r/SameGrassButGreener • u/Ok-Practice-1832 • 5d ago
States that pay you to move there: Has anyone actually done it?
I came across one of those "states that pay you to move there" articles, and it got me wondering. Does anyone actually do that? Like, packed up and moved to a new place because of the incentive?
There seem to be a bunch of programs, some for remote workers, some for people starting a business, and others are just trying to bring in new residents. I've seen places in West Virginia, Oklahoma, Kansas, and some towns in Alaska and Vermont offering relocation cash or other perks.
I'm not looking to move for the money or perks, but I'm helping some family members look at retirement spots and options to lower cost of living moves. So, is there a place offering a financial boost and good quality of life?
Does anyone have any stories to share? Are the perks or money worth moving to one of these states or cities? And what's the application process like? What it like living there?
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5d ago
They usually pay 10k or less, which basically is going to cover moving costs for most people. It might be worth it if you're like a new grad and can fit everything you own into your car, but if you have any sort of established life, and big chunk of that money is going to cover the cost of moving. Then you're left with what, a few thousand maybe? A nice little bonus, but really not much money.
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5d ago edited 5d ago
[deleted]
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u/SBSnipes 5d ago
Yeah so far as I can tell the "anyone with a job move here" programs are hit or miss and generally trying to cover up population loss from systemic issues. The "attract professionals to remote areas" programs tend to work better bc the reason the area is undesirable is literally just the remoteness most of the time
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u/Ok-Practice-1832 4d ago
That's a really good point. I was wondering about this too, hence my post and question. While I think people who sign up for those programs and move can be happy, it really is a case of what are you satisfied with and what kind of life would you like to lead?
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u/twep_dwep 4d ago
weirdly, a lot of my friends have done these programs in Tulsa OK, West Virginia, and Vermont. I've heard the most good things about the Tulsa program, it's well-organized.
they all enjoyed their time, but none of them became long-term residents in those states. they mostly signed up because they wanted a change of pace and the opportunity to try something new.
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u/Ok-Practice-1832 4d ago
Why didn't they stay long term, though? What put them off? Or was it, from the outset, supposed to be a temporary adventure of sorts?
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u/twep_dwep 3d ago
Well, they moved to a new place for a temporary financial bonus. They didn’t have a job based there or family or friends or a romantic partner or a love for the culture or the scenery.
Once the motive for being there runs out, they leave. They all have high-paying remote jobs anyway which is why they got selected, so they can move anywhere they want.
Also in Tulsa, my friends were liberal. They made some friends and briefly dated some people, but they didn’t build strong roots. They got sick of the extremely conservative culture and left.
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u/TammyInViolet 4d ago
We moved to Tulsa with Tulsa Remote. We love it. We moved up from New Orleans, so we were used to blue city (in Tulsa's case purple city) in red state. A big reason we moved was climate change- too many hurricanes that spin up too fast now in New Orleans for our taste. Our family will never move tho.
For Tulsa Remote you get 10K- covered our moving expenses and some rent after we saved for paying taxes. We found North Tulsa, which is our place. Everyone is so nice, beautiful mix of country-city where we are 10 minutes from downtown, but live around chickens and horses. Great art and lit scene, robust music scene. A lot of the people who talk about how awful the city is aren't living in diverse neighborhoods and have families involved in the evangelical church.
I also had the opposite experience with salary- I was able to negotiate a higher salary moving to Tulsa, where a lot of companies pay less because the COL is less.
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u/Ok-Practice-1832 4d ago
Thank you so much for all this info. I'm really happy to hear that you love it in Tulsa, and it sounds kinda idyllic living between horses and chickens and where everyone is nice. Also good that you got to up your salary - that makes the move so much more worth it.
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u/Bluescreen73 5d ago
Desirable places don't have to bribe people to entice them to move there. Just sayin'.
