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Does It Make Sense for Programmers to Move to the Bay Area?

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Re: Does It Make Sense for Programmers to Move to the Bay Area?

#511

Post by mr_pink »

pedrosorio wrote: post #367
jartelt wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A decent 1BR on the peninsula (in San Mateo, Redwood City, Mountain View, etc.) is likely closer to >$2,500 a month plus $200/month for utilities/renters insurance. For transportation, I pay $200/month for a 15 year old Civic with liability insurance. If you have a moderately nice car that isn't paid off, you are going to pay >$200/month (especially if you commute daily). If you cook moderately nice meals and drink s…

If we're talking about low balled figures, I guess we need to consider the income side of the equation as well. The original question depends a good deal on what kind of job you're doing in the Bay Area. If it's someone coming to the Bay Area to work for Google/Facebook or similar, the figure I used is way too low, for example. "A decent 1BR" - It all depends on the definition of decent. I pay $2k for a 1BR walking d…

> Maybe not, but you certainly don't need to be "eating garbage dumped by grocery stores".

Nice strawman :) I was specifically talking about the situation conditional on saving the 100k in 18 months, my comment was a response to the comment above it.

Separate point: your figures seem very low. I thought SF is roughly equivalent to NYC in terms of cost of living. In which case 300/mo is a zero off as an estimate for all food expenses.

Re: Does It Make Sense for Programmers to Move to the Bay Area?

#512

Post by mr_pink »

morgante wrote: post #389
mr_pink wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It takes about 2 years to save up $100K on a typical Bay Area engineer's salary Have you actually done this? Know anyone who has? This seems completely implausible, outside of some extreme frugal lifestyle cases (I'm talking "eating garbage dumped by grocery stores" level frugal)...

I went from a net worth of $150k at 22, while never being particularly frugal at all. Heck, I didn't even have roommates. My monthly spending averaged $4k/m. NYC, not SF, but the difference isn't huge. Most people are atrocious with their money by either overspending or under-optimizing.

OK, it all depends on what the cash flow looks like :) You're leaving out that one very important piece of the puzzle...

Also, the average apartment in Manhattan (if you do rent without roommates) is pretty close to your cited figure for total monthly expenses. Which means you either lucked out, or seriously compromised on your living arrangements.

Re: Does It Make Sense for Programmers to Move to the Bay Area?

#513

Post by morgante »

mr_pink wrote: post #512
morgante wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went from a net worth of $150k at 22, while never being particularly frugal at all. Heck, I didn't even have roommates. My monthly spending averaged $4k/m. NYC, not SF, but the difference isn't huge. Most people are atrocious with their money by either overspending or under-optimizing.

OK, it all depends on what the cash flow looks like :) You're leaving out that one very important piece of the puzzle... Also, the average apartment in Manhattan (if you do rent without roommates) is pretty close to your cited figure for total monthly expenses. Which means you either lucked out, or seriously compromised on your living arrangements.

> OK, it all depends on what the cash flow looks like

I was making $150k/yr, which is pretty standard for a developer in NYC.

> Also, the average apartment in Manhattan (if you do rent without roommates) is pretty close to your cited figure for total monthly expenses.

I take it you don't live in NYC. The average is a useless metric because it's distorted by millionaires and billionaires. Just go on Craiglist and you'll find plenty of suitable apartments in the $2-3k range.

Nobody I know pays more than $3k/m for their apartment. Heck, my friend just rented a beautiful luxury single-bedroom for $2.8k.

In my case, I chose to go for a non-luxury apartment for $1.8k/m. This was definitely a deal, but even though it wasn't luxury there was plenty of space and I even had a back yard.

Re: Does It Make Sense for Programmers to Move to the Bay Area?

#514

Post by jdmichal »

the_gastropod wrote: post #222
jdmichal wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How exactly do you figure increasing your take-home pay by contributing to a 401k? Did you forget to subtract the money that's actually going to the 401k instead of your pocket? Even at 90% tax rate, all you are doing is sparing that 90% on the money you are contributing. In other words, you are only actually paying $10 for every $100 you put in, because that other $90 would have gone to the tax man anyway. But you a…

> How exactly do you figure increasing your take-home pay by contributing to a 401k? I guess it depends what you mean by "take-home". The original premise was "saving 100k in 2 years". I hope we can agree that saving money in a 401k is saving money, regardless of whether we agree it's "take-home".

Take-home is typically understood as the amount written on the check. As in, that's the amount you take home with you when you cash the check.

Re: Does It Make Sense for Programmers to Move to the Bay Area?

#515

Post by mr_pink »

morgante wrote: post #513
mr_pink wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, it all depends on what the cash flow looks like :) You're leaving out that one very important piece of the puzzle... Also, the average apartment in Manhattan (if you do rent without roommates) is pretty close to your cited figure for total monthly expenses. Which means you either lucked out, or seriously compromised on your living arrangements.

