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In Bay Area, six-figure salaries are “low income”

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Re: In Bay Area, six-figure salaries are “low income”

#41

Post by emrekzd »

anon374939 wrote: post #19

After two years in San Francisco, I had to move back to my small(er) home town city because I ultimately realized there's little to no future for me in a city like San Francisco, despite making 250k/yr. I'd have to make at minimum $1M per year for a similar lifestyle (and even then, the stress of living in the bay area will reduce years from your lifespan... what's each year of your life worth to you?).

You "need" to make $1.5M/year for "similar" lifestyle. Maybe you should either reconsider your lifestyle or your math skills.

note: I made the assumption you didn't move to a village in a 3rd world country.

Re: In Bay Area, six-figure salaries are “low income”

#42

Post by spoonie »

dllthomas wrote: post #13
bardworx wrote: post #5

I don't know much about SF salaries, but in NYC, 100K is really middle class. With enrage rent at 2k/mo, salaries have to be high in order to keep up with cost of living. Everyone makes a huge deal about the number but shouldn't it be more of a ratio? Like the cost of living to base salary? That should be a better statistic to judge quality of life.

Ratio is probably better, but also misleads if my income isn't close to the cost of maintaining my lifestyle. If I am able to save, and I move to make 2x in a place that costs 2x, I am saving 2x as much! If I am stuck drawing down savings, and I make the opposite move, I have doubled my runway.

Yeah what's probably best is some number closer to "monthly net after taxes, rent, insurance".

Re: In Bay Area, six-figure salaries are “low income”

#43

Post by emodendroket »

cm2012 wrote: post #9
bardworx wrote: post #5

I don't know much about SF salaries, but in NYC, 100K is really middle class. With enrage rent at 2k/mo, salaries have to be high in order to keep up with cost of living. Everyone makes a huge deal about the number but shouldn't it be more of a ratio? Like the cost of living to base salary? That should be a better statistic to judge quality of life.

The median annual family income (for a whole family including all earners) is 50k. 100k for a family is in the top 20% of NYC.

Well to really answer the question we have to define what we mean by "middle-class," which is often deliberately left so nebulous that it covers practically everyone besides the homeless and the stratospherically wealthy.

Re: In Bay Area, six-figure salaries are “low income”

#44

Post by davidw »

ProAm wrote: post #28
davidw wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Boulder managed to copy a lot of the good stuff about Silicon Valley - but also seems to have copied the brutal, rampant NIMBYism https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/04/business/how-anti-growth-... Great place, and I understand not wanting sprawl, but... build up and in?

Boulder didn't copy that, Boulder has been that way since the late 70's, tech just happened to move here and the culture was already in place.

Fair enough. It just struck me how they've managed to get a lot of the good stuff right when so many places are trying - and not doing a great job - to copy Silicon Valley, but also have that exact same NIMBY problem.

William Fischel draws some links with environmentalism in Zoning Rules! ( http://amzn.to/2oIKbyM ) which make sense. Not that he's against it, but just that it sometimes gets a bit perverted to further the ends of NIMBYs rather than actually protecting much of anything. Making people drive 15 miles back and forth to Longmont isn't terribly great for the planet in some ways. In any event, both SF and Boulder are both places that do have a strong sense of environmentalism (in a lot of good ways too, I think), so that could well be the connection.

Edit:

Exhibit A: SF's Sierra Club fighting to save... a parking garage.

http://thebaycitybeacon.com/32740/282282/a/the-sierra-club-f...

Re: In Bay Area, six-figure salaries are “low income”

#45

Post by rocgf »

Sharlin wrote: post #30
archeantus wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We moved to Utah where the tech scene is actually quite strong, and the cost of living is significantly less. We bought an 8k sq ft house for the price of many 1,500 sq ft town homes we had been putting offers in on in California. It can be such a rat race down there, it is refreshing to remember that it doesn't have to be that way. Life exists outside of The Valley, and it happens to be a pretty darn good one (and a…

800 square meters????

