WGN Investigates traveled to Nashville, Tennessee to catch up with Chicagoans who made the move for financial reasons. How did they know it made sense? Do they have any regrets?

They do it to spike up pensions. The big raises are given in the final three years. Spiking, in other words, is more important to them than the penalty.

Ambitious people still flock to Chicago. Between 2010 and 2016, Chicago added more people in a key demographic category than any U.S. city except New York. The number of Chicago households that have more than $100,000 annual income and are headed by a person under age 45 grew by 26,000, outpacing such economic meccas as Denver, Houston and San Francisco.