You ask a very practical question, and a lot of money is at stake. If I understand your approach properly, the practicality and cost of the two vehicles is more important to you than your reputation for owning one or the other or your self-image for being the owner of one or the other.
If that's true, then the only meaningful way to answer the question is to consider what kind of off-road terrain your chosen vehicle will be exposed to. The FX4 is a capable off-road truck and is useful for jeep trails and dirt roads, low traction conditions, and anywhere 4x4 capability capability is valuable. It will go almost anywhere a Raptor will go, but perhaps not as fast. The Raptor is optimized for high speed off road travel, and was tested in the dessert. Since there isn't much dessert in North Carolina, it does put the extra expense of a Raptor in question.
To get the nearly 12 inches of wheel travel a Raptor has, longer A-arms are used. That makes the Raptor 7 inches wider than an FX4. If the your conditions in North Carolina would be better served by a narrower vehicle and if you do not highly value traveling through those conditions at high speed, then it would seem that an FX4 would be a perfectly practical vehicle for your intended use of it, and that the Raptor would not perform markedly better given where and how you intend to use it.
Remember that the ownership cost of a vehicle involves much more than the purchase price or the monthly payments. Ownership cost also includes fuel economy, maintenance costs, insurance, and tag/license fees. The FX4 would save you money in every one of those categories and would do everything you want it to do if the assumptions I've made are representative of your situation.
How's that?
