And therein lies the rub. We had the big house (that we had to clean more often and pay more to heat, cool, and maintain), the huge yard with lots of space (that we had to spend hours every weekend dealing with, along with the cost), the two cars (with their own costs and hassles), and so on.
What we didn't have was the respect of our community, or at least the recognition that families like ours should be full members of society. It's fucking awful to hear your governor on TV crowing about how immigrants are "ruining the state," or that the latest environmental-disaster of a highway project is "true freedom."
No amount of money can ever make up for that. Where we live now, we still get to save, we still are able to travel (well, pandemic notwithstanding), and we need not drive everywhere to do it and we feel accepted--or at least somewhere between begrudgingly tolerated and utterly adored--by the government of our state.
I used to optimize for cost; no longer.