I'm not a fan of that type of thinking. Research all you want. You need to visit the place for at least a weekend to get a feel for it. That being said, a friend of mine moved from San Francisco to Omaha for the same reasons as you. He was making ~$130k/year in CA, but when he was offered double that he moved immediately. Like many people I know, he flies to more exciting places on weekends to make it more tolerable. Since the cost of living there is so low, his paycheck goes further. He's getting out there in 3 years though. I'd need to earn 2.5-3x more to live in a place like that. Sometimes you can't fly away on the weekends because of work. That's where the boring city can trap you. It'll be subtle things like your neighbors and the neighborhood, where to take a woman out on dates, the people you'll meet at networking events, your colleagues in general, whether there are bookstores, etc. It'll be things like that make NYC, Houston, and London such attractive places to live versus Bismarck, N. Dakota.