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What I wish I knew before moving to San Francisco

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Re: What I wish I knew before moving to San Francisco

#481

Post by Spooky23 »

greghinch wrote: post #447
JoshTriplett wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try http://networthify.com/calculator/earlyretirement for a fairly straightforward, income-independent answer to that question. Tell it your annual income and expenses, and it'll tell you when you can retire. Adjust the numbers and your retirement date changes. (The defaults for "return on investment" and "withdrawal rate" work pretty well.)

Whenever I see one of these retirement calculators I don't understand how people save enough to actually retire. Are most people really socking away 25%+ of their gross income every year?? I certainly enjoy motorcycles and exotic travel far too much for that to ever become a reality (not to mention pay rent in the Bay Area and try to maintain an organic/local-sourced diet which costs about double a typical grocery st…

You don't blow your money on expensive vacations and new cars. Don't pay retail.

My wife and I are in our mid 30's, put away about 15% of our income and have defined benefit pensions that we contribute 7% into.

It's totally doable. Last year we spent two weeks in Hilton Head and paid about $80/night, we drove from New York to save about 80% vs. flights/car rental. We live in the city we work in and I commute via bus.

It's also totally worth it. We're living we'll now, and will be able to retire in our late 50's with a paid off house. I will not be the guy in his mid 60s trying to hang on to his job.

Re: What I wish I knew before moving to San Francisco

#482

Post by caublestone »

I live in the Tenderloin, and it's not that bad. Sure there are a lot of homeless people and drug addicts in the area . As a 24 y/o white male, I have not felt threatened by any of the "sketchy" people here. In fact, most here are very polite saying "excuse me", "be careful with leaving your phone out", and "do you need help with that?". San Francisco is just a friendly place in general. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_cities_by_crime_r...

Basically the tenderloin is the ugly model. Yeah it's the worst model but still a model. And since the price is half of anywhere else in the city, it's worth it.

Re: What I wish I knew before moving to San Francisco

#483

Post by hkmurakami »

ww520 wrote: post #413
HockeyPlayer wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I thought the typical withdraw rate is 4% to maintain a portfolio indefinitely.

That's probably pre-financial crisis portfolio returns.

Re: What I wish I knew before moving to San Francisco

#484

Post by Spooky23 »

driverdan wrote: post #73
petercooper wrote: post #61

Earlier 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.

NY is a funny animal when it comes to roads. Upstate, the thruway, state highways, and interstates are pretty good. The State and Feds fund this.

County roads often suck because the counties are broke for a variety of reasons. City streets are awful because the state doesn't provide any aid -- although "towns" (some of which are bigger than cities) do.

The other thing is related to NY being ahead of the curve on highway construction. Many of the "expressways" and "parkways" in the NYC metro area are ineligible for federal highway funds because they connect toll bridges, but don't receive any toll money.

Massachusetts has a road system designed by masochists who didn't drive. No amount of money could fix it.

Re: What I wish I knew before moving to San Francisco

#485

Post by mindcrime »

aliston wrote: post #160
jasonshen wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You CAN do tech anywhere, just as you CAN be a banker outside of NYC or an actor outside of LA. Doesn't mean it's the most efficient or effective way. I have lots of respect for people who choose to live in other parts of the world but to suggest that there's not much difference between living in SF or Austin for someone interested in starting or working for a successful technology firm is inaccurate. I don't count f…

^This. I've lived in both SF and Austin. Austin is a bad ass city. In terms of quality of life, as a young and single male, it is a complete and total no brainer that Austin is better than SF. Better nightlife, more attractive women, cheaper cost of living, less bums, more sunlight, better weather (if you prefer hot to cold), better urban/outdoor balance... BUT, in terms of the startup scene, SF is in another league.…

Austin has some successful startups, but they seem to be largely enterprise focused.

And? Is that supposed to be bad or something? I don't know about you, but I find consumer webapp startups to be dead boring. Who cares about building yet another way for people to share pictures of cats doing stupid shit, or whatever? At least with enterprise software, you're doing something that's actually improving someone's productivity, helping other businesses grow and prosper, etc.

Disclaimer: I am the founder of a (non-SF based) enterprise focused startup. So, yeah, I'm a little bit biased. :-)

Re: What I wish I knew before moving to San Francisco

#486

Post by tlrobinson »

beatpanda wrote: post #314
kevingadd wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where in San Francisco? It's my understanding that rent continues to go up in basically every part of the city, and it's even incredibly expensive outside the city.

