a fact no 1 person can sell, mortgage, or subdivide their portion.  

I'd love to live there, it's mortgage free too, but I can't see it happening anytime in the foreseeable future.  It kills me because the house is 100% new inside and it's just sitting and aging and all the old farm buildings are falling apart.  Totally furnished and equipped too, furniture, tools, farm equipment, everything you need to walk in and live.

I've been looking around here, there are plenty of interesting places in north AL and south central TN, it seems by far the most feasible possibility for us.  There's a lot of rural spots in the hills between Huntsville and Chattanooga and the land is cheap.  

So who wants to buy a nice farm in PA?

I've floated the rent idea, but it's impractical.  The rent would be higher than 95% of locals could afford, plus the house would get used up.  I contend it doesn't matter since its sitting and aging anyway.  Also if we later sold it then we'd have to pay tax on the profit.  We bought it for $1 from our dad, so I think the full sale price (minus $1) would be taxed since it was a rental and none of us lived there in the previous 5 years, correct?  

I looked into Airbnb, but with none of us local it seems like a disaster.  Also by the time we pay somebody to help us (clean it, manage, etc) we'd make no significant profit and endure lots if headache and potential trouble.

Arfcom discount, who's buying?

I'd be careful with kids involved.

My parents have a ranch 100 miles SW of Fort Worth, and they were wanting to move out there... until they realized how strange country folks are.  I am not talking about small town folks, or good, hard-working farmers and ranchers, I am talking about crazy-as-hell country ass mofos living out in a trailer on 1/4 of an acre.  For many, there is a reason why they live out in the middle of nowhere, and that is because that they are crazy and have no social skills.  Your kids will be going to school with their kids.

Never forget, out in the country, the only things to do are drink, smoke, snort, and screw.  Don't think for a minute that your kids are going to be out fishing or coyote hunting every friday night.

A conversation with a deputy in a rural county is pretty enlightening.