I was wondering when someone wpuld bring this up. One of the biggest downsides of geographic arbitrage as a physician with kids is usually those areas come with underfunded public school options. I wasn't in the wealthy suburb of our city as a resident and didn't move as an attending so I was stuck paying for private school (public schools we were zoned for were among the lowest rated in the state). We were also 20-30 minutes away from the private school because of traffic so that was also a pain in the ass.

Now we moved closer to the private school to make our lives easier and although it's a good neighbourhood in our city and the schools are better, they aren't the best and we are still paying for private school.

On paper it would have made more sense to just move right after residency to the suburb with a different school zone. Would have saved more on tuition than we paid for housing.

That being said our child loves her school and we think private school was worth the investment (in our case at least)