A California native recently moved to a Kentucky city with 26,000 residents. She’s able to live a much more fulfilling life closer to family at a much lower cost.

• A Gen Xer moved from California to a small city in Kentucky in 2021.
• She said it was one of the best decisions she ever made, citing lower living costs.
• She knows all her neighbors and she’s gotten better medical care, though the transition was choppy.

A. Duvall, 47, was struggling to make ends meet in San Diego County.

She became disabled in 2016 and was receiving $1,400 a month in Social Security Disability Insurance. She was living with her boyfriend at the time, who was assisting her with daily expenses. Her living costs were still too high, and given she was unable to return to her job working in medical records for hospitals, she decided it was time to move elsewhere.

Duvall moved in 2021 from San Marcos, her city of 100,000 in California, to Paducah, Kentucky, a small city with around 26,000 residents. She asked to use just the first letter of her first name to protect her privacy.

It was one of the best decisions she had ever made, Duvall said. Everyone in her community is very friendly, costs are much lower, and she said she’s been able to get better medical care in Kentucky than in California.

“I have no plans on ever going back to California,” Duvall said. “I probably should have been born here instead of California.”

Around 818,000 former Californians left for other states between 2021 and 2022, compared to just 475,800 moving in, according to US Census migration data released in October. Of that total, just under 6,000 moved from California to Kentucky, compared to over 22,500 in neighboring Tennessee.

Many former Californians, including Duvall, cited the state’s high cost of living and crowded infrastructure as reasons for making the move east. Still, some residents living in states like Tennessee and Kentucky previously told Insider the influx of wealthier residents has contributed to rising prices.

From the San Diego area to small-city Kentucky

Duvall said it took her two years to start getting SSDI after her injury. Her boyfriend with whom she was living agreed to work longer hours to support her, and while she said they “didn’t suffer,” they were just about breaking even at the end of each month.

Once she was able to catch up on some bills, Duvall ultimately made the choice to move away from her boyfriend, though she found she couldn’t afford her area of California on her SSDI benefits alongside her other costs. Insurance costs were rising, and she said there would often be power outages because of wildfires.

Her parents retired in Kentucky in 2020, where they have a larger house with a smaller mortgage. With no other family still in California, she decided to follow suit, moving in six miles away in Paducah.

She saved up for a few months prior, then found a home for just $60,000 that she can pay off in 15 years. She has about an acre of space, meaning she rarely hears her neighbors.

The average home price in San Marcos is over $921,000, according to Zillow estimates. By comparison, Paducah is $165,000.

“You can’t get anything in California and think you’ll pay it off in 15 years unless you put 90% down,” she said. “There’s bigger yards here, you’re not basically shaking your neighbor’s hand through the bathroom window.”

Weighing the pros and cons

Though groceries she said are only slightly cheaper, gas is nearly half what she was paying in California, and her utilities bill is way down. This summer, she would run her air conditioning 24/7 and her electric bill wouldn’t top $150, which was the minimum she ever paid in California.

The benefits have been as simple as living in a green area where lawns are nicely kept — as opposed to in her part of California where water bills cost a fortune. She said businesses like car dealerships are a lot more friendly and trusting of potential customers.

“I want to say Kentucky is almost the polar opposite of California, and in a lot of ways, it is,” Duvall said. “This is how these people have always been, and so it’s nice not to still be that California way.”

Though, it’s taken her some time to get adjusted. Everything is significantly more spaced out in Kentucky than in California, which has made for some longer trips to see family or get what she needs. She said nobody is ever in a hurry to get things done, which has its negatives and positives.

“California was go, go, go as fast as you can to get things done, and here, they just don’t do that,” Duvall said. “They take time to sit on the porch and actually have tea and talk to the neighbors to make sure they’re okay.”

Decisions as small as putting security screens on her door as she did in California for safety precautions have been met with some stares, though she on the whole feels a lot safer in Kentucky. And she said the drivers in her area are sometimes harder to deal with.

“My thing is, either you adjust to Kentucky, or you leave,” she said. “I’m not going to bring my California ways here and try to make people change.”

It’s also a little scary navigating natural disasters like the occasional tornado and earthquake in her area, she said, though she’s gotten accustomed to her area’s fluctuating weather.

Still, Duvall said in her small city, she’s gotten better care for her medical problems, as she’s gotten more individualized, thorough attention. In California, she said doctors would spend five minutes with her, but in Kentucky, her doctors meet with her for an hour.

Duvall said she was shocked how few people from Kentucky she met in her first few months there — many were California transplants. She knows her neighbors all the way down her street, and she said her neighbors all came to check up on her once after her carbon monoxide alarm went off.

“I’m a Californian, and so I’m not used to everybody being nice, knowing your neighbors, but you do know your neighbors around here, a little too much in my opinion,” Duvall said.

Have you recently moved to a different state? Reach out to this reporter at nsheidlower@insider.com.