they've already got the highest property taxes and one of the highest income taxes in the u.s.-i cannot fathom choosing to live there.
I was born here and all of our families are here except for 2 of dh's brothers who later moved. It's a free country and we could move anywhere but our jobs pay well and we get 4 seasons with nothing being too terrible for very long. We're 20 mins to one airport, 50 mins to another and 2 hours to yet another. One hour to the beach. 20 mins to Philly. 2 hours to NYC.
Before we got married, we looked into moving to FL. While on vacation there, we took a long drive on east coast, west coast and made lots of stops along the way. We spoke with a realtor that was hosting an open house at a new construction development. This was in the early 90s so of course this will sound amazing but we could have bought a 3BR/2Bath new home for around $60k. Super cheap property taxes.
The flip side of the coin is that when I looked at what jobs in radiology were paying down there, it was around half of what I was making up here. IIRC it was like $10/hr.
So yes, the house is cheap but costs for everything else was similar to up here: food, clothing, cars, Home Depot, etc. So at age 24 or 25, I had a hard time trying to choke that down, the thought of having my pay cut in half was too much for me to want to look any further into it. Also at that young age, I was not exactly proficient at budgeting which also led me to this thread eventually but that's another story.
Within a few years, we were getting married, & having kids. There is no way I would have moved us away from their grandparents. One set was 10 mins away, the other were 15 mins.
So now that our kids are financially independent, we could move but I can't just dump my dad on my niece and move away. Also even as adults I don't want to see my kids just a few times a year. I love being able to have dinner together on some weekends. So unless one of them takes a job far from home, we'll be staying put.
