Why an entrepreneur has no regrets about moving from Hawaii back to her Kansas hometown

Audra Dinell moved back to Kansas in 2020.

Audra Dinell, 38, said her move back to Kansas from Hawaii felt like she was starting over.

“We miss a lot of things about the places we left — the people, culture, mountains, and ocean — but no, we do not have any regrets about moving back to Kansas,” Dinell, who moved from Kansas to Colorado before living in Hawaii, said.

Amid the pandemic in 2020, she had an idea for a career shift and wanted to become a homeowner again after leasing a place in Hawaii.

She also moved back to be closer to family and for the “ease of living” in the Midwest where she said “things were easily accessible, affordable.”

Dinell and her husband moved from Wichita, Kansas, to Colorado in 2012 for her marketing career. They had their first child before they left Colorado for Hawaii in 2017 because of a job opportunity for Dinell.

Dinell said, “Hawaii was magical.” The high cost of Honolulu life wasn’t as pleasant.

“The cost of living moving from Honolulu to Wichita was shocking,” Dinell said.

Indeed, the latest data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis shows that Kansas is much cheaper than the states she left behind. As of 2022, Colorado and Hawaii were 2% and around 11% more expensive than the national average, respectively. Meanwhile, Kansas’ cost of living was 10% lower than the national average.

Dinell said Wichita, which has a population of almost 400,000, is lively. She also likes the Midwest’s community feeling.

“When I left in 2012 versus coming back in 2020, I have personally felt this energy, this collective energy, of just people lifting up our city and bringing cool things and sharing ideas and helping each other out,” Dinell said. “I just think it’s such a vibrant, cool place to be right now.”

Dinell said moving back to Kansas during the pandemic felt risky but was the right choice. After having the chance to live elsewhere, she’s happy she, her husband, and their two kids took the one-way trip to the Midwest and that she gets to live in her dream neighborhood.

Dinell and her husband also sold many of their belongings because they didn’t want to deal with the shipping delays, adding to the feeling of starting over.

Work and life in Kansas

Work was one of the things that drew Dinell back. Before the family moved to Kansas in 2020, Dinell considered starting a women’s leadership collective.

“My husband and I were talking about potentially moving home already, and I thought about this experience that I had while working in Honolulu with a professional women’s organization, and I thought, ‘I wonder if Wichita has anything like that?'” she told B-17.

She said she found a “hole in the market” for this type of community and founded The Thread.

“We help women become more confident and build up their professional communities by working on their power skills,” Dinell said.

Dinell finds people in the Midwest are helpful, including for professional opportunities.

“One of the things I noticed is in the Midwest, there are less gatekeepers than in some of the other cities I’ve lived and worked in,” she said. “I’m able to get a coffee meeting with the president of a large nonprofit and really get to know different people in the community who I can help and who want to help me grow my career and business.”

While Dinell and her family are enjoying Kansas, she said she’s still able to afford visits to Colorado and Hawaii, given the Midwest’s cost of living.

Meanwhile, she finds there are a lot of fun activities for her kids in Kansas, such as going to the science center. She also likes the local parks for her children. Dinell also enjoys the restaurant options.

She loves where she’s at now, but Dinell said she misses some aspects of living in Hawaii and Colorado. Dinell liked biking to breweries and hiking in Colorado. In Hawaii, she would hang out at the beach multiple times a week. She said she thinks the people in Hawaii are great, and the state has ideal weather.

Dinell suggested people who are thinking about moving to the Midwest to book a trip to see what it’s like.

“I have friends who have visited us from Hawaii, Colorado, many different cities, South Carolina, and they’re always so surprised,” she said. “They’re like, ‘I can’t believe I didn’t know this was here.'”