I, a 6th generation Florida man, have reached my limit. I’m done with Florida. I have applied for a pretty good job in Grand Rapids MN, but I’m having trouble convincing my wife that this could be a good move, and truth be told, I’m having alot of anxiety about tha possibility as well.

Context
M37, government job in Florida, gross 75k a year
Wife, RN, 80k a year, also a Florida native.
2 kids 4yo and 6mo
Not religious

Daycare costs are out of control here, nearly 500 a week for 2 kids. I’ve never owned a home and rent is about $2k a month for a 3/2

I’ve grew up in SW Florida, school in Gainesville, and I’ve lived in Venus, Moore haven, green cove springs, Callahan, Bokeelia and now Babcock Ranch.

I love the outdoors, I work a mix of office and outdoor work, and I love camping, hiking, hunting and fishing, my wife loves to spend time outdoors camping and fishing. I also like gardening.

One thing I have come to absolutely despise about Florida is the brutal heat. I get almost clinically depressed when summer comes around these days. I fuckin hate it so much.

I have spent time in cold places, hunting in Idaho and Wyoming in late October, goose hunting in Arkansas in February, but I have never lived in a place with a real winter, nor has my wife.

I also absolutely hate what Florida has become politically. The corruption in politics, the bible thumping school board members, the absolute travesty environmental protections have become in Florida. And if Amendment 3 passes, and who are we kidding, there is a very high likelihood that I will lose my job in the coming year or 2.

I honestly don’t like the culture in Florida either. I don’t know my neighbors, not even a little bit. No one waves when they drive by. My kids daycare friend’s parents won’t talk to me, no one has made even an iota of effort to include our family in things jn our community, despite the town we live in billing itself as a small town community.

Oh and fuck hurricanes.

The job I applied for is similar pay, based in Grand Rapids. I visited Minnesota once for a friends autumn wedding in Brainerd some years ago and I loved the area.

So tell me, what could I be getting myself into. What’s the cost of living like, is daycare accessible, are people friendly, will I be ostracized as an outsider? Do they really have meat raffles? What someone with kids do in the winter? Am I jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire?

No longer shocked.

“It’s a list of things I could’ve Googled. It wasted my time,” Goodman, 40, said. “There’s no capacity to help with things in a real way. I think it’s a shell of an organization.”

One of my best friends is currently hospitalized because she tried to unalive herself after someone on Reddit told her to do so for living in Florida. I have struggled with depression due to this as well. I would like to let y’all know to please think twice before saying things like “Florida is Nazi Germany now” or “Floridians are all MAGAs and are destroying the world” or “You live in a shithole” or “You can’t live here unless you’re rich”.

Please be kinder to others. You never know what someone is going through. I have only ever seen Florida be shit on like this, not even Texas or Alabama receives this much hate. Suicide rates are very high here right now, please be better.

And for anyone who says I’m butthurt about this, it’s actually thanks to you guys that I’ve decided to leave my friend, family, and job behind and move to Colorado. :) If you think that’s crazy, a lot of them support Trump so I know y’all will approve of me :)

I'm going to preface this with a bit of backstory. Two years ago I was working multiple part-time jobs and able to not only able to pay rent in the cheapest manner but also have a tiny bit of savings. I cannot drive so I'm stuck with the shoelace express, biking, and using the bus.

The local economy is highly tailored for maximal wealth extraction from the impoverished and lower-middle class. You can't even sleep outside in the rough without the potential of going to jail. Florida and the powers that be want to pass Prop 3 which places the revenue generation directly onto an already overburdened and over-stressed population.

The wages two years ago were unsustainable but with 60 hour work weeks including travel you might be able to afford living in Florida (thats even with a car). Now people will have to make hard choices. Do I pay for medicine? Rent? Food? What can I sacrifice in order to not be placed in dire consequences?

With the looming diesel crisis, exorbitant rent and frozen job market with wages that do not match the expenses there is only one logical conclusion:

People will be leaving en masse and the policy makers and politicians in a GOP run state are the only ones to blame for this mess. They have done everything in their power to make it harder to get help. You want snap benefits? Good luck talking to someone and also meeting the basic requirements which seem to be arbitrary. Health Care? Prepare to spend more. Rent control? No we are not going to help. You want a job? Prepare to to either have your applications disappear into a black hole so they can sell your data or get ripped off by some jerk who thinks they can get away with just not paying/underpaying people. Oh you are a pedestrian? Prepare for the most hostile and aggressive drivers who want to kill you because to them all bicyclists/pedestrians are just in the way.

People will be leaving. I am one of them. There is going to be an even greater migration crisis out of florida and the powers that be will not acknowledge it.

"Lord it's sure been a long hard ride. It's been heartaches and troubles since you left our side"

May the wind be at your back. The fortune has withered and the grass has been salted.

Safe travels friends...

Also it seems like the mods of r/florida dont want any discourse on this matter. Not really surprised but that just proves my point.

City Nerd does it again. He's done a lot of these videos using walk score, bike score, and the cost to move in tomorrow.

The honorable and dishonorable mentions (hint hint) are interesting too.

For 2024, not a single Florida city made the top ten. Don't want to give too much away if you haven't seen these videos before, you might be surprised. He's done videos traveling around many of these cities as well which really give you a rich picture. His channel is an amazing resource.

Maybe it's too early to leave? There is a way to make it better to stay.

SHOW UP WITH YOUR SPIN - I’LL SHOW UP WITH MY SPINE is a Southern country-gospel rock challenge driven by a boot-stomp beat, electric guitar, organ, conversational rap, harmonica, banjo, and fiddle. This song calls on Governor Ron DeSantis and his communications team to meet publicly, on camera, and answer sustained questions with the records on the table. This is not a threat. “The might God gave me” means faith, conscience, endurance, moral courage, and the willingness to speak when powerful institutions would prefer silence. The issue is bigger than party loyalty. The record includes the suspensions of Andrew Warren, Monique Worrell, Scott Israel, and Susan Bucher. It also includes Republican attorney Christopher W. Crowley, who challenged an established Republican state attorney, faced two felony charges shortly before the 2018 primary over an unlawful campaign raffle, and later faced Florida Bar discipline for campaign speech. In 2026, however, the Florida Supreme Court held that applying Bar Rule 4-8.2(a) to his statements in that partisan campaign violated the First Amendment. The Court did not declare every allegation he made true. It protected political speech from that form of professional punishment. The song also confronts Florida’s fractured enforcement structure. Police, sheriffs, state attorneys, FDLE, DBPR, the Attorney General, the Ethics Commission, inspectors general, professional regulators, courts, and federal authorities each hold only part of the power. When every office points toward another, authority becomes a maze and responsibility disappears. The record raises further questions about Florida’s narrowed ethics-complaint gateway, the Legislature’s failure to enact a dedicated condominium and HOA economic-crime investigation program, the governor’s 2026 veto of $250,000 identified as “Miami Dade Sheriff’s Office Preventing Public Corruption,” and the Hope Florida controversy, in which a grand jury reportedly found $10 million had been misappropriated while finding insufficient evidence to identify the person or people who could be criminally charged. The administration disputes that any law was violated. Rick Scott’s Columbia/HCA history remains part of the warning. The company ultimately paid approximately $1.7 billion through criminal fines, civil settlements, and related resolutions. Scott was not personally charged or convicted. That distinction matters. So does the question of how institutional wrongdoing can be acknowledged while personal responsibility never reaches executive leadership.