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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”

#171

Post by santaclaus »

ryanSrich wrote: post #113
santaclaus wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Portland Rents in Portland are skyrocketing (I had friends whose landlords were pulling out 30% rent increases). I went from Portland to Oakland and my rent isn't that much more.

You can still buy a house in Portland for $500k. I live here. Bought in 2015. It's more expensive in 2017, but not 100% more. Once 1000sqft houses hit a $1mm average Portland will be too expensive. Until then we're doing just fine.

I dunno, developers were snapping up lots in our hood in Albina for 750, demoing them to lower the tax burden, and letting them sit empty to appreciate. Long term residents who had been renting for 30 years were getting chased out and moving to the numbers... those don't seem like great situations.

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

#172

Post by tezzer »

ryanSrich wrote: post #70
geggam wrote: post #21

Single income, Alameda county ( Fremont ), family of 4 No car payment, No credit card debt, 130k will let you live and eat with a bit of room to go do things once a month. If you have a car payment and or credit cards kiss that once a month thing goodbye 150k will let you have a car and do things Source : I left that area recently

Honest question. I just looked at Redfin and the average house costs around $1.2mm. How would anyone making $130k with 4 dependents buy a house? You seem to fit that criteria so I'll ask you. How on earth did you afford that? Because based on my simple math there just isn't enough money for it to be possible.

Not the OP, but based on living here for 15 years- you bought a house 8 years ago, when prices were half what they are now. Or you had an IPO/acquisition/bonus that netted you a downpayment large enough to bring the mortgage into affordable range.

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

#173

Post by archeantus »

sedky wrote: post #149
ransom1538 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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... WARNI…

What is your tech stack ? I would love to be remote some day.

I do native iOS development. I'm very much a proponent of remote work, and I wish more Bay Area companies would embrace it. If done right, it can lead to higher satisfaction from employees as well as increased productivity and reduced costs!

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

#174

Post by mdorazio »

nommm-nommm wrote: post #143
ShakataGaNai wrote: post #2

For a family of 4. That's the critical bit left out of the article title. 104k is low income for a family of 4, in some areas. Which makes sense when it's hard to find somewhere to live alone, in SF, even at 100k. Finding a place big enough for a family of 4 plus all the costs related to 4 humans? Not surprising in the least.

How much does that have to do with our increasing desire for more space though? The square footage of living space per person in a new home has increased from 506.6 to 980.7 since 1973. https://www.aei.org/publication/todays-new-homes-are-1000-sq...

I've seen this argument before and it's not a clear-cut relationship to desire at all. Did home buyers absolutely demand more and more space, or did developers realize they could make more by building bigger and bigger homes? Now we are in a situation where many, many young people looking to move to cities would be perfectly happy with smaller living spaces at associated smaller costs, but those properties straight up don't exist, and also aren't being built.

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

#175

Post by anon374939 »

nilved wrote: post #74
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?).

This post is hilarious. You're the embodiment of HN.

Yeah, first world problem I know :)

Everything's a matter of perspective. Ultimately I want my future kids to have a quality of life similar or greater than I had growing up, and I just didn't think that would be possible in the Bay (at least not without taking on the much higher stress that would likely accompany a much higher income)

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

#176

Post by geebee »

nosequel wrote: post #132
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 10 years ago. Couldn't take living in California any more. We moved to Colorado. * My health, both physical and mental has increased tremendously. * Our house is far cheaper in mortgage than our apartment was. * Schools are far better than anything in California we could afford * Crime is almost non-existent. Most people don't lock car or house doors. * It is rare I drive more than 8 miles on…

Can I ask you about one thing, though? Both my kids are in SFUSD schools, and San Francisco actually has a large number of 10/10 rated schools. This is based on test scores, of course, so it doesn't tell the whole story.

For instance, take a look at this:

http://www.greatschools.org/california/san-francisco/schools...

Do you think that your elementary school in Colorado are vastly better than the top three we see here, Chin (John Yehall) Elementary, Clarendon, or Lafayette?

Scroll down a bit. SF has some bad schools, but it's not like these three are isolated one offs. There really are a lot of schools in SF scoring a 9 or 10 here. There is a lottery, but (this is just my experience and impression) it's not shot in the dark level lottery. If you research schools and find some of the ones that fly below the radar rather than just listing the "trophy" schools, and create a balanced list, you have a good chance at a good school. No, not a 100% chance and an excellent school, which you can obtain by leaving SF and moving to a good district where a high rent or mortgage payment locks it in for you (hey, I get it - I'll call it what it is, but I do get it).

There are great reasons to leave SF, and the school situation here is hardly perfect. But I disagree with the general notion that public schools in SF are an across the board failure. I'd even disagree that they are a general failure with a few minor bright spots.

I'd call the situation mixed, with a lot of good, a lot of bad and a lot of in the middle. You can have a very good experience with SFUSD.

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

#177

Post by ig1 »

bencoder wrote: post #133
ig1 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if you want to live in central London. You can still easily get a house on that income in London suburbs. For example you can get a 3-bed in Orpington (20 minutes by train to London Bridge) for around £400k which should be comfortably affordable to someone on 70k.

Saving up a 10%, £40k, deposit while renting here is quite tough though, even on 70k. And most devs don't earn that much

Well lets reverse out the numbers.

The median cost of a room in a flatshare in Zone 1/2 is just under £700 month, that's £8.4k/year. Let's assume other costs of living to be £10k/year that gives us a total of £18.4k/year.

Let's say you want to save £40k over 4 years, so 10k/year, that would require a take-home salary of £28.4k/year which implies a pre-tax salary of 37k.

37k should be comfortably achievable for a software developer 1-2 years out of uni.

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

#178

Post by tezzer »

hourislate wrote: post #51

Why would a young professional person want to live anywhere where earning 100k + is not enough when they could live in quite a few other states and earn a 100k + enjoying a cost of living that is 1/3 of what it is in SF or NYC? My wife and I both make well into the 6 figures working at boring corporations enjoying a lifestyle where we would have to earn the equivalent of 7 figures in the Bay Area or NYC. There are a…

I like my job. A lot. So we make sacrifices.

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

#179

Post by coltalk »

I hear this sort of thing a lot and I have trouble reconciling it with my experiences. I live in SF and my total expenses (rent, food, entertainment, etc.) were ~$15,000 in 2016. I don't feel like I live a life of great deprivation.

I get that the article is talking about a family of four, but even if we assume there are no economies of scale, my costs would work out to $60,000 for a family of four.

I also get that I have some privileges: healthy enough to bike rather than drive/take transit, minimal medical expenses, no student loans. But I am surely not the only person in this position.

What's happening here? What are the other major expenses that people have?

(I understand this comment probably comes off as obnoxious, but I'm genuinely trying to understand. This incongruity makes it harder for me to understand/sympathize with others on this issue and I'd like to regain that ability.)

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