It's funny you mentioned Shackleton, my husband reached out to them last month and apparently the job posting he asked after was 7+ months old. Happy to get insight on the pay not being wonderful, maybe it wasn't great to begin with. I'm going to pass along the tip about the timber framing demand you mentioned. My husband was actually looking to get out of it. He used to travel around the country with a field crew doing raisings and it takes quite a physical toll. I could see why you pivoted! We have to keep our options open with the higher cost of living, I guess. Thanks a million for the tips, it's extremely generous. We're really hoping to make this work but need a few things to fall into place first.

Thanks for your honesty! Just monitoring this feed is having us reconsider NH more seriously due to the job and housing concerns. In your opinion, is there much difference in the people and culture between VT and NH?

Thanks so much for your honest take. We don't have ties other than a love of the land and Vermont's closeness to the upper Northeast. We want to establish community and make friends, but not being a native probably sets us back, especially if one of us has to work remotely to live there. Every other post in this thread mentions insane housing costs and scarcity, and we are now considering NH much more seriously. The states are so small, I'd almost rather visit VT every weekend and skip across the border than surrender my savings account to the VT renting situation.

Do you recommend any areas in southern NH? We were looking at Keene and Concord. I'll probably get banished for asking.

We are liking more and more the areas of VT that border NH, it seems like NH has a lot going for it as well. I'm glad you mentioned energy costs, I didn't even have a guess to go off of, and that number is quite high. A lot of people in this do seem bitter and negative, but I'd rather the rude honesty to shake the romanticism I think lots of people have for Vermont who have no idea of the realities that you mentioned. This last 24 hours of following up on this post have my husband and I doing lots more math and hard thinking.

I appreciate the info! Is the job you got remote, or local? I would likely be working remotely, so we'd have to be somewhere with internet, which is coincidentally where the rent is insanely high and housing is hard to find. My husband is looking for a job in either furniture making or timber framing. He's not having the best of luck after looking the past 6 months. We could dip into savings, but when rent is nuts, it really pushes off the house buying process. The culture is really where our hearts are at, and maybe it would be worth a tighter living.

Thanks for the numbers, that's what we couldn't seem to put a finger on. It's crazy that it would take a six figure income to live a simpler, slower life comfortably. Although I keep hearing that's the price people will pay for the Northeast.

Thanks so much for the detailed run down. My husband is a furniture maker and I'm a graphic designer. I could work remotely, but my husband can't, and there's not much to pick from as he's been looking the past 6 months. The lifestyle change is honestly what we want: slower simpler living and closer to nature. We won't be leaving for vacations, because we'd be living exactly where we'd escape to when we lived elsewhere in the US. So in some ways, we could make it work. But we'd love to buy a house within the next few years and the renting costs in VT seem to leave very little for a savings account. The pros and cons list is extensive on both sides.

Good lord, that's depressing. Our goal if moving here was to rent for 1-3 years to save and then buy a house. But it sounds like renting and saving don't go together in VT.... yikes.

Totally fair, although I can see in all the bitterness that there's some hard truths that people who've never lived in VT would not know otherwise.

My husband is looking for work as either a furniture maker or timber framer, and I'm a graphic designer. We're both seeing very little available, sadly. I am able to work remotely but have always preferred working locally if possible. We definitely don't live paycheck to paycheck, but the housing costs make it look like our house buying goal will get pushed much farther down the road. We've been traveling to the NE for vacation for years, so living there means we won't be traveling elsewhere because we're not "escaping" the southeast anymore. To me, the tradeoffs sound worth it. But I'd hate to get there and find out we romanticized it beyond reality.