We’re NYS lifers.
Decades ago we bought a very small, very inexpensive home.
We used to get a lot of ribbing about that.
Now we know folks who can’t sleep at night wondering how they’re going to pay the high four to low five fig annual property tax bill on their larger, nicer homes.
We never have worried about that.
And trust me when I tell you that the thought of all the property tax income we have denied local and state bureaucrats over the decades more than makes up for the lack of space and inconvenience.
Good post—we have done the same in CT.
The old real estate rule was to buy the least expensive house in the best neighborhood/area possible—that is what we did.
Sleeping well at night not worrying about finances is priceless.
We looked very hard at retiring to different southern states but could not find a better situation than we have now.
We looked especially carefully at a variety of Texas locations—concluded that we could not count on the future control of illegal immigration to keep their taxes (and crime) under control. Future events may prove us wrong—but we had to make a call and that is the one we made.