Nice to see some fellow Iowans here (we are recent transplants to the Cedar Falls area).
While I wouldn't recommend Iowa for the weather particularly (though being a former Minnesotan, Iowa often seems warm to me), the combination of cost of living and jobs has been great for us. We've lived in both Ames and Cedar Falls, which are both college towns with professional job opportunities, but relatively low costs of living. We both make good salaries), working professional 9-5 Monday through Friday jobs. Our house would probably have been twice as expensive in Minneaplis (my home town) and property taxes would also be much higher. While we both would love Minneapolis, the lower cost of living in Iowa has really appealed to us, and we are now located squarely between both sets of parents!
I love living in a college town, as there are still good restaurants and things to do (though we rarely go to things that cost money since starting our mustachian journey). There are a lot of other transplants due to the college, so we aren't the only non native Iowans around (we were previously during a stint in a small, 6000 person town!). I will say that the small town we lived in previously was not a good fit for us (hard to meet people, not much to do, limited housing options). But Cedar Falls has been great for me because there is stuff to do/people to connect with, but no traffic (worst downfall of Minneapolis in my opinion!).
Another nice thing about smaller towns in flyover country - there seems to be much less of the keeping up with the joneses! We don't have kids yet so maybe that'll change, but no one looks at us weird for wearing jeans and t shirts around (or carharts and boots at some times of year!), or for driving an 18 year old car. Our coworkers don't really question why we bring lunch everyday, and our neighbors mostly do their own lawn work too (though we have had multiple people offer us has lawn mowers and leaf blowers when they see us using manual means of completing those tasks!). In fact, just yesterday we had a contractor over to give us a quote on blowing in insulation in our attic, and he didn't even try to give us a quote for air sealing and instead showed us how to do it ourselves, saving us $200 off what they would have charged to do it! Mid westerns tend to like a good deal, and help their neighbors out, at least in my experience. I don't know if we would get that in other parts of the country or not.