Donna, in her 60s, lived in the Dallas-Fort Worth area for decades, but she and her husband wanted to be closer to their son in St. Louis for their retirement.
“We thought: Midwest — not everyone wants to live there. It must be less expensive,” Donna said. “We were so wrong.”
Donna, who asked to use just her first name for privacy reasons, said she regrets the decision in some ways. She said nearly everything is more expensive in St. Louis compared to Dallas, from groceries to gas to various taxes. While she loves how friendly everyone is and the more moderate weather, she sometimes thinks she “should have stayed in Texas,” even though it was never where she envisioned herself retiring.
“People say, you lived in Texas for 40 years, so that’s probably where you belong, but I still never felt like I belonged,” Donna said.
Several former Texans previously told Business Insider that they left the Lone Star State in search of cheaper living costs, better weather, slower paces of life, and political reasons. Those leaving in 2022 tended to be younger, according to a BI analysis of individual-level data from the Census Bureau’s 2022 ACS, assembled by the University of Minnesota’s IPUMS program — 37.3% were millennial, while 31.2% were Gen Z. The average salary of those moving away was $50,428 a year in 2022, with two-thirds employed.
Census data shows that between 2021 and 2022, about 494,000 people moved out of Texas, while over 668,300 people moved in. Nearly 9,200 people moved from Texas to Missouri during this period.
Leaving Texas, moving to Missouri
Donna moved around the northern US and Europe growing up, as her father was in the Air Force, and her family eventually settled in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. After college, she moved back to the area and got a job as a paralegal before working for an information technology company.
She formally stopped working after adopting her last kid, while her husband retired right before the pandemic. Though both lived in Texas for over 40 years, they knew Texas never felt like their permanent home.
Their son attended the University of Missouri, where her husband went, and he settled in St. Louis. Donna and her husband were looking for a new state for their retirement, as she knew she couldn’t stand another Texas summer.
“When I got situated in Texas, I just didn’t feel like I fit in. I wasn’t a Southerner. I wasn’t a Texan,” Donna said. “It surprises me everybody’s moving to Texas. I’m like, you know how hot it is here.”
They moved to Missouri to be closer to their son and escape the heat.
“We didn’t want to just be the parents that lived somewhere else and came in on a plane to visit you for a couple of days and then they were gone,” Donna said. “We wanted to actually be close to him.”
They looked around St. Louis for two years but couldn’t find much on the market. They would fly in, tour five homes, and nearly all would be bought by the end of the day. She said the ones that weren’t selling fast would be built on hills or back up onto a highway. Finally, she got the call for a new home on the market. She flew in on a Friday morning in January 2020 by herself, and by that night, they signed.
The home was bigger and more expensive than what they originally wanted, though they were grateful to find something that worked. They loved the neighborhood, and they envisioned they would renovate the Missouri home while working on selling the Texas home. The process took longer than they expected, though they eventually got a buyer.
Learning the hard way
Donna said she immediately felt like she was missing home once she moved in September 2020. Still, she was optimistic about life in Missouri, as she figured it was quieter and slower-paced.
Her new neighborhood was similar to Dallas, though she said it’s more spread out. It’s taken some time to get used to driving everywhere, which she said has been burdensome as they age. Still, she values having many hills and trees, unlike in Texas, where her community was more flat and monotonous. Her new neighborhood is also more family-oriented and diverse, though she said her neighbors were confused about why she would move from Dallas, which they perceive as a “real sexy place to live.”
“The people in St. Louis are so friendly and so helpful,” Donna said, noting that many of those she knew in Texas were friendly “on the surface” and didn’t often go out of their way to say hello. “If you go into, say, a Lowe’s, and you need help, oh my gosh, you’re going to get help. People here are hardworking, and they don’t complain.”
Acknowledging that she should have researched some of the hidden costs, Donna said everything was unexpectedly a lot more than she thought. She noticed first that gas was more expensive in Missouri; though Texas and Missouri, on average, are now about the same per gallon nationally, she said her area is about 75 cents more expensive per gallon than where she lived in Texas. In her area, she saw just two grocery chains whose prices for some items were nearly 40% more expensive than in Dallas.
She knew Missouri had individual income taxes, unlike Texas, which she didn’t worry too much about as she and her husband’s income dropped in their retirement. Her property tax is about the same as in Texas. However, she didn’t expect to pay $89 more a month on her car lease when she changed her address. She said she even had to pay $50 more per month at her gym for the same membership.
She added that she’s had to get permits to install a new dishwasher and turn on irrigation for the spring. And her sales tax in St. Louis is nearly 10%, compared to 8.25% in Dallas.
In addition, she said the quality of her Missouri home is not as robust as in Dallas, as she’s had two leaks so far in the winter, and cold air seeped in quite frequently.
Regardless, she’s remaining positive about her future in Missouri. She’s scheduled various home fixes, and she’s gotten closer to many of her neighbors. She is also comforted by living closer to her son after years apart. And she’s keeping the thought of downsizing when the market changes in the back of her mind, but she’s taking it day by day.
“I’m thinking it’ll take us a couple of years to see if this feels like home or is it still not right,” Donna said. “Maybe I just never found the right place, and possibly that’s because, as a military brat, I don’t really have a hometown. I don’t know where I belong.”
Have you recently moved to a new state or country? Reach out to this reporter at nsheidlower@businessinsider.com.
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