> OK, it all depends on what the cash flow looks like I was making $150k/yr, which is pretty standard for a developer in NYC. > Also, the average apartment in Manhattan (if you do rent without roommates) is pretty close to your cited figure for total monthly expenses. I take it you don't live in NYC. The average is a useless metric because it's distorted by millionaires and billionaires. Just go on Craiglist and you'…

> I take it you don't live in NYC.

I do.

> Nobody I know pays more than $3k/m for their apartment.

Few people I know pay under. We live in parallel dimensions I guess.

> In my case, I chose to go for a non-luxury apartment for $1.8k/m.

I don't know what NYC you live in, but this is non-existent AFAIK. I know someone who went all the way to Rego Park (this is really far from Manhattan) to rent a 1BR for $2.5k.

Re: Does It Make Sense for Programmers to Move to the Bay Area?

#516

Post by smsm42 »

vonmoltke wrote: post #402
shostack wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget about home repairs and renovations, HOA, and services like gardening, etc. depending on what you buy. It is easy to end up spending double rent on a comparable place. The difference is for now at least the home you buy can grow nicely so you need to do the math on rate of return for that vs other uses of that cash.

Those are all expenses your landlord has to pay if you are renting. If those costs plus mortgage is double rent than either landlords are hemmoraging money or something is seriously fucked up with the housing market.

True, but when you rent, the cost is obvious and stated upfront, however ownership has many hidden costs that are not apparent when you consider only purchasing price.

Re: Does It Make Sense for Programmers to Move to the Bay Area?

#517

Post by superqd »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #255
superqd wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, we wanted the neighborhood, and also both my wife and I grew up very poor (i.e., we'd never lived in a really nice house). So we bought a mid-size house in a really nice neighborhood (over bought a little). That's why I am personally very happy with downsizing. But not at the cost of paying 4x what I am paying now. But as already said by others, you fill the space and get used to it. There are times it's…

4200 sq ft. is mid-size to you?? Wow! I lived in a 600 sq ft. mobile home in the bay area with my wife and son. It was a bit cramped but not too bad. Now we're in Munich in a place that's...maybe 900 sq ft.? And it feels like a pretty good size, just wish we had a garage. 4200 just blows my mind. To me, I think having that much space would feel like a burden.

No, 4200 isn't mid-size to me, it's mid-size for the neighborhood. It's a freaktastic mansion to me. I grew up with 6 people in a 1000 sq ft space (we moved a lot, so sometimes more, sometimes less).

But, you are right, this much space does feel like a burden frequently, which is why we are moving and I plan on downsizing. A little.

Re: Does It Make Sense for Programmers to Move to the Bay Area?

#518

Post by kLeeIsDead »

iamcasen wrote: post #410
kLeeIsDead wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The crazy part about it is it's just going to get worse and worse. I was born and raised in SJ... since the 80s this tech stuff has been slowly building on top of itself like some sort of tumor, and the city does absolutely nothing to stop the gentrification and overall shittyness of the money-money-money mindset from taking over. I'm 23 now, most of my friends and 100% of my parents friends (lived there since the 60…

I felt the same way after living in SF for 6 years. I moved up to Portland, though they probably find me to be an annoying migrant too :/

FWIW, it's not the "migrant" part in itself that irritates me. It's the whole thing, "migrant workaholics". I hate the people who moved to my hometown for the sole reason to make money and go back to their home country, with no intention to integrate.

Re: Does It Make Sense for Programmers to Move to the Bay Area?

#519

Post by kLeeIsDead »

chrisper wrote: post #221
kLeeIsDead wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The crazy part about it is it's just going to get worse and worse. I was born and raised in SJ... since the 80s this tech stuff has been slowly building on top of itself like some sort of tumor, and the city does absolutely nothing to stop the gentrification and overall shittyness of the money-money-money mindset from taking over. I'm 23 now, most of my friends and 100% of my parents friends (lived there since the 60…

I am moving (back) to Europe (Germany). I have a European Passport, so I don't have to worry about a visa, like I would have to if I decided to stay here.

Ah, interesting. I'm German too. Unfortunately all my ties to Germany have been severed when my Oma died.

Re: Does It Make Sense for Programmers to Move to the Bay Area?

#520

Post by harterrt »

ammon wrote: post #48
harterrt wrote: post #32

It looks like the salary differential of $33k listed in the article is gross earnings. After taxes this would just barely cover the rent differential of $1.5k/mo ($18k/year). Note that this is the best case scenario according to their estimates. What troubles me is the use of median rent to compare housing costs. As rent increases, renters are likely to downsize offsetting some of the rent increase. I'd be willing to…

EDIT I incorrectly multiplied the tax rate to the salary difference, and said that this was a 5$ difference. This is totally wrong (as multiple people point out below). I'll leave my original embarrassing comment as a cation to not write stupid things :) == I just added in a mention of the tax difference. But the numbers are 13.3% in CA vs 0% in WA. That's significant, for sure. But 13% tax on $33k is about $5k. I do…

For clarity, I wrote up my thoughts here [0]. The issue I pointed out applies to Federal as well as State taxes. By my calculations, it looks like it's clearly not worth it to move to the Bay Area.

[0] http://blog.harterrt.com/is-moving-to-the-bay-area-worth-it....

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