You can be well off in Seattle or poor in NY. What will your pay look like in 3, 5 years in these locations?

Nashville is a good place to live but very diff culture in all these places.

NY is only the best if you need more restaurants and bars then you could ever possibly try. You will be less likely to have a tight knit friend group (more distributed), you will feel poor. You won’t do outdoors things very often.

When you move to the suburbs those will be very expensive too.

Move to NY if it is a 2-3 year stint, like a long vacation, and you have some friends there.

If you have roots in none of these places, I would pick somewhere with a balanced lifestyle, which is probably anywhere but NYC (Seattle is kind of shitty weather most of the year).

If you are putting down roots long term, choose carefully based on culture and lifestyle.