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Cost of Living

news.ycombinator.com

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Cost of Living

#1

Post by jdavid »

My is gearing up to submit to the ycombinator winter round, and we are having a small amount of trouble to see how to fit 4 months into 5000 per person? Especially when 2 of the guys are married.

this is the budget i have for the south bay area:

 housing         600	
 internet         50	
 electricity     100	
 food           1050	35$ per day
 water            40	
 entertainment   100	

 cost            1940
how much should we budget per person? right now we have 2 single guys on the team, and 2 newly married guys, that would either want to bring their wives with, or they would need to visit often.

any advice would be great to see how this would work, but right now it seems like we would need money just to win ycombinator, which for those of us in Milwaukee, the VCs/ Angels alone might be worth it.

Re: Cost of Living

#5

Post by spoonyg »

I live in the Bay Area, and those #'s look pretty close to me for a minimum, penny-pinching baseline. When it comes down to it, you can almost forget about the money ycomb is offering. The money is NOTHING. It is all about the contacts and guidance, which is priceless.

Re: Cost of Living

#6

Post by DanielBMarkham »

Living expenses are the reason I'm not applying. Unless you somehow lose intelligence and execution ability when you get married and have kids, the structure doesn't make sense to me. It seems to be geared towards single, foot-loose folks. As somebody who's put long hours in on multiple technology projects, I don't feel that having a higher overhead translates to being a worse risk. After all, what are we talking about here? The difference between 5 and 10K, or something like that? Being hungry is great. Having your wife call you every day to tell you the house is getting repossessed is counter-productive.

I agree that the knowledge and contacts are what you guys should be going for. Running on savings and forgetting about the money is the only strategy I can figure that works for us "high maintenance" entrepreneurs. If I apply, I'll just make sure I have money in savings to run for six months or so first.

Re: Cost of Living

#7

Post by rrival »

"I'll keep it short and sweet -- Family. Religion. Friendship. These are the three demons you must slay if you wish to succeed in business." - Mr. Burns

Re: Cost of Living

#8

Post by tirrellp »

spoonyg wrote: post #5

I live in the Bay Area, and those #'s look pretty close to me for a minimum, penny-pinching baseline. When it comes down to it, you can almost forget about the money ycomb is offering. The money is NOTHING. It is all about the contacts and guidance, which is priceless.

I agree with that sentiment. I am married, and I have a child. My wife and child will not be coming with me to the Bay area if I am accepted. I will be living in a cardboard box and eating ramen in the Valley, but the necessary financial arrangements have been made to ensure that my son will continue his current (private) school, the bills will be paid at home, and life will continue more or less as normal for the 3+ months I am away.

It comes down to how badly you want the experience. Look at it this way: Grad school at Stanford is ~40k/year, not including living expenses. Making whatever sacrifices necessary to experience ycombinator should be significantly less, but the experience and contacts most likely will dwarf what you are most likely to gain from a top tier graduate program in Engineering. Is it worth the investment? I can't speak for anyone but myself when I say "Absolutely."

Re: Cost of Living

#10

Post by jey »

Entertainment should come out of your own pockets. We just paid for food and housing out of our YC funds, in addition to miscellaneous expenses for incorporation and etc.
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