Trying to find your perfect place to live but have no idea where to begin? In this blog post, I outline which cities I decided to give a test run before I committed to one. 

Trying to find the perfect place to call home can be overwhelming. There are so many factors to consider that it can be tough to even know where to begin. Take it from someone who spent an entire year traveling to find her perfect place to live.  

Trust me, I know how it feels to be completely paralyzed by the options available to remote workers or digital nomads who can live anywhere. It can be overwhelming to choose just one place.

However, at the end of the day, you have to choose somewhere or it will choose you.

And if you’re anything like me, you like to do the choosing.

So take a look at why I decided to spend some time in the below cities. Hopefully, it will encourage you to take the plunge or at the very least to spend some time thinking about what might be your perfect place to live. 

If you haven’t had a chance to check out my How to Decide Where to Live Series, I would encourage you to start there. But without further ado, here are the 6 cities I choose for my journey.

Potential Perfect Place Number One: Miami

The first stop on my perfect place finding adventure was Miami. I chose to go to Miami during February and March which are the best months in terms of weather because it’s not blistering hot. 

If you are a choosewheretolive.com student, you know that this is the opposite of what I typically recommend. Generally, I suggest that when you’re exploring a new city, it’s best to visit during its most challenging season.

For example, since Chicago experiences extremely cold temperatures around negative 10 degrees for a significant part of the year, it wouldn’t be wise to test it out only during the pleasant summer months.

Chances are if you can’t survive a few months during the worst time of the year then you probably shouldn’t move there. 

So I guess in this case do as I say not as a do…

Miami has a lot to offer in terms of diversity and culture which are two of the things on my Top Five Location Must Haves list. There’s access to the beach which I’ve never lived near but had always wondered if I’d like to. To be honest, Miami was one of my stretch cities meaning that it wasn’t at the top of my list, but I had always been interested in learning more about it. 

Since I could live anywhere, I thought, why not add it to my year long excursion of choosing where to live?

Sometimes your perfect place will surprise you.

I’m also a big fan of Latin culture and had heard that Miami is the closest you can get to living in another country while still living in the US. What could be better than bachata and meringue every night of the week? I was excited to experience that vibrant culture and still be in the country.

San Diego  

The thing that appealed to me the most about San Diego was the weather. Living somewhere that is 75 degrees year round definitely qualifies as a potential perfect place for me. In fact, sunny weather is the most important thing to me when it comes to where I live. It’s number one on my Location Must Haves List.

After living in the dreary Pacific Northwest for a few years, I learned that I’m sadly a victim to seasonal effectiveness disorder. Remember one of the best things you can do when choosing where to live is prioritize your mental health. For me, that mean’t constant sunshine and having access to beautiful scenery.

San Diego has both.

SD is also a very active city. Everywhere you look someone is running, playing volleyball, enjoying a green smoothie, hitting up the ocean for a surf. I’m one of those people who is motivated and encouraged by others so constantly seeing people live their best fit lives sounded great to me! Plus fit folks means fit friends.

Who doesn’t want to live in a place with like-minded people? 

There’s plenty of access to hiking trails and nature. Just a quick drive from the city are beaches galore. It really is such a beautiful place. So for all of these reasons, I thought San Diego might be my perfect place to live. 

Chicago , my perfect place?

Truth be told, Chicago has always had a special place in my heart. It was the first city I had ever visited. And for a while, I thought it could be the perfect place for me to live. I remember getting that excited feeling in the pit of my stomach when I saw a sky scraper for the first time. There has always been this nudge inside of me for city life.

My rural hometown just couldn’t provide the excitement I needed.

I had been to Chicago to visit, but I needed to really truly experience it. Was Chicago that “can’t eat, can’t sleep, reach for the stars over the fence” kind of love (where my Marky Kate and Ashley fans at?)? Or was it all just in my head? 

So on the list it went!

In addition to this internal nudging, Chicago had a lot to offer or at least that was what my research was telling me. The city is massive compared to all of the ones I had lived in. They have great access to public transportation and many things to do. If I wanted it, Chicago most likely had it.

Diversity is another Top 5 Location Must Have for me and Chicago has a lot to offer in this department. The city is full of all different types of people and things to do. There are mosques and churches and so many different types of cuisines. It made me happy to know that my friend group could potentially reflect the United Nations. I’ve always embraced cultures and perspectives different than my own.

Chicago also has access to great hospitals and schools and its surprisingly clean.

