re: Tell me about Memphis

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Can you elaborate on this? Is it cause it's super cliquey?

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Ehh no more so than any other medium sized southern city. I just think unless you have some personal connection keeping you there such as family etc it won’t have very many redeeming qualities to keep you there.

Like Jackson or New Orleans, but bigger. And more F500 companies.

Collierville and Germantown are both very nice though. I used to live there. Moved away in 2015.

Of you're going to work downtown, try Mud Island. It's an oasis from troublemakers who are not likely to just be driving through.

Germantown or don’t go

It depends on where you live now.

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Can’t beat the cost of living. I own a 2 bedroom condo in a nice area of East Memphis and with mortgage, escrow, HOA I pay about a $1000 a month on a 15 year mortgage.

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Subtle “I mortgaged a 2 br condo” brag.

Memphis has its problems like any other city. But you should visit for yourself. From someone who lived in the area and worked there for years, I hope the below is helpful.

- As a young couple without kids, downtown is great. Mud Island/Harbor Town is a really nice spot, but the Main Street Mall area is also home to some nice loft-style apartments and lots of nightlife, young professionals, etc. There are some beautiful condos and homes around the riverfront (South Bluffs). It is also close to the medical district for your wife. No yards on Main or most of the riverfront. The island will have a few really small ones.

- If you’re buying and considering having kids sometime soon, consider East Memphis, eastern suburbs or Mississippi suburbs. Schools I’d look to are Germantown, Collierville, Olive Branch/Lewisburg. All of those burbs are about the same commute to downtown/med district, but your wife might also find a job at a hospital out there too. Methodist and Baptist are the biggest systems and both have suburban campuses.

- East Memphis is pretty central and you’ll find some decent single family homes for rent with yards. High Point Terrace is a popular neighborhood that isn’t terribly far from downtown or medical district. Note about Cordova, houses are cheaper but they don’t have their own school district like the others do, they’re part of the Memphis/Shelby County schools. Traffic is heavy on Germantown Parkway in Cordova pretty much all the time.

- Midtown has come cool stuff and good restaurants. It wasn’t for me when I lived there, but some people really like it. It’s kind of street by street as far as good and bad. It’s also very hipster. There has been quite the effort to gentrify a lot of it in recent years, but you are more likely to see crime there even than the downtown area for the most part.

- Crime. Yes, it exists. Some areas are better than others. More suburban areas are more insulated. Honestly Nola seems worse to me.

- One thing that was great about that area is they really do have a very involved and thriving professional community, thanks in part to the massive presence of orgs like FedEx, AutoZone, St. Jude, International Paper, etc. Check out CityCURRENT, which focuses on great things happening and hosts gatherings of professionals. Leadership Academy and Leadership Memphis are other programs that may interest you if you are that type. There are of course things like the young professionals section of the chamber, etc. My husband and I moved there knowing no one and made a great group of friends we still keep in touch with and visit even though we have all moved different places now. I guess it would be easy to move there, stay in your house and never do anything and think the city sucked. But if you make any effort you might enjoy yourself.

- As for entertainment there is quite a bit. Pretty good live music scene. There is a lot more than Beale to the nightlife. There is a minor league baseball stadium right in downtown. The Orpheum gets Broadway shows and more. There are a ton of festivals (more than just the Beale Street Music Festival).

- Overall it’s liberal politically, suburbs are more red.

Not sure what your angle is here. Is it something I’m supposed to be ashamed of? Seems like a better idea than renting an apartment and I certainly didn’t have the cash to buy something outright when I was starting a new job out of grad school.

Or are you saying I am overly proud of it? Not really, pretty matter of fact and the cost is ridiculously low compared to other cities, trying to give OP a feel of cost of living. Only reason I could buy something right away was because I avoided student loans.

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Any place to look at/ avoid?

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All of it. Seriously, don’t do it. Lived there for two years and it’s terrible.