Typhoon I feel for you, I watched my dad do the same thing for his parents. It’s a tough place to be in. Once they passed, he decided it was “too late” to move. I looked at him and asked, “how can you say NY is such a shithole, taxes are out of hand, nothing makes sense, you hate it here and choose to stay?” He tried to find justification, but it boiled down to being afraid to pull the trigger. Ironic for a man who has traveled literally the entire world and said he would never stay once his obligations were handled.
So I packed all my shit, left the comforts of everything I knew and moved myself away before I got stuck in the same pattern. If something happens where my parents need to be in an assisted living or nursing home, they will be moving to my area.
I know it’s not the same situation for you, but if you think about the financial implications alone of leaving a Democrat run state (not being political, just look at the facts) and moving, it’s worth it. Say nothing about the weather, etc. I looked at it like this:
Property/School taxes saved/ year $6k
income take reduction of 2% / $ 4K
COLA around 5% less / $3k
So with just that, call it a conservative $10k a year swing in ACTUAL money, so for us x 50 years, savings is astronomical. $500k. If invested properly, looking at returns of Millions in retirement. Luckily, for my wife and I, income increase of $30k/year also gets added in, so it’s a giant difference in our long term outlook.
The recognized difference for you would probably be more as your tax rates tend to be worse than (upstate) NY and the healthcare scam in Mass is awful. Basically you have to throw $20k/yr down the drain before it even covers anything, insane. “Affordable” for those who aren’t paying for it. Even in your 50s, there’s 30 or more years to look at. Getting the hell out of the swamp before you are stuck in the mud forever is a worthwhile consideration, even if it requires a lot of initial sacrifice.
We have days where it sucks and would love nothing more than the support of friends and family we had at “home”, but the implications of returning to a place that’s headed for self destruction vs living quite comfortably and setting up to retire 15 years earlier, makes no sense at all to even consider it.
Sorry to rant and use my experience as reference, I know we are not the same people, nor nearly in the same situation. I hate to see good people struggle, when there is an alternative path. Change is always a hard thing, but many times it’s the answer to making life easier at the other end of the tunnel.