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KEY TAKEAWAYS

• The location you choose to live in can impact your life in many ways, improving your quality of life and may result in lower lifetime expenses.
• Quality of schools, community strength, walkability and commuting distance to work are among the largest impactors.
• Moorestown, NJ is awesome.

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Housing is the typical American’s largest expense with transportation (cars) being a close second. Given that, plenty of retirement/FIRE bloggers advise you to move to a lower cost-of-living area, downsize, or even go all out and move into a van (#Vanlife4eva!). These writers are not wrong. There are big savings to be had in smartly choosing an economical location to live and purchasing a home properly sized for your needs. Spending too much, buying too large a home, or moving to a fancy location just to keep up with “The Jones’s,” who you probably don’t even like, will attach a financial anchor on your plans to sail to early retirement.

But even with that truth, there are good reasons to not base the decision on where you move strictly on upfront costs. Many of the best qualities of a community may save you money over time.  My family considered all the reasons, both financial and subjective, when we decided to move from Frisco, Texas, to Moorestown, NJ. And it seems like we made a good decision, as Moorestown was just named the best town in South Jersey for the second year in a row by South Jersey Magazine. Obviously, South Jersey Magazine is not a financial rag, but many aspects of a good community will impact your finances.

Here are their rankings:

The background photo accompanying the piece is not actually of Moorestown—at least not part I have ever seen. But Moorestown is a beautiful place with a deep history, tree-lined streets, parks, and a charming Main Street. On August 30, 1990, for its significance in architecture, commerce, community development, and exploration/settlement between 1720 to 1940, 47 acres of the downtown area was added to the National Register of Historic Places.

There are endless reasons to love Moorestown, but here are a few.

Great Schools

For parents of school-aged children, the value of living near high-quality schools is clear. Living in a good school district provides a good education and can save the expenses associated with private schools. But even singles and couples without children should consider the public education system when choosing where to live.

Home values tend to rise faster in good school districts than in comparable locations with lower ranked schools. According to a study published in the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Review, the trend is even more pronounced in the best school districts.

With highly rated public schools, safe neighborhoods, and superb quality of life, Moorestown is the perfect place to raise a family. According to Niche, the Moorestown School District has been ranked in the top ten in the state.

Three smaller elementary schools are located within walking distance of most residents’ homes. In fact, walking my daughters to school every morning is one of my favorite activities. After elementary school, the three schools combine in fourth grade at the Upper Elementary School, where the children continue with their classmates until graduation from the high school.

More than 90% of the high schoolers continue beyond secondary education with acceptances at over 260 colleges and universities schools. Over 75% of the students attend schools outside of New Jersey. 

Walkability

Few suburban towns in America with great schools and a good quality of life are walkable. Scarcely understood by Americans trained to drive everywhere, the benefits of living in a walkable area are realized throughout life, from earlier independence in childhood to remaining independent during the later stages of life when driving becomes dangerous (for the driver and others). Even if you’re an adult and not quite old (except in your children’s eyes), walking to work can help you lose weight and build mental fortitude.

Excess weight harms health in many ways. It increases the risk of developing conditions such as diabetes, heart disease, osteoarthritis, and some cancers and reduces the life span. In real dollars, adults with obesity are expected to have higher annual medical care costs, over $2,500 per year more than those with normal weight.

Sadly, the lack of walkable towns in America is such an issue there are organizations dedicated to the trying to improve the situation (check out Not Just Bikes and Strong Towns).  

My family chose to live in the center of the town. We are within walking distance of the library, the rec center, and the business section of Main Street. It’s not the most booming Main Street, a criticism often levied against it, but it has an ice cream parlor, several pizza places, a Rite Aid, and a small toy store. This may sound boring to grownups, but it’s more than enough for kids and young adults. My own kids, 9 & 12, ride bikes or walk there on their own, gaining a sense of freedom and independence which will serve them well throughout their lives.

We are also a short 1-mile bike ride along tree-lined streets to the town swim club, where we spend our summer between swim team, diving, and letting the kids hang with friends. The swim club is such a draw for kids that we know families who have pools in their backyards or are members of country clubs who join the town pool to be where their kids’ friends are. Most of the writing of this post was actually done poolside using the Wi-Fi provided there. The club also is a source of high schoolers’ jobs, as it’s mostly staffed by teenagers who serve as lifeguards, snack bar servers, front desk attendants, and private swim teachers. Besides those formal jobs there are opportunities for booming babysitting businesses that can all be had without a car or parental ride, by just hopping on a bike.

If swim clubs aren’t your thing but you like being outside, we’re 1.5 miles from a small lake in town called Strawbridge Lake. Every day people are swimming or fishing off its banks. The association that takes care of the lake added two floating docks this past year to ease entry to the lake for paddleboarders and kayakers. The dock wasn’t even funded with taxpayer dollars, it was paid for through funds raised at its annual Paddleboarder and Kayaker Race (WJL is a sponsor). One of our friends who attended it with us said it was “the most family friendly fitness event” they have ever been to. It helps that after the race there is access to local vendors, food trucks, live music, and of course local breweries have tents as well. 

