I was paid $5,000 to move to a ‘dying’ town. I was sold a hidden gem… but could never have predicted what it did to my life

Kelley Meadows was fed up with the Texas heat – and the price of living – as her lease came to an end two years ago in Killeen, about 70 miles north of Austin.

She had spent most of her life in the Lone Star State but had already been priced out of the capital, where the majority of her family resided.

Then 30 and living in a $950-a-month duplex with no fenced yard for her 100lb dog, Meadows was sharing a wall with a family of four young children. She felt stuck.

So when she saw a Facebook ad promoting small towns and cities across the US that would pay remote workers to relocate, Meadows clicked.

The ad led her to MakeMyMove, a platform that connects people with places across America offering incentives to attract new residents. One of them, Richmond, Indiana, near the Ohio border, was handing out $5,000 in two instalments, along with perks such as symphony tickets, to remote workers earning at least $55,000.

Meadows, who had never been to Indiana before, took a week off work to visit three communities with her mother. Richmond was the third – and she immediately fell in love with it… and one of her new fellow residents.

‘Realistically, the reason why I noticed Richmond was because it was on a shortlist of places that would pay you to move,’ Meadows told the Daily Mail.

She moved within months. Two years later, she is married to a man she met at a dog park just weeks after arriving, is 35lb lighter thanks to a better lifestyle and saving hundreds of dollars every month. 

Kelley Meadows, a remote claims adjustor, moved from Texas to Richmond, Indiana (pictured) after learning that the small midwestern city was offering a $5,000 incentive to move there

Meadows, pictured with her new husband, says that she is saving thousands of dollars a month since making the move – and met her spouse just weeks after relocating

Meadows now rents a 1,250sq ft, two-bedroom house with a garage, shed and fenced yard for just $800. On top of the $5,000 relocation incentive, she estimates there is a saving of $500 a month in other expenses. 

‘I think many people underestimate just how positive a change like this can be, moving from a high cost of living area to a low cost of living area,’ she said.

But towns and cities, such as Richmond, across the country are banking on the hope that many more people do realize.

Some, such as Tulsa, Oklahoma, began creatively seeking new residents pre-pandemic, launching a $10,000 grant in 2018 to remote workers who met various other eligibility requirements with funding from the George Kaiser Family Foundation. Others, like Neodesha, Kansas, have only recently joined the wave.

Neodesha’s Mayor Devin Johnson, 41, is a fourth-generation resident whose grandfather was mayor in the 1970s. He grew up watching his parents run a retail location downtown – and then watched his contemporaries leave, as he did, too, temporarily.

‘We’ve suffered the brain drain,’ he said, expressing hopes of reversing the trend. 

Last year, after a downtown revitalization, Neodesha partnered with MakeMyMove to offer an incentive package for remote or self-employed workers earning at least $50,000, including: up to $15,000 in student loan repayment assistance; a 100 per cent Kansas state income tax waiver through 2026; gym membership; a one-year splash zone family pass; a six-month local newspaper subscription; two tickets to the annual Chamber of Commerce’s auction and dinner; and even a meal with Johnson himself and the city administrator. 

Neodesha, Kansas is offering a range of perks for remote workers looking to relocate who make at least $55,000 – including payment of in-state college tuition and fees

Neodesha Mayor Devin Johnson, whose grandfather was mayor in the 1970s, says the town with a population of 2,500 has received 292 applications since partnering last year with MakeMyMove.com

One of the town’s biggest promotions is the Neodesha Promise – payment of in-state college tuition and mandatory fees for qualifying students. It has handed out $1 million already to recipients.

‘It’s huge,’ says Johnson, boasting that the program is the ‘only one in Kansas’ and one of only ‘a handful’ in the Midwest.

He and other Neodesha executives hope that promotion will be a major tipping point when it comes to remote workers making destination choices.

But not everyone is happy, of course. The architects of the package have had to weather grumbling from locals who complain about the benefits being offered to the new arrivals.

‘The same ones that complain about ‘You’re going to have to raise our taxes, this or that’ are the same ones that don’t comprehend that the more people that live here the more people we spread those taxes out across,’ Johnson said.

‘If we’re a dying community, then less people pay to make the pie – and if there’s more people, then that pie’s split more evenly.’

An early pioneer of incentives programs was Tulsa, which in 2018 began offering a $10,000 grant through the George Kaiser Family Foundation to remote workers willing to relocate and stay for one year. An estimated 3,500 workers have taken it up, according to the foundation

According to Evan Hock, co-founder of MakeMyMove, the site has gone ‘gangbusters’ since it launched nearly five years ago.

‘There were about 15 programs across the country when we first started,’ he told the Daily Mail, adding that there are now more than 100.

‘Places throughout the Midwest, through the Northeast, these are places that historically have been kind of flyover country,’ he said. ‘They have lost population and lost workforce to the city centers.

‘But there’s an inversion of that migration now, where people are choosing places based off of quality of life – where they can find some place that’s more affordable, some place that they can find a connection to that local community.’

At least 3,500 remote workers have taken Tulsa up on its offer since 2018, according to the George Kaiser Family Foundation. And, as programs have multiplied throughout the country so, too, have the perks that places are offering to distinguish themselves from other dying communities.

