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Re: San Francisco

#121

Post by veemjeem »

usaphp wrote: post #117
ryanSrich wrote: post #80

Eh. They can keep it. • Average engineering salary in sf: 116K / year [1] • Average rent for a one bedroom: $2,700 / month [2] After taxes you're coming in around 72k / year - 32k / year for rent You'll have roughly 40k to play with. That may sound like a lot but factor in food, health care, travel, energy, internet, phone, and numerous miscellaneous expenses and you'll be hard pressed to save anything over 10k a yea…

Are you sure that the average rent for 1 bedroom is $2,700? I lived on Market street in a studio apartment with a pool and a gym in our building and I paid only $1500, that was couple years ago tho, but I dont think that the average rent is $2,700...sorry

I think you need to look around again. Prices have increased dramatically over the last two years. I have friends who landed a cheap place in SOMA for $3600. They were the ones who used the word "cheap". If you glance at craigslist, the majority of the listings are above $3k. All the cheap apartments are outside of SF-proper.

Re: San Francisco

#122

Post by ryanSrich »

usaphp wrote: post #117
ryanSrich wrote: post #80

Eh. They can keep it. • Average engineering salary in sf: 116K / year [1] • Average rent for a one bedroom: $2,700 / month [2] After taxes you're coming in around 72k / year - 32k / year for rent You'll have roughly 40k to play with. That may sound like a lot but factor in food, health care, travel, energy, internet, phone, and numerous miscellaneous expenses and you'll be hard pressed to save anything over 10k a yea…

Are you sure that the average rent for 1 bedroom is $2,700? I lived on Market street in a studio apartment with a pool and a gym in our building and I paid only $1500, that was couple years ago tho, but I dont think that the average rent is $2,700...sorry

From the company who did the estimates:

> "is based on averaging all of the data points from each neighborhood, not the average prices of the neighborhoods."

Here's the application they're using --> https://www.zumper.com/sf

1.) http://sfist.com/2013/03/07/map_average_rent_for_1br_in_san_...

Re: San Francisco

#123

Post by nilkn »

jamesaguilar wrote: post #6
charliepark wrote: post #3

Is 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.

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.

For comparison, my roommate and I in Houston pay $1950/month for our apartment (or $975/person). 1300 sq ft, brand new hardwood floor, granite countertops, stainless steel appliances, huge windows, rain showers, full-sized washer/dryer in-unit, concierge service, etc. I also walk to work; it takes me about 5 minutes.

So we're paying almost exactly half what the rent would be in SF, assuming the apartment you had in mind is of the same quality. We individually make a lot more than half the wage we'd get if we went to SF, though.

Re: San Francisco

#124

Post by liveinoakland »

usaphp wrote: post #117
ryanSrich wrote: post #80

Eh. They can keep it. • Average engineering salary in sf: 116K / year [1] • Average rent for a one bedroom: $2,700 / month [2] After taxes you're coming in around 72k / year - 32k / year for rent You'll have roughly 40k to play with. That may sound like a lot but factor in food, health care, travel, energy, internet, phone, and numerous miscellaneous expenses and you'll be hard pressed to save anything over 10k a yea…

Are you sure that the average rent for 1 bedroom is $2,700? I lived on Market street in a studio apartment with a pool and a gym in our building and I paid only $1500, that was couple years ago tho, but I dont think that the average rent is $2,700...sorry

key phrase: "couple years ago"

welcome to rent increase 30% in last two years... SF is a disaster and incomes aren't rising to keep up with this. these "high" tech worker salaries assume an outdated rental market.

Re: San Francisco

#125

Post by iyulaev »

ryandrake wrote: post #66
michael_miller wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 re…

Not to nit-pick, but I'm curious about how a $1MM starter home is attainable for an engineer. For someone making let's say around $100,000/yr, your mortgage payment (assuming 4.5% is $5,000) is going to be at least 50% of your gross salary. That's a lot of sacrifice. The common formula is that you really don't want your total mortgage payment to exceed 28% of your gross income: $5,000 * 12 / 0.28 = ~ $214,000/yr sala…

2 engineers at 100k/yr gets you right to the figure you mentioned. $200K down payment is rough but not nearly impossible given the figure in the first sentence and willingness to maintain a college-ish lifestyle for a few years.

