I lived in Austin and loved it but the heat got to me. I loved the food and nightlife in Nashville when I visited. Also thoroughly enjoyed Burlington VT and would love to live there some day. I wouldn’t mind ending up back in Boston again though. If that’s the kind of places you mean, then yeah.

I bought a place in Denver now because it’s so much relatively cheaper than Boston while I’m making the same software engineer wage. I could only afford to buy a teensy tiny old studio or a spot in a garage in Boston for the cost of my centrally-located condo in Denver.

I really liked living in Austin, but I'm thinking smaller. Terre Haute, Urbana-Champaign, Kalamazoo, State College, Denton, Madison, Manhattan (Kansas), Binghamton, and many others, depending on your taste in climate, topography, and politics. Maybe Burlington, but the cost of living in Vermont is surprisingly high considering how sparsely populated it is.

I'm surprised you mentioned Terre Haute, but not Bloomington, IN (where Indiana University is located), which is really much, much, much nicer than Terre Haute.

List was off the cuff -- I've been to or know people who've lived in those places. Bloomington sounds quite nice, but it didn't come to mind.