So I currently live and work in London in a DCM/advisory role at a boutique IB, before that did some time at a Big Four. Although I like my job and the career prospects are great here, then for multiple lifestyle reasons I'm not sure I want to stay in London forever. I'm originally from a smaller European country and would like to move back home one day, maybe sooner, maybe later. Currently I'm 27. The recent Brexit doesn't help things either, not sure how long I'll have a job in London for after this.
Yes the job is pretty much what I had hoped for, however the London lifestyle is not quite for me in the long run. During weekdays all I do is work and sleep a little and sometimes don't even have time to go to the gym in the evenings. Not sure I want to look back on my life and realize the only thing I ever did was just work.
It's so overcrowded and just a big concrete jungle with almost no nature left. I want to live in a house with a garden, not an apartment or one of those cramped red brick Victorian terraced houses (my ideal home is close to an American suburbia style house, not England suburbia) which are the only options available in London/SE England.
I know this will be a big step down in terms of career and the scale of the projects I work on. Salary and bonus would drop significantly though these would at least partially be balanced out by a much lower cost of living (especially housing: in London I'd be paying about 10x my current annual base salary for a place that I'd pay just c.5x annual base salary for back home for example). This would be a conscious step towards limiting the the highest my career could go (at least within the confines of my country, could still go back to being international later), however when I look at the lifestyle I'd be having, then even if I had a lot more money in London I think I'd still prefer what I can get for far less money back home.
I know this post is somewhat counter to what most people discuss on these boards (i.e how to get into Canary Wharf/the City). I however am here and have found that the grass isn't as green as I hoped it would be.
Has anyone been through such life decisions in their career before? What did you choose/what would you choose?