I would disagree will the other posters. I moved to Silver Spring, MD about 20 years ago from Wisconsin. I am about 2 miles from the DC line. I love the weather here. It is so much better than the cold and snow. My kids had just started school when we got here. They got a great education. I am a teacher. My kids attended Catholic grade school and high school. Their high school was in DC. They had more opportunities than they would have had in Wisconsin. My oldest son got a full army scholarship to college because of the high school he attended. He almost got in the Coast Guard Academy. He made it to the last cut. My kids marched in parades down Pennsylvania Ave. The history in the area makes for many side trips. The traffic is bad but it is like that in Chicago and other cities. We do not have a long commute. The only thing I found to be more expensive was the price of a house. But our wages tripled when we moved to Maryland so we could afford it. Everything else I could find at prices like Wisconsin. Actually, WI did and still have higher property taxes than Maryland. I am paying the same amount of property taxes on my home now as I did in WI 20 years ago. I grew up in the city of Milwaukee so I like people not wide open spaces.