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You are always better off (economically speaking) in a higher cost-of-living area with proportionally higher salary.

There are other externalities to this. Tax incentives are better if you can buy vs rent, which is harder in high COL. Also from personal experience, you get to live in more vibrant and diverse neighborhoods as opposed to more homogenous ones that price out others. If you have children that go into non-lucrative fields (ex: teaching), they will not be able to live by you without your financial support.

On the other hand, if your kids go into fields where the pay is unequal across the country, they are less likely to stay in your small town of 100k and move to somewhere else with more economic or artistic opportunity. And by being in small town, it's a lot more time and money for them to fly to see you, so they will see you less.

Ex: I can fly across the ocean for the same price it is to fly 2 hours direct equivalent / 4 hours connecting to see my family in their relatively small town.

Are you talking about high vs. low COL area in US? It sounds like you are (because none of what you said seems to be true where I live), but I wanted to point it out since this whole subthread started with the mention of Italy.

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