Right there with you, I make an effort to plan trips around those sorts of criteria. I’m from IL, but still have family (barely) across the IN state line. I can easily enough visit without spending a nickel in IN.
More difficult to go other directions sometimes, but as a matter of course I tend to stay north of the Mason-Dixon with precious few exceptions. That doesn’t solve the problem entirely, but eliminates some of the worst offenders.
Nebraska isn’t exactly on my bucket list, or ‘states I must drive through to get to x’ list, so I’ll probably be fine avoiding them, but it becomes more and more difficult to track those lists mentally as time goes on.