This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Nick Lyktey, 34, a New Yorker who grew up in Wantagh, on Long Island, but moved to Fort Wright, Kentucky, five miles outside Cincinnati. He now works as the chief of lab operations at Gravity Diagnostics and has lived in Kentucky for seven years. The following has been edited for length and clarity.
I had a very set trajectory ever since the eighth grade; I knew what I wanted to do with my life.
Every move I made was based on working for the FBI. I went to Penn State specifically because they have a really elite forensic science program where they have buildings on campus dedicated for crime scene analysis.
Even going to graduate school at Indiana University, that eliminated needing a larger amount of job experience required to get into the FBI. After graduate school, I talked to a contact at the FBI and they said, “With your master’s, you just need one year of work experience before you can be accepted into the special agent program.”
I’d always envisioned myself living on the East Coast. I liked growing up on Long Island. I didn’t necessarily think I’d return to Long Island, but I wanted to be on the coast, and I think my familiarity with the East Coast would allow me to pick that over the West Coast.
I was applying to a bunch of jobs eastward of Indiana, and I didn’t hate the idea of being out this way. I felt like I had friends in different areas of the country, and the cost of living was great.
I had a lot of good opportunities, and I narrowed down my job search to two companies, both in Kentucky.
When I went to visit the locations, I felt like this is somewhere I could live.
My mindset was, “I’m just going to be here for a year,” so even if I’m not in love with the area right now, it’s only a year, because ultimately I’m going to go to Quantico and go to bootcamp and then get placed somewhere else.”
My area of Kentucky is more suburban and less rural than I expected
I didn’t think Kentucky was going to be as urban or suburban as it ended up being. I thought it was going to be a little bit more rural, with maybe not as much access to things.
When I was telling my family about the move, my mom, who was born and raised on Long Island, would always make jokes to me.
She would be like, “You’re going to get a pickup truck,” or “It’s probably just a bunch of farms.” I was like, “No, no, it’s pretty built up.”
My expectations were that Fort Wright was going to be a smaller, less populated city; if I live in Kentucky, I’m going to go to Cincinnati all the time. That was the energy I had, but I was looking at it as more of a short-term scope.
After I moved in, when my mom visited me, she would always say, “This is a little paradise.”
I live in a really nice little suburb. It’s a great community where people are taking your garbage can in for you if you come home late from work.
I think that’s something that was similar to Long Island. I grew up in the suburb of all suburbs, and it was similar in the sense of community — houses along the street together — but in Kentucky, you have a little more space than you would in New York.
There’s also a lot of growth and development in this region, and I want to be somewhere that’s better every single year. I feel like this area is doing that.
I miss my family and friends all the time, but it’s a good community here. The life I have with my wife here is phenomenal.
We’re in a good, comfortable place and we’re happy with where we are. We’re happy with our jobs and happy with the environment surrounding us.
Kentucky gave me the financial flexibility I never thought I’d have
I never talked about the word “retirement” in my life. I don’t see myself as being a good retiree. I thought I’d be working until I’m in the grave.
I didn’t think I’d be able to take vacation. I thought I’d be monitoring my budget really frequently.
With the amount of money we’re saving by living in Kentucky, we’re able to do renovations on the house, and we’re able to take vacations freely. I’m not as anally retentive about our budget as I thought we were going to be.
We’ve had conversations with our financial advisor, and he’s like, “This is a reasonable plan for you to retire at 55.”
My mom unfortunately passed away at 59, and I’ve been thinking about different things in life and the way they hit you — it completely changes your thinking.
Both my parents had good jobs. They worked extremely hard. I knew they did well for themselves, but that was just to keep us all afloat.
Now, it’s a luxury to be able to go on vacations or be able to get the best things for my daughter. That matters the most to me in the world. Having that financial flexibility is really powerful.
I have a bunch of friends who we’re all in the same stage of life together. A lot of them still live on Long Island and they’re buying houses and having kids.
We talk about these financial things and I realized we live in radically different worlds.My wife and I were able to get a pretty nice starter family home with a fenced-in backyard. We have two dogs and we have one daughter, and I think it’s a comfortable way of living where our mortgage isn’t suffocating.
One of my buddies on Long Island bought a house that was listed at $650,000 and they closed at $750,000 — and it’s a fixer-upper.
Our house was $230,000, and it was ready to go in a nice suburb close to work.
I love where I grew up and I have no issues there, but we have a lot more financial flexibility and can do a lot more here.
It’s like a chemical shift in your brain because I never grew up in that type of environment, where you can afford this life. All of our friends, all of our family, everybody worked really hard and they were really great people doing the best they could for their family. But affording things always felt, to me, rather suffocating and stressful.
Kentucky has provided me with a life that I didn’t even think was a possibility, and I didn’t even realize it was within grasp.
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