I'm a dentist. Not a rich, lion hunting dentist though. But I aspire to be. How about you Knight Shift?
Will it be easy for you to join a practice or set up your own in the Phoenix area?
I am a patent attorney. While I can do my work from nearly anywhere, we have an office in NJ that I cannot leave. Plus our kids are settled in their middle and high schools. We live at the beautiful shore area, and we have talked a lot about whether we will leave when I retire, but we like this area too much to leave. Yes, it is expensive. We have lived in various other places--Wilmington, NC; Cincinnati, Ohio and upstate New York in the Finger Lakes area. But we found each of them lacking in certain aspects. So, our current plan is we will find a smaller home/property when we retire, and head to Arizona during the cold and snowy months.
There are plenty of places in Monmouth and especially Ocean County where you can get a decent home for under $400K and property taxes under $7K. We have done the math with the various property, income, sales and various other taxes in other states. Many of the states with lower property taxes have higher income or sales taxes that can make up for the difference in property taxes. And in some places, like Sedona, you have to pay for private trash collection and brush collection when you clean up your yard. Some states have ridiculous fees for car registration--IIRC, it was Ohio/Indiana that charged you many hundreds of dollars per year.
So, different states get you one way or another on costs/taxes. Arizona has some ridiculously high sales taxes. Counties and towns can add their own sales tax. In parts of Sedona, the sales tax is 9.9%. I believe clothing and grocery store food are charged at least the local sales tax, which are not taxed in NJ. I don't know how the public schools are around Phoenix, but if we were living in Sedona, our kids would be in private school.
Arizona charges annually a Vehicle License tax (VLT) $2.80 for every $100 of the value of your car. If you have a $40,000 vehicle, based on their formula, you will pay nearly $700 in VLT per year.
I have not done all the math, but on garbage collection, additional sales taxes and vehicle taxes alone, I estimate an additional $2-4,000/year over what we pay in NJ. Depending on your property taxes, you may save money, but in our experience, the higher wages and quality of life in NJ (yes, quality of life) are worth the extra cost to us.