My reaction exactly. Americans use way too much, to be honest. 8k sq ft is more than enough for like 7+ families.

Re: In Bay Area, six-figure salaries are “low income”

#46

Post by ransom1538 »

archeantus wrote: post #6

Wow, this resonates with me. In 2013 my wife and I were living in the Bay Area and had just welcomed our third child into the family. I was making 105k/yr at Apple (which seemed like a ton at the time!) but I felt like I was saving very little of that. I was approached on LinkedIn to take a job with matching pay but that was fully remote. I could live anywhere I wanted in the entire country. I jumped at the chance an…

Did the exact same thing this year. Moved to Oviedo, FL from SF:

1) no state income tax,

2) public schools in my neighborhood are equivalent to a private school in sf [i]

4) weather is great 8 months out of year,

5) beaches you can swim in,

6) rent is ~1/4 of what it was in SF,

7) cuban food,

8) as a resident, kids have year round disney passes

[i] http://school-ratings.com/Florida/schools/Carillon_Elementar...

WARNING: The tech job market is pretty much non-existent. "more challenging" is an understatement. I would be prepared to answer 'can you lift 50 lbs' in your 'tech' interview. I am a remote dev.

Re: In Bay Area, six-figure salaries are “low income”

#47

Post by enknamel »

BadassFractal wrote: post #22

Let's set aside cost of living in the Bay for a second. Here's a completely taboo subject. At what point do we hold people accountable for their reproductive choices? You want to have 2, 4, 6 children in the most expensive slice of land in the US? Great, but please bear in mind that choice comes with real financial consequences to your lifestyle and you should not expect the state to bail you out of it.

Of course people should be responsible for their choices. However that doesn't mean we can't be more accommodating to people making 100k or less. You think Starbucks will stick around if they have to pay their employees 100k or make them commute a couple hours?

The bay needs more housing to meet the needs of all the companies that need employees here.

Re: In Bay Area, six-figure salaries are “low income”

#48

Post by throwthisawayt »

BadassFractal wrote: post #22

Let's set aside cost of living in the Bay for a second. Here's a completely taboo subject. At what point do we hold people accountable for their reproductive choices? You want to have 2, 4, 6 children in the most expensive slice of land in the US? Great, but please bear in mind that choice comes with real financial consequences to your lifestyle and you should not expect the state to bail you out of it.

The Bay Area is the most expensive place in the US for no real reason except for regulation.

It's kinda like everyone cheering for Uber and Lyft because medallion rules in SF prevented ever having enough cabs.

There's no real reason and that's the problem.

Also maybe they had those kids in the 1990s when things were a bit more affordable ? The Bay Area wasn't always the most expensive place in the US

Re: In Bay Area, six-figure salaries are “low income”

#49

Post by sigstoat »

davidw wrote: post #15
leesalminen wrote: post #8

Here in Boulder CO, the cutoff for "affordable" housing subsidies is ~80k for a family of four. 104k in the Bay Area seems about right.

Boulder managed to copy a lot of the good stuff about Silicon Valley - but also seems to have copied the brutal, rampant NIMBYism https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/04/business/how-anti-growth-... Great place, and I understand not wanting sprawl, but... build up and in?

it's probably worse, in a sense. you can't build up in boulder because there are height restrictions on buildings.

Re: In Bay Area, six-figure salaries are “low income”

#50

Post by [deleted] »

Sharlin wrote: post #30
archeantus wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We moved to Utah where the tech scene is actually quite strong, and the cost of living is significantly less. We bought an 8k sq ft house for the price of many 1,500 sq ft town homes we had been putting offers in on in California. It can be such a rat race down there, it is refreshing to remember that it doesn't have to be that way. Life exists outside of The Valley, and it happens to be a pretty darn good one (and a…

800 square meters????

[deleted]
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