I want/need to relocate

Nope - there is an ice cream store on STJ called "I Scream" 🙂

Pia

Nancy: Please read Teresa's post about her time on St Thomas. Your post sends up several red flags- your children (increases the difficulty of living in the VI by some large multiplier), the lack of a nest egg and especially your statement of "needing" to relocate. If you are having problems now on the mainland, those problems will follow you here. I do not think life would be very "laid back" in your case. If you aren't big on new construction, you may want to think twice about the Virgin Islands. 🙁

iScream has a good location - steps from the beach and the ferry in Wharfside Village. They're not cheap - but the ice cream is good and they have a Ben and Jerry's kind of menu - splits, shakes, etc.

To move to St. John (not St. Johns), you need to come with tens of thousands of dollars in savings....not debt.

I love stj beaches but a box of cearel is $8. You think you do not want the megastores until you realize what you're grocery bill to feed your family will be and thats just the start. It sounds like you and your husband are more then a little stressed out and I really do wish you the best of luck and home you can dig yourselves out, but it sounds like stj is a wonderful escape during the hard parts of your daily life (just an opinion and I realize I could be very wrong). If he was willing to get relicensed I would think he would be able to find work in construction, as there is alot going on in stt and stj. You know another option is to buy a piece of land and get it paid off and once the kids are out of the house you can build on it if you still have a strong desire to come here. The locals buy land, pay it off, build a little at a time as they can afford it. If nothing else it would be a great investment. And it would give you something to dream about everyday.

Nancy, it really sounds different than it is......and although we returned to the mainland for a multitude of reasons, one of them was convenience. It sounds nice to say you don't need Wal Mart (I hate it) or a mall (I DO hate that, truly), but we found we missed the smaller comforts that were familiar - the place where two people eat for $15, or Barnes and Noble, or Petsmart. Maybe these are mega stores on the mainland, but there's nothing remotely like them on island (actually, I can only say that for STX and STJ, I don't know about STT). You will find you miss ducking into Walgreens and picking up that shampoo...it will be a 30 minute ordeal through Kmart just to get the shampoo, even if they have it....no more ducking in for anything - you would have to plan VERY carefully. I spent 8 days on STJ last summer - $9 for 12 oz. of bacon? Oh heavens!

The waiting in line is something different - and very hard to describe - it's not that you're waiting in line because everyone is so busy, it's because ..... well, you're waiting in line. It sounds good in the "island time" frame of mind, but every day it does get a bit tiring. It's not small town America with Joe's Tire Shop....it's simply different, and much of what you have on STJ, you have to go to STT to get, adding even more time to your day. It does sound good to slow down - it does - but if you convert that into daily life, sometimes it just doesn't work. You're trying to make your appointment, and everyone at the hardware store is visiting, or something new has come in and they are unpacking it......and you will wait while it is unpacked.....the line at the post office is out the building, but you've got yet another appointment to try to squeeze in....I do think we on the mainland are more "clock oriented" - 2:00 means 2:00 - but 2:00 means anytime from noon until 3 days from now, or possibly never, on island.

We went to St. Croix with more than adequate reserves of funds....and STX is MUCH cheaper than STJ....and when we returned we were much more depleted than when we left (admittedly, some of it our fault).

You don't say where you live - the cost of living varies greatly throughout the mainland - but the fact that you have a business and are in debt from that.....unless you could sell your business at a big profit and start over, it's probably not in the stars at this moment in time for you. Teresa's posts are most revealing about having children on island.

All I know is - we most likely should have had an excellent vacation for 15 years on STX for what it cost us to relocate and keep ourselves going for a year. You've come to STJ in February one time - please make many, many repeated trips back before even considering this.

After reading Becky's post it reminded me of something similar today. Becky said

All I know is - we most likely should have had an excellent vacation for 15 years on STX for what it cost us to relocate and keep ourselves going for a year.

I was thinking about how some of the parents who have come have said they want their children to grow up with a world view or to know about the world outside the us. And for what you will pay to relocate and difference to live here vs the mainland, you could easily take some nice family vacations all over the world for at least a decade (thinking only about 2 weeks a year). What if you took the family to someplace like Thailand or cost rica and try (as best you can) to live more like a native and less like a tourist. IMHO that would be a better way to broaden their horizons and experience the world and still maintain their quality of life and education.

Sorry a tad bit off topic.

And don't forget school tuition & the cost of the ferry rides back & forth on top of very high rents. It's much easier to be broke in the States than it is here.

Becky R...wjat do you mean you arrived on STX with more than adequate funds? $$ vary....how much $$ does more than adequate mean and what kind of lifestyle did you live?...tx

Please enjoy the dream and see if you can find other ways to enrich your children's world view - pen pals, vacations etc. From your rough description of your situation, it sounds (IMHO) as if the VI would eat you up and spit you out in pieces.
Shipping your stuff, or will you buy it all on island? 2 vehicles, private schooling at 5 - 6,000 a year each, Renting a family home or buying at Island prices. Trips to the mainland - medical events that cannot be coped with on Island.
The list is endless. Most people who transplant successfully with multiple children could be described as 'well-off'. Your family situation sounds ideally suited to have one of those VI blow ups that we have all seen too often and they end in big tears.

