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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

#261

Post by kyrra »

_pius wrote: post #206
driverdan wrote: post #83

I considered moving to SF but chose Austin instead. I refuse to live in a state with such a dysfunctional government and ridiculously high taxes. Some of the same reasons I left NY. You can do tech anywhere. You do not need to live in the bay area. If you really like the city pick a place (like Austin) with inexpensive direct flights and go a few times a month. You'll still save money.

I considered moving to SF but chose Austin instead. I refuse to live in a state with such a dysfunctional government ... You do realize you live in Texas, right?

Have you been to Austin? Or Dallas? (I'd personally stay away from Houston and San Antonio). It sounds like you're passing judgement without really experiencing the area.

Texas is a fairly reasonable state when it comes to most of their laws. There has been some controversy around the human-origin that will be taught in schools, but this issue isn't isolated to just Texas. And beyond that, if you really dislike the public schools, you can always go for private or charter schools, or even homeschooling.

Texas government tends to stay out of the way of their people for the most part (at least compared to NY or CA). No state income tax, though, property taxes are fairly high in the cities and suburbs. Gun laws are very lax. It's overall a pretty good state.

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

#262

Post by addlepate »

Roybatty wrote: post #244
_pius wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I considered moving to SF but chose Austin instead. I refuse to live in a state with such a dysfunctional government ... You do realize you live in Texas, right?

You do realize that there are people outside of your little world that aren't leftists/socialists/fascists, right?

Who said anything about leftism? The quote was about dysfunctional government. You do realize that there are dysfunctional governments outside of leftism/socialism/fascism, right?

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

#263

Post by svachalek »

noname123 wrote: post #183
bherms wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Seems to me the most difficult is saving 5x between 30-40, especially at that age when a lot of folks get married, have kids and purchase property. How do you save up to 5x - which for a household income of $100,000/yr is half a million dollar; do you really get a lot of tax breaks on mortgages, kids and filing jointly? Also, at the current rate of US inflation; by the time I retire which is in about 40 years, $30K/y…

All of the classic planning advice is based on about a century of economic history, most of that time period having little resemblance to today and things are only getting weirder, faster. Inflation is increasing (and increasingly under-reported), investment returns just--to put it bluntly--suck, social safety nets are falling apart, and we're expected to work for much longer in a world where age and experience don't count for much anymore.

In short I don't think retirement is something you can "plan" for if it's more than 20 years out or so. It's more like disaster preparation. Save as much as possible, live as far below your means as you can handle, keep your skills valuable. Keep your money diversified and expect your returns to just about keep up with the real and honest cost of living increases until the world economy feels like taking a dramatic shift for the better. We're still "unwinding" from all the previous crises so I don't foresee that happening anytime soon.

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

#264

Post by tsotha »

_pius wrote: post #206
driverdan wrote: post #83

I considered moving to SF but chose Austin instead. I refuse to live in a state with such a dysfunctional government and ridiculously high taxes. Some of the same reasons I left NY. You can do tech anywhere. You do not need to live in the bay area. If you really like the city pick a place (like Austin) with inexpensive direct flights and go a few times a month. You'll still save money.

I considered moving to SF but chose Austin instead. I refuse to live in a state with such a dysfunctional government ... You do realize you live in Texas, right?

Yeah, the state with the surplus. The weather in Texas isn't anything to write home about, but in every way that matters it's a more competently run state.

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

#265

Post by stephencanon »

erohead wrote: post #204
bherms wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate that everyone calls the weather here amazing. Being cold all but maybe 30-40 days a year is not incredible weather, especially factoring in fog.

Palo Alto is the answer to the weather. Consistently awesome compared to the city.

Yup. South of Palo Alto it gets too hot in the summer. Farther north it gets foggy and cold too often. Palo Alto and Menlo Park have it just right.

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

#266

Post by geebee »

run4yourlives wrote: post #170
kafkaesque wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I tried that too, but then I discovered people will sleep in unlocked cars.

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

#267

Post by cema »

georgeorwell wrote: post #258
paulhauggis wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need to lighten up..I bet you're a blast at parties.

It makes me angry when privileged people don't demonstrate compassion. I have trouble demonstrating compassion for them. You're right, I don't have fun at parties full of such people, and I've been to a few. But you're also right that I need to lighten up. Attacking people out of the blue like I just did is not good for one's health, and it has little positive effect on the world. I have pretty poor social skills.

  It makes me angry when privileged people don't demonstrate compassion.
OK, but where do you see a lack of compassion? I think you read too much into the "zombie" reference.

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

#268

Post by yummies »

xradionut wrote: post #102
driverdan wrote: post #83

I considered moving to SF but chose Austin instead. I refuse to live in a state with such a dysfunctional government and ridiculously high taxes. Some of the same reasons I left NY. You can do tech anywhere. You do not need to live in the bay area. If you really like the city pick a place (like Austin) with inexpensive direct flights and go a few times a month. You'll still save money.

Here in Texas we have dysfunctional government and ridiculously shitty services.

No government pleases everyone and no government is perfect. However, from someone who has been a citizen of both Austin, San Francisco, and other cities, Texas/Austin, despite some shortcomings, is to me clearly the less dysfunctional government. I'd be interested to hear from anyone who has been citizens of both cities and honestly thinks otherwise.

I'm not saying Austin is better than San Francisco or anything super subjective like that, but only the mildly subjective assertion that the government is less dysfunctional in Austin, compared to SF.

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

#269

Post by neilk »

run4yourlives wrote: post #225
kjackson2012 wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have very close friends in Vancouver, and over the last 20 years, I've been to there often, throughout all parts of the season. I'm fairly familiar with it. If I could retire in Vancouver I would because it's a nice, quiet, slow-paced town. Even at the height of work hours, there is very little traffic downtown. It doesn't have the same flair that a city like SF has. SF has major events throughout the year. It has…

You are essentially saying SF is bigger than Vancouver, which it is. Of course there is more of everything in SF. Have you ever lived on the East Coast though? The differences between the actually "culture" is dramatic. It seems though that most of the people objecting to my comment only have experience on the west coast, and therefore see the differences in the cities instead of how - in reality - how similar they a…

Nope - San Francisco is not much bigger. San Francisco has 800K people. Vancouver has 600K.

(It is true that there are much more people in Bay Area versus the greater Vancouver area.)

I've lived in both cities. Vancouver is basically the San Francisco of Canada. But it lacks the defiantly weird spirit of San Francisco. The insane wealth that's pumped through the city from nearby tech zillionaires does play a role, because it gives 20-year-olds really high incomes, even though they spend a lot of it on rent. But in NYC or Toronto people would be spending that money on status possessions, not constructing snail-cars that shoot fire.

And everyone having an iPhone? That was 2007 in the Bay Area.

Vancouver does have virtues of its own. The OP talks about SF's culture of fitness, but I did not notice that so much -- it's nothing compared to Vancouver. People in Vancouver have excellent work-life balance. They put in a decent effort at work, more or less 9-5, but do two different sports in their spare time. People in Vancouver look like they're 25 when they're 35. People in SF stay mentally young for longer, but the job stress tends to wear down on them. When I moved from Vancouver to SF I noticed how tired everybody looked.

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