Re: San Francisco

#126

Post by paul9290 »

skwirl wrote: post #104
lobotryas wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are forgetting the weather. DC winters: cold, snow, sometimes blizzard, have to scrape your car free from ice if you don't have indoor parking. SF winters: sometimes you have to put in a jacket and sometimes it rains. That's it. This is just one example of many. It's pointless to compare two cities on rent and cost of living alone. Now, if the extra 11k is worth the winter challenges to you then I'm happy. Person…

I suppose this outlook is related to where you grew up. To someone from the north, referring to DC as cold and snowy is preposterous. They had one bad year with snowfall a few years ago, but other than that winter they rarely even crack 10" in recent years, and even that usually comes over only a couple of days during infrequent storms. Their mean temperature is above freezing every month of the year.

On average in and around DC we see a blizzard every six years.

The last awesome snow filled winter we had was the 2009 to 2010 season. We accumulated up to 80 inches of snow; fun stuff!

San Fran weather is awesome, the amount of homelessness makes me sad though!

Re: San Francisco

#127

Post by wpietri »

ef4 wrote: post #94

Regarding the hotel gym: the most likely reason you couldn't find any free weights is America's penchant for lawsuits. The hotel's lawyers and/or insurance company probably insists on less "dangerous" fitness equipment.

Do you have some specific citation? I've seen plenty of hotel gyms with free weights. And any real gym has them, even though they face similar liability concerns.

I can think of a number of other reasons that hotels would avoid free weights. Fitness machines need less tidying, are harder to steal, are more friendly to novices, and look fancier to people looking at the hotel brochure.

Re: San Francisco

#128

Post by rosser »

philsnow wrote: post #97
lobotryas wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are forgetting the weather. DC winters: cold, snow, sometimes blizzard, have to scrape your car free from ice if you don't have indoor parking. SF winters: sometimes you have to put in a jacket and sometimes it rains. That's it. This is just one example of many. It's pointless to compare two cities on rent and cost of living alone. Now, if the extra 11k is worth the winter challenges to you then I'm happy. Person…

in SF, summer is often colder than winter. I've never lived in DC, but - presence of good chinese food - weather (even though I love winter weather, DC summers would not be worth it) - jobs (which companies have large presences in SF vs DC-area) all conspire to make me completely incurious as to whether DC is "$11k/year" nicer than SF.

Exactly. SF is expensive, but it's going to take a hell of a lot more than ~$1k/month disposable income for me to give up what that amount buys me in quality of life — for, admittedly, my definitions of "quality of life"; YM, as always, MV.

Re: San Francisco

#129

Post by justanother »

lobotryas wrote: post #88
ryanSrich wrote: post #80

Eh. They can keep it. • Average engineering salary in sf: 116K / year [1] • Average rent for a one bedroom: $2,700 / month [2] After taxes you're coming in around 72k / year - 32k / year for rent You'll have roughly 40k to play with. That may sound like a lot but factor in food, health care, travel, energy, internet, phone, and numerous miscellaneous expenses and you'll be hard pressed to save anything over 10k a yea…

You are forgetting the weather. DC winters: cold, snow, sometimes blizzard, have to scrape your car free from ice if you don't have indoor parking. SF winters: sometimes you have to put in a jacket and sometimes it rains. That's it. This is just one example of many. It's pointless to compare two cities on rent and cost of living alone. Now, if the extra 11k is worth the winter challenges to you then I'm happy. Person…

To add something to this discussion: On my South Florida tropical island, rent is 1500-1900 per month, depending on whether you live on a canal, or waterfront (nevermind living on dry land, which is much, much more reasonable). For most of a decade, I've telecommuted and received, well, let's round it down to the San Francisco 119K per year, and yes that's W2, and paid 22.8K/year a month for rent. Snow? Ice? haven't seen them in years. Jackets? Surely you jest, I shiver at 73 degrees.

My point isn't that San Francisco is worse than this or that, but that every day I read that it is the center of the universe, and recruiters used to tell me "but you _have_ to be here, this is the place to _be_" which is terribly unconvincing for persons of my particular persuasion, nevermind that I don't care for wading through bums and traffic.

TL;DR it's a huge universe, and you don't have to put up with California to develop software in it.

Re: San Francisco

#130

Post by wpietri »

ryandrake wrote: post #66
michael_miller wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 re…

Not to nit-pick, but I'm curious about how a $1MM starter home is attainable for an engineer. For someone making let's say around $100,000/yr, your mortgage payment (assuming 4.5% is $5,000) is going to be at least 50% of your gross salary. That's a lot of sacrifice. The common formula is that you really don't want your total mortgage payment to exceed 28% of your gross income: $5,000 * 12 / 0.28 = ~ $214,000/yr sala…

The norm is that both parents work, which changes the math substantially.
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