I'm not in the bay area, but I think I could blow my entire income. Some top floor luxury apartments are north of $5000 a month (even for 1 bedroom, I've seen 3 bedroom ones north of $7,000). Add in a top end Tesla with insurance and parking is another $2500 a month. That's $90,000 a year right there. Throw in expensive groceries, eating out every day, first class travel, 5 star hotels and it'd be pretty easy.
In this case, the SF bay area fellow I know works five days a week for a landscape/gardening company and pays taxes on that income. ($25/hour cash is additional off-the-books income.) And, contrary to your research, California has a $10,000 incentive.
Though you're right about the down payment, so let's assume it will be a used Tesla and therefore cheaper. And you're right about the relative comparison point. But these were rough numbers, remember, and not intended to be a detailed argument as much as a refutation of the impossible "to afford" claim above.
I think the point is: his salary while not high by SF was high in nearly any other location in the US. In any other location, he and his family could live how they wanted. In any other location, have a $40,000 car instead of a $10,000 or less car is a perfectly reasonable. In any other location, eating out more than once a month would be perfectly reasonable. Having a expensive hobby racing cars is reasonable, just not in SF.
The point of the article wasn't that I am poor you should feel sad for me. The point was: look the Bay Area is so expensive that it is impossible to afford unless you are making an extremely high salary. A good salary isn't enough, a high salary isn't enough, it has to be extreme otherwise you will need to make life style sacrifices to live in the Bay Area.
I think there are people that simply cannot afford to go lower than 400k if you’re looking in the Bay Area. Or it’d take a relatively big hit in lifestyle.
Mortgages are really expensive, kids in school or day care, payment to the new Rivian, etc. Just offering perspective of the other side for the forum.
Yeah, the article kicks in with an inflation angle but I don't buy it. Last year I moved to Orange County, their example of a paradigmatically expensive area, and the real estate certainly is pricey, but not out of reach for anyone with a quarter-mil in yearly income. But I've never seen so many Teslas, Lamborghinis, and Porsches on the road in my life. Not a mystery where the money is going.
A few years ago, I bought a 3-bedroom house in East Bay area, with a nice backyard (which looks distinctly less nice now, but hey, programming is a time-consuming job), and a decent public high school in walking distance for my two kids, all the while getting a whooping <$250K salary. Still had enough money left to invest in mutual funds and enjoy trips to Hawaii every other year or so.
I honestly don't know what to say. If you really think 300K/year is barely livable then I hope someone in your family has a sit down with you and ask blunt questions about what the fuck you're doing with all that money.
A low-end Mercedes is not much more than a new Honda Accord. It probably wasn't the greatest decision, but it also probably wasn't as irresponsible as you are trying to make it sound.
If you think someone spending $30k on a car with a $120k income is bad, you probably don't want to hear about the folks buying those cars while making half that amount (or worse, leasing them).
Besides, they were pretty conservative with their home purchase. A $250k house on a $120k income is way more conservative than what a lot of people do these days. Just by virtue of the home price, I'd argue they were doing better than the typical Bay Area programmer, who might make $120k but face home prices 5-15 times their income.
Looking at the numbers, they should be renting. Secondly, children are expensive. Thirdly, it’s cheaper to have kids if there is a stay at home mom. But likely not going happen as that bra is already burnt down to ashes.
Having said that, the article is trying too hard. Why live in SF? 300k is plenty in the rest of Bay Area.
+ humble brags like this is why everyone hates tech bros and America. It’s just silly. But annoying as fuck.
In the real world, who talks about how much they spend? No one with any real money will ever talk about how much they spend? What kind of bizarro culture is Bay Area water breeding? It’s tasteless and so rude. Some kind of sponsored ‘creative accounting’ shenanigans to promote some agenda. These are not real people. At times like this, I feel obligated to apologize to the rest of the world on behalf of California. Sometimes it looks like the entire state has been raised by a family of traveling clowns who got lost near the Nevada border and decided to adopt the feral citizenry of CA. Leadership in Sacramento doesn’t help.
250k in the bay area with family is ok but it isn't great. You can live on it but people want nice houses and schools for their kids,etc... so I get where they're coming from. Even for the single people they wanna retire early or whatever. Everyone has different goals I guess
I wasn't talking about people making $200k, though. I was talking about people making $100k, because that's the number cherry picked by the person I was replying to.
And, yes, of course I'm aware that a Model S is the same price no matter where you buy it, to a first approximation. The point is that housing is so expensive in the Bay Area that you can actually end up having less disposable income left over for your car than someone making $20k less than you on paper in a much cheaper city and in a state with lower (or no) income taxes (Washington, Texas, maybe a few others?). If you don't believe me, you need to just sit down with a calculator that will do taxes and everything, look up comparable rents, and do the math. You sound like you might be surprised.
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