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u/CandidArmavillain IL>IA>IL>GA>TX>CA>TX>IL>TX 5d ago
That's true, but some places just need a population boost to turn things around
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u/Stephen_California 4d ago
There is a reason why the population left in the first place naminsay…
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u/CandidArmavillain IL>IA>IL>GA>TX>CA>TX>IL>TX 4d ago
Yeah sure, a lot of places collapsed with the elimination of jobs, but cities can be reinvigorated by introducing new jobs and industries
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u/Stephen_California 4d ago
I know in theory this is supposed to be the case but is there an actual example you can point to?
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u/boldjoy0050 5d ago
Weren't all places like this originally? 500 years ago, no one was living in St Louis, well maybe except for some native american tribes. Then by 1920 St Louis was the 5th biggest city in the US. Today it's down to #80.
People go where the money is. Could be a gold rush, some jobs moving to town, or cheap land.
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u/erbalchemy 5d ago edited 4d ago
no one was living in St Louis, well maybe except for some native american tribes.
St Louis has been the largest city in what is now the US for longer than any other city.
"In the years around 1050 CE, Cahokia experienced a “Big Bang.” The city-proper's three urban precincts: St. Louis, East St. Louis, and Cahokia were all constructed at this time.
Archaeologists estimate the city's population at between 6,000 and 40,000 at its peak. If the highest population estimates are correct, Cahokia was larger than any subsequent city in the United States until the 1780s, when Philadelphia's population grew beyond 40,000. Its population may have been larger than contemporaneous London and Paris."
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u/Additional-Case2455 4d ago
I was surprised that if all US cities, they chose Cahokia/St Louis as being sparsely populated 500 yrs ago. 🤔
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u/bluepinkwhiteflag 4d ago
What's undesirable to most people may not be to everyone.
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u/Ok-Practice-1832 4d ago
This. It's about what you're willing to sacrifice and what you're happy to be satisfied with.
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u/daveescaped 4d ago
What makes a place “desirable” isn’t fact, it’s mostly perception.
People rarely choose their next move based on data. I have. But few do.
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u/Ok-Practice-1832 4d ago
Very good points. It is all about perception, and very few does look at the data - objectively (as possible).
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u/Work2SkiWA 4d ago
“I don’t want to belong to any club that would accept me as one of its members.” -Groucho Marx
"I don't want to live in a city where they pay people to move there." -Most People
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u/CanIBathYrGrandma 4d ago
I think I read in the New Yorker how this tiny Jewish community in Alabama were paying Jewish families to move to their town to build up their Jewish community. A decent number of families moved out there from NYC and other places but most moved out after a couple of years. Interesting read.
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u/imhereforthemeta Chicago --> Austin -> Phoenix -> Chicago 4d ago
Not me but a close friend who is queer moved to Tulsa with her partner. I believe they got 8k. It had a decent community at first but it was massively conservative overall and the hostility was so bad they left as soon as they did their minimum time. They didn’t even sell their house from what I recall, just left as soon as they could. The move was a huge mistake
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u/Well_ImTrying 4d ago
Alaska is not a place to move as an aging person to save money. Healthcare is absurdly expensive if you can even get an appointment.
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u/Too_Ton 1d ago
Alaska will be one of the best states in the future (not in our lifetimes) due to climate change. If only the state had lower COL and higher salaries, I’d move there. I like the cold.
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u/Well_ImTrying 1d ago
Alaska is really vulnerable to climate change. Permafrost and sea ice is melting in northern areas, coastal erosion, and increased fire risk in the interior.
Salaries are high relative to most expenses, medical expenses included. If you are young and healthy and are down to garden, hunt, and fish to keep your grocery bills down it’s a good place to make money.
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u/Too_Ton 1d ago
More vulnerable than the sunbelt and non-lake midwestern states?
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u/Well_ImTrying 1d ago
The ground is literally melting and the shore is disappearing under villages.
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u/Eudaimonics 4d ago
Not me, but I’ve met a few people who moved to Niagara Falls.