For work, Moorestown does not have lots of high-rise office complexes, but several industrial parks are home to quite a few manufacturing and office jobs. Most are in one stretch of land less than 2 miles from the center of Main Street. My office is in a rented space above the town’s hardware store that is a mere 0.3 miles from my house. It takes me about 5 minutes to walk to work each morning, waving and saying hello to community residents as I go.

Community

Having a walkable town naturally leads to having a closer, stronger community, but Main Street hosts several family events throughout the year to build on that closeness, including Daffodil Day, Moorestown Day, End of Summer Block Party, Autumn in Moorestown, Halloween Parade & Costume Contest, and the Main Street Candlelight Stroll. In recent years, some of these events have added local brewery tents to the events, adding fun for the adults. For some reason, attendance volume and duration are always longer for the events with brewery or wine tents (are you starting to see a trend?).

Main Street is also home to the Mooretown Community House. A historical building with impressive architecture, it was once home to the town’s rec center and still has the old pool in the basement. Now a nonprofit, it rents out the upper floors to other non-profits as office space; the lower rooms are available to host large private and public events. We had one of my wife’s birthdays there (I would be murdered if I said a number). The open events are rowdier. For example, the local volunteer fire house hosts a beer-tasting fundraiser every fall, and the Community House itself hosts a wine-tasting fundraiser in the spring. Anyone can purchase tickets, but the crowd is usually filled with familiar faces from town.

Having such an active community decreases the desire to commute into the city for entertainment, reducing the need for Ubers and the expense of overpriced meals. Most of the community events are also family friendly (minus the rowdy, really fun, ones at the Community House) reducing the cost for babysitters.

Location

I realize I’m lucky to be able to decide where I work. But there are many options for employment in the Moorestown area. Just across the Delaware River from Philadelphia, the drive from Main Street in Moorestown to City Hall in Philadelphia is a mere 25 minutes. This makes it possible to work in downtown Philadelphia and still enjoy the schools, quality of life, and the comparably lower cost of living that Moorestown provides.

But you don’t only have access to Philadelphia! In today’s post-COVID world, more employees are enjoying remote or hybrid work situations requiring only one or two days in the office a week. Under those requirements, even working in New York City is an option. A commute from Moorestown to Manhattan can be accomplished in 1.5 hours via a short 30-minute drive to the Hamilton train station and a well-timed ride on regional rail. I would not want to make that commute every day, but commuting on regional rail is not nearly as stressful as driving.

Both Philadelphia and New York offer entertainment and cultural options too numerous to detail, and anything in either city can be done via a day trip without the additional expense of hotels. Philadelphia has added numerous new concert and performance venues, with casinos first allowed in the city in 2004. The casinos actively seek to bring talent into the city as they vie for profits offered by gamblers’ losses.

There is more to life than cities, though. If hiking, camping, or getting your souped-up 4×4 out of the mall parking lot is more your thing, Wharton State Forest is less than 30 minutes away and offers almost 123,000 acres of classic Pineland wilderness to play in. This includes over 500 miles of unpaved roads varying in degree of difficulty (and levels of mud!).

If you like your weekends with more air-conditioning the summer and more hot chocolate in the winter, Moorestown is only 65 minutes to the beaches of Long Beach Island and less than two hours to snow skiing at Blue Mountain Ski Resort in the Poconos.

Want To Live in Moorestown (or Your Own Dream Destination)?

When you’re ready to lay down roots and raise a family, I can attest that Moorestown is a dream destination. However, as you can imagine, living here isn’t as cheap as some other locations. That said, if Moorestown sounds like your ideal home, or if you have another place in mind, don’t lose hope. With smart financial planning, you may be surprised at what you can afford (or how quickly you can save).

At WJL Financial Advisors, we can put together a personalized financial plan that will help you reach your goals. If you’re interested in hearing how we can help, give me a call at 215-880-1892 or email me at sean@wjladvisors.com.

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About Sean

Sean joined WJL Financial Advisors, a holistic financial management firm dedicated to providing clients guidance today for tomorrow’s success, after spending more than 20 years in corporate finance. Fourteen of those years were as Chief Financial Officer (CFO).

Sean seeks to help clients achieve their short-term and long-term goals to gain financial independence and to worry less about their finances. Financial independence allows clients to focus more on their passions in life and improve the world in ways based on their own values, not their employers’. Based in Moorestown (you did read the article, right?!), Sean enjoys serving clients face to face in New Jersey and Eastern Pennsylvania as well as virtually, wherever they may reside. To learn more, connect with Sean on LinkedIn or email mailto:sean@wjladvisors.com.