A little personal, but okay - I'll see your quarter and raise you one......we arrived with $30K after moving expenses. Dropped about $8K right out of the chute on a car - we shipped our other one. Our first rental was $2K/mo. including utilities.....we paid first month and deposit, there goes $4K....(thankfully, they didn't ask for last month) and as I have stated in about a million posts before, I came with 6 dogs, which made the lower cost housing almost impossible to find because we had to locate safe and pet-friendly (which was done through this board and I still say we had the greatest landlords ever) - still, we had a 3 BR, 2 BA, very nice apt. on Tipperary. We moved to something slightly more expensive but did have someone sharing the house later that year when it looked like our first landlords would be transferred. The rent going up wasn't the biggest deal - it was the WAPA change that occurred during that period of time, and we could never find out why 3 people had a $400 light bill, when the previous month the 2 people living there had a $75 bill. We ran a computer, 2-3 fans, and a refrigerator. a couple of hours of t.v. at night. No AC. We brought probably 30% of what we owned on the mainland, the rest was sold off - it still cost $12K to move and ship it all and it cost that on the return trip....between deposits and first and last month's rents, etc., etc., we were tapped when we came back....not totally, but tapped. My husband is a professional and made, for the island, very good money - however, when we translated that same amount of money back to the mainland, it was huge......HUGE. And then we were offered a $30K/yr. raise to return to a rural Arkansas town where the cost of living is next to nothing compared to the islands? Do the math.

That's my point and has been my point from the beginning of time - although someone coming from the east coast might find the costs on island to be comparable, you HAVE to consider your locale at this time before making the move and try to translate stateside dollars to island dollars, even if you have a job in place like we did when he arrived on island. Paying $11 for a box of Velveeta just never crossed our mind......and don't they run specials where it's $3.99 a box? Well .... NO would be the answer. Eating out? Maybe twice a month......maybe. We ate a lot of conch and local foods. I work from home, so no clothing expenses....my husband wore to work what he wore in the States, no change there. Entertainment? We made every parade and Jump Up and Starving Artist sale there was and totally loved it....

If you are from a not-so-metropolitan area, have relatively low living expenses, have credit card debt, kids in college, kids that will have to go to private school, whatever you want to pick as your point to start with - you're bringing all of the same problems to a different location. I would have bailed out on New Jersey, too.....can't afford it. Look at your overall situation, see what is likely to change - one thing that changed for us was our kids and families - my kids are 26 and 29 - the oldest was getting out of law school (University of Michigan, can you say DEBT? Good, I knew you could.) They were setting up households, finding girls that may or may not be "the one", the relatives were aging, we were hemorraghing money to get back to the States to help care for them (oh yeah - they were old when we left, but their health went downhill - we're baby boomers, we're the ones responsible now)......we didn't make the right choice for us at our particular moment in time. However, I don't think anyone could say we came down and were under-funded.

Before someone eats my lunch, this is the very reason that some who are there and some who have gone will keep hammering at you to take as long a time as possible on a PMV - we did a week, thought we had it figured out. We didn't. At all. We still had enough money left in the bank stateside to buy a house - we quickly figured out we knew NOTHING about island construction or the various neighborhoods and it just didn't seem to be a good idea for us.....others will beg to differ, and that's great for them. Can't argue that, to each his own. Should we have brought all of our earthly possessions and dogs? Nope, but it was never a negotiable point for us.....well, our mistake for not realizing just how much that "no negotiate" rule would cost us in the end.

If you can put your stuff in storage, go with your clothes, rent a place for 6-12 months, get your feet on the ground and THEN consider making bigger steps, you have a much clearer vision of what is really happening with regard to you personally. Had we done it that way, we most likely still would have returned due to the family situation....these are things that can't be predicted, and things you will have to make heart-wrenching decisions about if you are on island and you find it just isn't working for you, or it is working and you still feel obligated to your family or whatever it is that makes you feel you need more than one trip per year back to the old stomping ground. It's not cheap to fly in and out, sometimes it's just dreadfully expensive.

I'm just saying to think it through - everything - don't do some hoo-doo on yourself and get blinded to the obvious......but to suggeset we might have come without enough money or lived a lavish lifestyle is just not true....just not true. Don't get me wrong - I miss the island in many ways, and I certainly miss some of the people every day....I will be there in May for a good long visit. I just think too many people don't do enough comparisons and research - this doesn't need to be a decision made in two weeks, it needs a LOT of research and a lot of traveling to and from the island (for most people) to make sure this is what you want. Visiting and living are two entirely separate adventures.

Nancy - just to preci what other posters have said in response to your question - no, no, no and no again. Given your most honest estimation of your family situation and your finances, relocation to the Virgin Islands is totally out of the question for you. I truly wish you all the very best in your search for a better life but the Virgin Islands are not for you,

Great to hear 'succinct truth'.

Promoguy, are you saying I'm not succint? I'll post a picture of you if you aren't nice to me.....

LOL....do it Becky!!

four young children and a lot of debt are a bad combination for new arrivals to the islands, especially if you aren't sure how you would make a living. On top of that, you have chosen the most expensive of the USVI.

Type "A" personalities go a bit nuts in the islands. My husband is a Type "A" and only copes by running multiple businesses to keep him hopping, plus tries to travel as much as possible. The slower pace that many of us love about the islands isn't as ideal for that personality type.

You probably should do a LOT of research before making any sudden changes in latitude.