I was reading up on Catania (the city from which he hails) and it looks like a beautiful place - very different from SF, but still having a large number of tech companies.
The nearby town of Taormina is awesome.
San Francisco
21–30 of 267 posts
Re: San Francisco
#22Is it a common experience that, as a single person in SF, you'd make $100K and end the year without any money saved? I'm not asking with any judgment or critique implied. I'm genuinely curious if that's normal in SF.
I think this is normal everywhere in the US. I expect this has little to do with SF and more to do with the fact that many people all over the country, regardless of income level, are living far beyond their means and lack the discipline to make saving a priority; the US average personal savings rate has fallen to 2.5%. But what percentage buys cable tv, smartphones with data plans, auto loans for more car than they needed, etc?
Re: San Francisco
#23Very happy he enjoyed the city! Next time he's in town, I'll be sure I'm following his twitter to remain informed. I'd love to buy him a drink. While there is a lot of crappiness in the city, it really is a melting pot (not as much as 10-20 years ago of course) of motivated, friendly people.
What forces do you see bringing together SF as a melting pot? I've only spent a small amount of time there, and with a very small subset of people, but my experience has been that there is a large group of people from very similar backgrounds (20-something from Stanford/MIT/CMU in the tech industry).
I absolutely agree about the motivated, friendly people part. There's definitely a "pay it forward" culture in the tech community which you can feel in the atmosphere.
Re: San Francisco
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes. Taxes are pretty high, so making $100k w/ benefits, you take home roughly $63k/yr. Then factor in rent and utilities: 1br ($2500+/mo), 2br w/ roomie ($1800+/mo), 3br w/roomies ($1500/mo). So let's assume 2br. You walk away with around $40k/yr. Then take out transport, cell phone, random monthly bills like student loans, etc and you're down to $28k disposable. Take out food and random living expenses and you don'…
28k for food and random living expenses is a lot of money unless you are eating out for every meal; that's more that some people's entire paycheck (like grad students.) If you can't make room for savings in there, it definitely shows a lack of priorities.
Well some people's priorities might involve having an active social life, dressing well, paying for entertainment, etc... all of which will be expensive.
It's not a "lack" of priorities, it's just a different set of them.
Re: San Francisco
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can certainly save money if you make that much living in sf. Your take home would be about 65k. A very nice apartment shared with one roommate should not cost more than 2k a month, leaving you with 40k for food, entertainment, and travel. If you can't save some of this that is a comment on your priorities, not the fundamental difficulty of living in sf.
Is your estimate of 65 including state (10%) and city (1.5%) taxes?
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Re: San Francisco
#26What a sweet and good-natured write-up. It's not cynical, and you can feel a positive outlook on life and people throughout. It's an outlook that's probably very helpful in being productive and happy generally.
Re: San Francisco
#27I enjoyed reading this as I'm planning on visiting CA next summer with my wife and son. I wanted to look at Palo Alto etc and consider emigrating there. If he and the other commenters on this thread are right and the schools suck, there's not a lot of families and the cost of living is really that high, it probably won't be a good idea.
This is very specifically about the San Francisco city area. The peninsular and south bay are much more suburban and family friendly.
Palo Alto isn't a lot cheaper that San Francisco it has a reputation as being much more family friendly and has some good schools. Also, Mountain View, Los Altos, Sunny Vale, Santa Clara are all more affordable and family friendly than San Francisco.
Disclaimer: I'm a single guy with no kids, so what would I know?
Re: San Francisco
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not a great place for raising a family: expensive, bad schools, disfunctional government, drugs on streets, and lots of crazies[1]. Pretty much everyone I have ever know who had kids in SF moved away within a few years. The demographics always reminded me of China where you did not see as many girls because of the one child policy. In SF children of both sexes (10% of population) are just missing: Persons under 18 (2…
The census citation is pretty incredible indeed... About schools, that's something you could never tell just looking at the city that seems very civilized, and this usually correlates with quality of schools. I hope there will be efforts to fix that in the future.
I hope they fix the school situation, but its unlikely.
There's a reason why SF is listed as one of the least well run cities in the world.
Re: San Francisco
#29I enjoyed reading this as I'm planning on visiting CA next summer with my wife and son. I wanted to look at Palo Alto etc and consider emigrating there. If he and the other commenters on this thread are right and the schools suck, there's not a lot of families and the cost of living is really that high, it probably won't be a good idea.
The schools in Palo Alto itself are very good. Palo Alto HS has an excellent reputation amongst people I know. It's a bit of a pressure cooker, as everyone in the school has parents in the tech industry who care about education, but the quality of teaching is great.
The cost of living is another matter. A very basic starter home will in Palo Alto will run $1-2 million. Not unattainable for an engineer, but it will require some sacrifices.
Re: San Francisco
#30Sounds like a guided tour with no real exploration of the city.