I worked in Red River for about a year and a half and it was pretty great. It was like Colorado Lite up there, and presumably much more affordable--I just had a condo paid for by my employer so I dunno. It'd be tough to live there without a remote job, I admit.

Taos was cool, but a little small/touristy. Santa Fe seemed great, but I heard it was expensive so I dunno. The rural areas did feel very impoverished overall.

I agree that it had its own feel. The native New Mexicans I met out there were just kind of their own people doing their own thing. The state had those fruit/pepper/produce stands here and there on the side of the road that you'd see in like Brazil. The landscape and terrain was this pretty mixture of desert shrubland right adjacent to mountain cypress-type ecosystems, at least in all the places I went to.

Would be worth going back again one day.