The only trade off I would experience was having easy access to beautiful nature which I decided maybe I could live without. This is the thing about choosing where to live. There will ALWAYS be trade offs. My choosewheretolive.com students know this all to well. At some point, you will have to decide what is more important to you and what you would be fine living without.

Could Detroit be my perfect place?

You might be looking at my list and trekking along with me until you hit Detroit. I get this a lot. People always want to know why Detroit?

And to be honest, its a fair question.

The city seems far from the perfect place to live. It literally went bankrupt back in 2013. But that’s the thing, Detroit isn’t the perfect place for everyone. However, it could have very well been the perfect place for me. This is something I tell my students often over at choosewheretolive.com.

Where you choose to live doesn’t have to make sense to your mom or your best friend or anyone else for that matter, it just has to make sense to YOU!

But I digress…

In addition to being obsessed with choosing the perfect place to live, I also geek out on city planning and urban design. The idea of rebuilding a city is incredibly fascinating to me. I love studying how a cities grow and how I could potentially be apart of that some day. It has always been a dream of mine to help restore a neighborhood. But Detroit offered a whole city.

I have some friends who live there and are actively apart of Detroit’s rebuild. They invited me to come stay with them for as long as I wanted to see the efforts they are doing to make Detroit a great city again.

So I decided to take them up on their offer.

Detroit is much smaller than the cities I was considering, but there is something about an underdog that I have always loved. It was exciting to me to live in a place with so much history and potential. The diversity there is huge for a city of its size and the people who live there really seemed to love it.

I encourage you as you are considering your perfect place to live that you consider places a little outside of your domain. You never know how something might surprise you if you give it a try.

Boston 

In my head, Boston was everything. It is a beautiful city adorned with trees and a river that runs through. There’s plenty of access to biking, walking, and running paths, and the city is quite easy to get around. I liked that they have great public transportation and easy access to surrounding states. 

I had never lived in a place where you can go to so many different states within a two hour radius. It provided a plethora of options for day trips whenever I needed to escape the city. I liked that I could quickly get to Maine or Rhode Island which both provided beach and mountain access. 

The school system in Boston is impeccable which led me to believe I could potentially find a well-rounded and intelligent husband. It was important for me to find a life partner wherever I chose to live next and Boston kind of seemed like a place I could do that. 

If you have read my How to Decide Where to Lives series, you know that Part 2 of the series is all about establishing your life goals. I was single at the time, and I knew that finding a life partner was one of the things I wanted to do in my perfect place. I knew I wanted to establish myself in the next place I chose to live so I wanted someone who was also committed to the place.

Outside of the university system in Boston, its actually a place where people stay so that was intriguing to me. Remember to take in your life goals when you are tying to decide where to live.

New York City  

I couldn’t end the last year of my twenties without spending extended time in NYC. In case you missed it, I did my year long perfect place finding adventure the year before I turned thirty. For all intents and purposes, I fell like every twenty-something should live in this vibrant city for at least a month. 

What can I say?

The TV shows and movies made me curious about the city that never sleeps. I liked the idea of having access to something every hour of the day. I am admittedly a grandma when it comes to staying out late, but I liked the idea of at least having the option to stay out if I wanted to. 

There’s broadways and dance clubs and speakeasies and plenty of job opportunities. If I haven’t said it enough, access to culture and diversity are high on my Location Must Haves list when it comes to my perfect place. I CRAVE spontaneity and NYC seemed like the perfect place to be my best and most spontaneous self! 

So off to the Big Apple I went excited for what was to come. 

Brit’s Location Must Haves

If you have reached the end of the article and are wondering what my “Top 5 Location Must Haves” are when it comes to my perfect place to live, please see below: 

1. Great weather (For me this means sunshine most days of the year and access to all four seasons).
2. Close to family. (I wanted to be able to quickly get to my family in case of an emergency).
3. Diversity (Diversity means not only the way people look but also access to diversity in thought. People can look very different but still think the same. That is not diversity.)
4. Access to Nature (I need there to be trees and parks. Plus if there are beautiful mountains within walking distance, I wouldn’t hate that.) 
5. Community Focused (I care a lot about community development so I wanted to live in a city focused on bringing the community together!)

Discovering your Location Must Haves is admittedly a lot of work. The perfect place for you to live might be somewhere where the cost of living is low or where there is access to great hospitals. Maybe you want to live somewhere that has no income tax so you can easily start a business.

Whatever it is, I’m here to help it be perfect for YOU!

Let me know what cities you are considering in your comments below!