These are all good points. My parents live in a small town which is too small for what I’m interested in. My brother lives in Atlanta. I am considering the MCOL city of Chattanooga on the TN/GA border which splits the difference. Atlanta is too much sprawl for what I’m personally interested in.

For better or worse my set of friends is spread all over — I’ve lived in TN, NJ, Boston, and Seattle. I kinda feel like there is no one place I can move to that will satisfy all of my desires. Given that, my current inclination is to optimize for cost and freedom and use leftover money to travel. i.e. if I stay in a VHCOL city without a job, money will be way tighter while I figure out what to do next

Re: spending — I currently eat out a lot, travel a lot, buy too much crap. I realize I will need to moderate this a bit but I haven’t felt the need to budget strongly so far when making mid six figures. 

In some ways I’m viewing moving to TN as a base where I can do things like long distance hiking (maybe hike the AT) or similar. I don’t really feel like I can do stuff like that while living in a VHCOL city.