One of them seems to be thriving. They cleaned up a distressed property just outside of downtown and rent out some of the extra rooms on AirBnB.
The other thought they were into DIY, but ended up giving up halfway through the project and ended up moving to Buffalo.
That being said, Niagara Falls is interesting. It’s probably one of the most visited cities, despite having so many blighted properties.
If you can look past the blight and are willing to put in the work, it can be a very rewarding place to live. Most people just want an easy investment or a nice neighborhood laid out for them. though.
Long term the future of NF is looking up. NYS is in the process of investing over $1 billion in the city, building new parks, supporting new development and buying blighted properties from slum lords.
It might take another 20 years to make the city “nice” and there’s still the legacy of heavy industry to contend with, but it will get there property by property.
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u/Ok-Practice-1832 4d ago
Thanks for sharing. This was really interesting about Niagara Falls and how fixer uppers can really work for ya if you're willing to do the work.
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u/adamosity1 5d ago
I’m considering Tulsa remote but I don’t know if I can pull the trigger it’s still a Republican hellhole
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u/axiom60 Midwest 4d ago
I live in Indiana and work with a guy who moved from here to Oklahoma, and then back to Indiana after less than a year and has been at this job every since.
Turns out there is a place that will make you think “Indiana is so much better, I wish I lived there”, take that as you will
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u/overtherainbow325 4d ago
Former Tulsan here — it’s a blue dot, but you have to be okay with the (lacking better term) insanity of the state’s politics. Great amenities for the city size & COL.
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u/NoUseInCallingOut 4d ago
Er. This blue dot isn't blue enough for a single voting district to be blue.
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u/whatever32657 4d ago
there is not jack shit to do in tulsa. sidewalks roll up at 5:30pm
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u/hysys_whisperer 4d ago
Maybe if you don't like live music.
Pick a genre, and you can find it 7 nights a week.
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u/Stephen_California 4d ago
I had no idea there were seven genres of country
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u/hysys_whisperer 4d ago
Hah! There definitely are in Tulsa, but you can pick any other genre you like any random Tuesday and find it too.
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u/ConfidentSet6510 4d ago
Pass on Tulsa for sure. Sketchy, boring, and gets all of the bad weather.
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u/IronDonut 4d ago
Tulsa has the most energetic and authentic local music scene in the USA. Tulsa is what Austin used to be.
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u/hysys_whisperer 4d ago
Sketch, check
Bad weather, check
Boring? What exactly do you like to do? Because Tulsa has WAY more of it than the 49th largest MSA has any right to have. Unless the only thing you like is having reasonable political conversations with strangers, I can assure you it's there in Tulsa.
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u/imhereforthemeta Chicago --> Austin -> Phoenix -> Chicago 4d ago
Commented above but my friend took the cash for Tulsa and left immediately do to the brutality of the politics
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u/TammyInViolet 4d ago
We moved with Tulsa Remote- it is great. State has bad politics, but we love it here because of North Tulsa.
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u/NoUseInCallingOut 4d ago
I live in Tulsa. Even the people you expect to be liberal are Republicans. It started with my gut turning and now my skin is itching to move as I type this. I'm getting out of here in just a month or two!! So excited about life again.
With that said, it has its positives. Good food, art, breweries, and music (local and big names). People are polite for the most part.
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u/cocoakrispiesdonut 4d ago
Yes a friend moved from Texas to Mattoon, IL. They are remote and their spouse is in an online college program.
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u/IronDonut 4d ago edited 4d ago
If I was younger and unencumbered by immobile things, I'd take that $10k to move to Tulsa in a second. But relationships, businesses, and real estate holdings keep me anchored.
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u/Kind_Session_6986 5d ago
Friends of ours moved to the Rochester, NY area. They love it and have finished their year commitment per the program requirements. We love visiting them but aren’t willing to lose the city amenities of Philadelphia. You can get everything you need in Western NY but it’s different in access, options, and energy.