are those rental prices really per quarter? if so they're making central London look exorbitant, I have friends paying that per month for studio flats!
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What I wish I knew before moving to San Francisco
161–170 of 573 posts
Re: What I wish I knew before moving to San Francisco
#162> I have no idea how anyone who isn’t working in a high tech role that pays an above average salary can live here. I wondered that too. Anyone care to share how to get by with a non-tech salary in the bay area?
Rent control. A lot of people are living/stuck in apartments and paying much, much less in rent. The high rent only applies to new people moving in, and I'd suspect that less new non-tech people are moving in these days.
Re: What I wish I knew before moving to San Francisco
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just curious, in your opinion, what should be the net worth target for people making regular tech income in their 30's, 40's and 50's if they want to eek out comfortable living in retirement, inflation-adjusted?
Not my opinion, but I once read somewhere that you should aim for a savings (+investments) of 1x salary by 30, 5x by 40, 10+x by 50.
So someone with 50k/yr of expenses should be making 100k, 250k, and 500k respectively?
Re: What I wish I knew before moving to San Francisco
#164In my opinion the high cost of living kills everything else on that list. I'd much rather have a comfortable living, travel the world and be optimistic that i will have no problems buying a nice house for me and my spouse/family if i need to/should i want to. I don't really see this possible based on what i hear from a couple of friends living and working there. Both consumed by their tech jobs, some cool things to d…
Just curious, in your opinion, what should be the net worth target for people making regular tech income in their 30's, 40's and 50's if they want to eek out comfortable living in retirement, inflation-adjusted?
You can conservatively spend 3% of a lump sum each year and the earnings will keep up with inflation. So if you had $1m in savings, you could spend $30k/year in today's dollars forever (and still have $1m at the end).
If you want to spend down the principal, the calculation becomes more complex and you need to use software rather than a rule of thumb.
Re: What I wish I knew before moving to San Francisco
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
LA has some of the worst road surfaces I've seen anywhere , even on the freeways. On the flip side, though, I suspect the US has more than 5x the roads despite only having 5x our population.
Have you ever been to the northeast? NY and MA have far worse roads.
Whenever I cross the boarder from NJ or Maryland or Ohio into PA, I suddenly feel like I'm off roading. PA roads are so garbage.
Re: What I wish I knew before moving to San Francisco
#166One of the biggest shocks to me when moving to the Bay Area is the difference in social norms and acceptable behavior. I grew up in Texas and went to college on the east coast. For the first few months after moving out here I was in awe by some of the things people would do and thought were acceptable. In fact I'm still in shock by many of these things but used to them by now. From some of the things I've seen manage…
I found that people from the west coast, esp. LA and SF are more happy-go-lucky types - meaning that if you were to meet a girl at a party or a new bro, the person of interest might be very enthusiastic or affectionate - "leading on" that there's specific chemistry between you or that person; when in fact that person is just very spontaneous, in the sense of being open and fun in any social situation. This is a bit different from the Northeast Coast frigid weather which causes most people to be irritated and singular-minded on roads/public transports, but causes people to find "cuddle-buddies" during the winter; once you make a friend, that friend becomes a best friend.
I used to be upset about this. But now I'm more understanding that for some people, they don't necessarily value their individual friendships as they value their own belonging/membership in a clique (SF vegan-foodie who works in SOMA startup who rides single-fixed gear) and also the necessity of forging temporary social/professional alliances in an transient yuppie community where most people moved to for professional advancement (marketing guys from frattier backgrounds fraternizing with engineers with more diverse backgrounds to advance everyone's careers).
Re: What I wish I knew before moving to San Francisco
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
You lost credibility with me by repeated use of the vulgar "San Fran". It's THE CITY. :)
Yes, no one from the Bay Area refers to San Francisco as "San Fran". Even worse is when people refer to it as "Frisco". It's either SF or "The City".
Only _some_ people from the city proper frown upon "San Fran", frisco, etc. Most people don't care and more over people that I know from elsewhere in the Bay area do some times call it San Fran or Frisco, if only to annoy people who get annoyed by the monikers.
I couldn't care less what people call it. When I lived in towns closer to San Jose, 'San Jose' was the reference 'city'.
Re: What I wish I knew before moving to San Francisco
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
You lost credibility with me by repeated use of the vulgar "San Fran". It's THE CITY. :)
Yes, no one from the Bay Area refers to San Francisco as "San Fran". Even worse is when people refer to it as "Frisco". It's either SF or "The City".
The only people who seem to get annoyed with the term "San Fran" and Frisco are either transplants or hipsters(which are usually transplants to begin with). Some of the old schoolers and hip hop community still use the term Frisco.
Re: What I wish I knew before moving to San Francisco
#169This seems more of a "West Coast vs. East Coast" article than it is a "San Fran" article. For the most part, the author is highlighting the differences that anybody living on the East Coast will experience in moving to one of the western coastal cities, save perhaps LA, which as everyone already knows is its own little planet. Most of these "hints" hold true for San Diego, San Fran, Portland, Seattle and Vancouver. T…
I'm sorry, I just don't think these points are true for the other cities you mention. As a Seattle inhabitant, the descriptions of San Francisco-specific weather, rent, cost of living, costumes, events, transients, canine-friendliness, fog, commuting, and other things just do not apply here. Of the first few things mentioned, only the strong neighborhood identity is something we share.
Actually, a lot of it is pretty similar, especially if coming from the east coast.
* Weather - replace fog with overcast/drizzle.
* Rent & Cost of living - Seattle is not cheap by any means, and rent and house prices are really steep until you get quite far from the city.
* Canine-friendliness - Definitely a west coast thing, there are tons of dogs in Seattle, dog parks, and companies that allow dogs at work.
* Commuting and public transit - Commuting is bad here, I-5 and its interchanges with I-90 and WA-520 are pathetic. On top of that, native Seattleites are terrible drivers - driving below the speed limit in the left lanes, blindly changing lanes, and don't know how to use a 4-way stop. Then there is the layout of Seattle, with bad east-west travel and the ongoing road construction.
Coming from not the west coast, San Fran, Portland, and Seattle do have some similarities - and aptly described as 'west coast' feel.
Re: What I wish I knew before moving to San Francisco
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's more a west coast thing. I grew up in Toronto and I can tell you the same thing shocked me about moving to Vancouver. Crackheads/street people don't like to freeze, so they move to the warmth is. I'd imagine this is as true in the US as it is in Canada.
This is anecdotal, so I guess you can take it with a grain of salt. But as someone from Vancouver who has visited SF quite a bit, SF always seemed to have more homelessness (it does have a warmer climate than Van) and more parts that smelled really bad. I might be desensitised to it already, though. Also, throughout my time living in Vancouver, I've never witnessed a robbery/theft/crime, whereas visiting SF last mont…
I lived downtown in Vancouver for 5 years - I think I had my car broken into about 200 times, no exaggeration. It got so bad I just left the damn thing open.
Everything in the US is basically X 10, so you have to allow for that in the similarities.