Staying in New Jersey is starting to feel like a bad relationship

You know the relationship. Maybe you have been in one. Maybe you have watched a friend stay in one way too long. Everything is falling apart but you cannot quite bring yourself to leave. You remember how good it used to be. You tell yourself it will get better. You say, just one more year.

That is exactly what is happening between a lot of New Jersey residents and the state they love.

We hear it all the time on The Judi and EJ Show. People call in from Florida, from the Carolinas, from Tennessee. They left New Jersey. They love where they are. Lower taxes, bigger house, money left over at the end of the month. They sound lighter. They sound free. And then we hear from the people who are still here, still doing the math, still telling themselves that this is the year things turn around.

It never does.

The good times are the problem

Here is what makes New Jersey so hard to leave. The good times were genuinely good. The neighborhoods. The diners at midnight. The Shore in August. The family two towns over. The friends you have known since third grade. The pizza that no other state has ever come close to replicating. New Jersey got its hooks into you early and it did it with things worth loving.

So when the bills started climbing — the property tax bill that somehow goes up every single year, the car insurance that costs more than some people's car payments, the grocery runs that empty your wallet before you hit the produce section — you did not leave. You stayed. Because you were not just leaving a state. You were leaving your life.

That is the trap. And Trenton has been counting on it for decades.

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The math that keeps getting worse

The average New Jersey property tax bill now tops $9,800 a year statewide. In counties like Bergen, Essex and Morris it pushes well past $12,000. Add in what you pay for auto insurance, utilities, tolls and the general cost of existing in one of the most expensive states in the country, and the number gets staggering fast.

People are not leaving New Jersey because they want to. They are leaving because they eventually run out of runway. The retirement account that looked fine at 58 looks terrifying at 64 when you realize the tax bill is not going down, the utility bills are not going down, and the fixed income you are about to live on was not designed for a state that costs this much.

The ones who stay the longest are the ones who love it the most. And Trenton has never once rewarded that loyalty.

What it is going to take

The people calling our show who say "just one more year" are not weak. They are not naive. They are people who love their state and keep hoping the people running it will finally decide to love them back. They are waiting for a governor or a legislature to stand up and say, enough. The people who built this state deserve to stay in it. Property tax reform is not a campaign talking point. It is an emergency.

Until that happens, the calls will keep coming in. People who left and sound relieved. People who stayed and sound exhausted. And people right in the middle, doing the math one more time, telling themselves what they have been telling themselves for years.

Just one more year.

Trenton, the people on hold are running out of patience. And this time, they mean it.