MakeMyMove, which has helped 4,000 people relocate so far, says a study by the IU Public Policy Institute estimates that, while results vary regionally, every $100,000 in household income recruited will generate ‘more than $80,000 in new economic output each year’. 

A new report about the Tulsa Remote program found that 58 to 70 per cent of workers would not have moved without the incentive – but their economic benefits far outweighed any cost.

Economist Timothy J. Bartik wrote in May that: ‘Indirect multiplier and spillover effects from the Tulsa Remote program yield benefits for other Tulsa residents that are over four times the program’s costs.’ 

Stacie Guild, pictured with her teenage daughter, moved last year from upstate New York to eastern Kentucky, where her property taxes have decreased by thousands

And early reports from movers to other regions seem to back that up.

‘I spend quite a bit of money – I know that,’ Stacie Guild, who used MakeMyMove’s help last summer to relocate from upstate New York to eastern Kentucky, told the Daily Mail. ‘When I first got here, I had to buy everything for my house – all the utilities and everything.’

Neodesha has received 292 applications since it launched the program in late 2024, Johnson said – 44 of those have met the requirements and been pre-approved. The city is in the final stages of helping the first mover relocate but, for a town of around 2,500, one or two families at a time is all that they’re looking for at the moment.

‘We don’t have anywhere to put [292] people right now,’ he said. ‘You always hear the saying: ‘If it grows like a weed, it dies like a weed.’

‘We don’t want that. We want sustainability, and we want to make sure that the first moves that we make through this program are really highlights of what the program can bring.’

According to data compiled by MakeMyMove, the largest chunk of movers using the site are coming from California, Texas, Florida and Illinois.

Movers aged 34 to 44 constitute the largest percentage at 42.25 per cent, followed by 45 to 59 at 25.11 per cent and 27 to 33 at 24.96 per cent. Movers aged 18-26 constitute the smallest percentage at 2.95, with people aged 60 and above making up the final 4.73 per cent.

Katie Mack, 34, and her husband, 37, fall within the highest percentage. They were already planning to move from Red Creek in upstate New York to eastern Kentucky – following friends who had done the same – when Mack’s sister sent an Instagram ad for MakeMyMove along with the warning: ‘I don’t know if this is legit or not.’

Katie Mack, 34, moved from Red Creek, New York with her husband and niece to Johnson County in eastern Kentucky, taking advantage of two $2,500 incentive payments

While Mack bought a bigger home, pictured, in Kentucky, her taxes decreased from nearly $8,000 a year in New York to around $1,500. She found and took advantage of MakeMyMove after her sister saw an Instagram ad

It was, and it happened to be for the same region Mack had already been researching. The couple, who are raising their teenage niece, took the plunge. They received $2,500 upon move, with another $2,500 a year later.

‘The house that we ended up buying was bigger than our last house so that didn’t really decrease for us mortgage-wise,’ she said. ‘But the taxes! We went from paying almost $8,000 a year for school and county taxes on a tiny little two-bedroom home to now we’re paying like $1,500 in county taxes for the year.’

Guild, 51, whose 15-year-old daughter is best friends with Mack’s niece, also decided to jump on the bandwagon. She has a degree in social work and began looking for jobs in Eastern Kentucky before landing a remote role that qualified her for the MakeMyMove $5,000 relocation payment.

She brought her daughter, boyfriend, four dogs and guinea pig from Medina last July to their new 1,600sq ft, three-bedroom, two-bath home that came with dramatically lower taxes. 

‘I was paying about $4,300 a year for my taxes in New York, and I had just a small plot of land and a very similar size house that I have here,’ Guild told the Daily Mail. ‘Here, I pay about $500.’

In addition to perks like college tuition and a downtown revitalization, Neodesha in Kansas is trying to distinguish itself from other ‘dying’ communities by offering gym memberships and a one-year pass to its Splash Zone, pictured

Kelley Meadows, pictured at her engagement to a Richmond resident, says: ‘I think many people underestimate just how positive a change like this can be, moving from a high cost of living area to a low cost of living area’

Guild’s car and homeowner’s insurance seem more expensive but utilities are cheaper and the area has superior fiber optic internet, though dead spots and power grid failures are occasional nuisances.

‘I think that our lives have gotten so chaotic and stressful – and I think it’s partly our own doing – that going to a place where it’s not so fast-paced is what a lot of people are searching for,’ she said. 

Guild can see the draws for many out-of-staters, including another new Kentuckian she recently ran into who had moved from Albany. Word is spreading. 

Mayor Johnson in Neodesha has seen that dissatisfaction translate into interest in Kansas from major metropolises. After an interview with a New York City radio station about his town’s program, there were ‘a dozen views and interests filed’.

‘The key is turning the interest into actual move,’ he said. ‘That’s our goal, and that’s what we want to do – but we also want it to be balanced and controlled.’

Already, he said: ‘It’s amazing, the spotlight that it’s put on our community.

‘Our economic development director gets calls regularly from people who have just seen an article about Neodesha or saw us on the news – not necessarily through MakeMyMove – and we are absolutely okay with that. Anybody that we approve through our own vetting, we will give them the same benefits.’