Please don’t. I’m from Devon and plan on going back! 😉 The house price differential is ridiculous. We could sell our house and move down there having cleared only half the mortgage and buy the same. I could take early retirement, consult one or two days a week, and have an income that would still be higher than the median in the area by quite a factor. But the sea….

Not such a big jump but I did move over the years from travelling all the time, living out of hotels most weeknights, to a company where most of the work/clients were close to where I lived so I had a fairly normal commute, to a role that I do remote (home or anywhere else I like).

Had two kids in that and can’t imagine going back to commuting or travelling anywhere. Drop youngest off at nursery, have breakfast with eldest and drop her at school, back in time to make a coffee and start up computer for 9.

Can’t comment on moving to the middle of nowhere at the same time, sometimes I think about going somewhere cheaper but actually we like where we live and the house we have now.

Gave up a 25 year sentence in the plastics industry and retrained to fix bikes which I did for 4 years then buggered off to Cataluña 4 years ago. Now running a little b&b with ride guiding and bike hire with MrsPB teaching English to aspiring University Students 12 hours a week. Wished we’d done it years ago, the climate is perfect for riding 11 months of the year. This is us Casa Tomillo

@justridemtb – thank you for posting that. The little bit about Aspergers at the start rings very true and the bulk of the talk was very eye opening.

Comments on the south west being cheap – as jam bo says, completely depends where in the “south west” you end up.

I live in Devon (always have), and travel throughout the south west. Transport is rubbish so be realistic in terms of working from home (mobile signal can be a challenge let alone broadband) or commuting for the couple days a week you’d like to work.

In terms of work life balance, work out what you need to live on and if you can realistically cut back / downsize etc then you’ll know that there is nothing stopping you. Perhaps rent somewhere before buying to make sure you are comfortable in the area as it sounds like it’s be a big move to an unknown area.

Personally I’ve too many ties to the area I live so would find it a wrench to relocate. As someone else says is the job the issue and could you find work and stay where you are still earning enough but without the stress?

As just about everyone else has already said, yes, go for it. What’s the worst that could happen?
I left a well paid career just over 7 years ago and moved to the Isle of Mull. Not regretted it one bit. It’s not been easy, but the place is stunning, whereas I used to live near Blackpool, which is quite quite far from stunning!!

Not to the extent you are considering but 20 years ago I was working hard to climb the ladder with the aim of opening my own care home which would have been a multimillion pound business. I had a job as manager of a 3rd sector care home with 24/7 legal responsibility and well over 100 staff reporting to me.

I realised I was crap at it, hated being crap at it and the stress was getting to me.

I quit and went back to being a shop floor worker as a staff nurse. I am much happier and merely work my 37.5 hours per week with no responsibilities beyond that

Work to live do not live to work. To me nothing is worth the long hours and stress.