No. The rent on new leases is going up, due to low supply and high demand, but also extremely low turnover. So people generally look for rooms, not full apartments. In this way, housing is regulated in SF through social factors on the low end (i.e. whether your personality and your interests bring something positive to a household), and price on the high end. I pay $680 a month for my room in the heart of the Mission…

How old are you?

I lived on roughly the same salary the first year I lived in SF. I was 24 at the time, and it was fine because I was working non-stop and didn't have much of a life, but I wouldn't want to do it again for long periods of time.

Re: What I wish I knew before moving to San Francisco

#487

Post by DaveInTucson »

jseliger wrote: post #434
aliston wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious question -- did you have trouble adjusting to the lack of sunshine?

I've lived in Bellevue, WA, then Worcester, MA, then Seattle, WA, then Tucson, AZ, then New York, NY, and I've never had a problem with sun or its lack. Different people react differently, however, and I still a) went running most days, and b) really like the cultural / lifestyle aspects of living in cities. I prefer the Seattle experience of relatively temperate weather, year-round, to the Tucson experience of insan…

> the Tucson experience of insane heat for about five months of the year.

I've got to object to this. Yeah, June and July (and to a lesser extent August) are pretty intense, but I'd hardly characterize the rest of the summer heat as "insane".

> I still a) went running most days,

I suppose this could be an issue. Especially during the summer rainy season (usually July-early September) it's still pretty hot and the humidity means it doesn't much cool off at night, which makes strenuous outdoor activity harder even if you do it at the coolest part of the day.

Re: What I wish I knew before moving to San Francisco

#488

Post by jessedhillon »

mattw wrote: post #477
jessedhillon wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It make no sense for most people to pay off their house aggressively. Refinance periodically if you want to lower your payments, but blowing a lump sum on your mortgage principal over a compressed time period is almost always more expensive in opportunity costs. Quick question: I put $100k in your pocket right now. Would your life be more improved if your mortgage principal was reduced by $100k, or if you went and di…

If you completely ignore risk then what you say is true (especially with interest rates so ridiculously low). However, if we're talking about improving lives, I personally find value in eliminating debt (including the mortgage) as quickly as possible because such obligations represent risk. I could apply all these extra mortgage payments to other things (rental property, stock market, etc.), but then I stand a varyin…

If you have a fixed-rate mortgage with a monthly payment at a comfortable level, then the mortgage should represent a very low source of risk. Having 12~18 months of payments in the bank saved up for a rainy 1.5 years is a great plan to mitigate that.

The idea of personal comfort is interesting, I think people should attempt to quantify the value of being mentally released of debt burden -- maybe for some there is very high value in it. For me personally, I have always been comfortable with the idea of strategic debt as a way to advance certain goals.

I think what your approach neglects is the fact that being conservative is risky as well. In the last five years, of course, it would be hard to make that case. But unless you die soon, there will definitely be times where you will be left behind -- relative to your economic peers -- if you don't finance your activities externally.

Re: What I wish I knew before moving to San Francisco

#490

Post by bunderbunder »

jseliger wrote: post #437
starpilot wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone forgets Chicago. In the US, it's the most important financial center outside of Manhattan and is the third place city in number of Michelin starred restaurants (fewer than SF; Seattle has none). Boeing moved their corporate HQ there from Seattle because of its financial prominence. It has a world class university in U. Chicago and excellent bus/rail transit across the metro area. But the Chicago area is seri…

What's Chicago known for these days? When I think of Seattle, I think of music (grunge was big, and today there's still a lot of it), Amazon, Microsoft, tech stuff, and arts. When I think of SF I think of free-spirits, the 60s, and startups. When I think of New York I think of movies, finance, artists (especially writers), publishing, and fashion. When I think of Chicago, I think of. . . corruption? Commodities marke…

As a place to live, in my opinion the biggest thing that Chicago has over other cities I've spent significant time in is green space. The city's motto is Urbs in Horto, and it shows. Virtually the entire lake shore is one big park, outside of downtown most the area along the river is also park land, there are forest preserves within city limits, and other significantly-sized parks and playgrounds are scattered all across the city. I suspect that it be quite hard to find a spot in the city that isn't within walking distance of at least one public baseball diamond or soccer field. Even non-park areas are greener, on account of more (and bigger) trees lining the residential streets.

Architecture would be another nice feature; the city has definitely benefited from being the home of many of the USA's most influential architects.

In summer the city's absolutely rotten with street festivals, which is also pretty fantastic.

So no, nothing that would be particularly notable to a non-resident. But you can't spend an afternoon outside reading a book under a social media startup or an up-and-coming fashion designer.

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