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Comment by dvt | Hacker News Reader

$200k-$300k in places like San Francisco and Menlo Park. Clearly, you don't understand how cost of living works. Also, to make that much, you need to be at around a level of SDE3/tech lead, which is by no means easy (a decade of making low six-figures & some political panache). See this top answer on Quora, for a pretty detailed analysis: https://www.quora.com/Will-I-be-able-to-become-a-millionaire...

You might be able to become a millionaire in 25 years assuming a frugal lifestyle and no big life event costs, but that's optimistic.

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You can argue all you want, but I understand how cost of living works plenty well. SV is expensive but not so expensive that it wipes out $200k in income. If you're careful about expenses you can easily put away tens of thousands annually.

This is backed up by own personal experience as a developer in NYC (hardly a low cost area). I expect to have a million dollars saved up within a decade and I certainly haven't relied on political panache to get there.

Sorry for seeming incredulous, but if you're saying that you're saving 100k a year in NYC, then you must be making like 400k or living in a cardboard box.

Even with a 300k salary, you could only save 10k a month if you only had 5k worth of monthly expenses (3-4k is easily rent in NYC).

And keep in mind that making 300k-400k is not typical.

I make substantially less than 400k and I assure you that I do not live in a cardboard box.

$5k is high for monthly expenses. I rented a single bedroom in Manhattan for $1850 and you can save even more if you're willing to live with roommates.

I'm not sure what I can do to convince you I'm not lying, but consider that median household income is less than $100k in both SV and NY. If the average person can get by on <$100k, why wouldn't you be able to save tons of money if you're making $200k? I have friends getting by on $40k in NYC. Can you imagine how easy it is to save if you match your lifestyle to theirs?

Of course, it's not going to buy you a luxury lifestyle. But personally I'd rather maintain a high savings rate than live in a glitzy apartment and spend thousands on bottle service.

Ok, so maybe I'm just bad at math. I know that if you make 200k as an engineer in NYC (which is STILL high[1]), you make around 10k a month after taxes.

10k - 2k for rent - 1k for expenses = 7k saved if you don't go on vacation, and literally do nothing that costs money for ten years. Even saving 7k a month, you won't save 100k a year.

[1] https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/new-york-city-software-en...

7k is about right. My average savings rate over the past 3 years has been $6k and it's increased as my salary has.

You're forgetting to include investment gains. With them, I can go on regular vacations and still reach $1m within 10 years.

Also, since someone else mentioned it, my model conservatively assumes a 4% inflation rate. Over the 3 years I've been tracking, my model has consistently underestimated the growth in my savings.

$1k for other 'expenses' is huge. You can drive that down at least by half with wiser spending.

It's not huge. That's bills together with all of your everyday spending. It's certainly possible to get that down to less than $1000 a month but you can easily spend $1000 a month without doing anything extravagant.

Food, insurance, gas, water, electricity, student debt, etc. At least by half? Come on. Let's be real.

You might want to save, but there's no need to be a total miser on any >100k salary.

You are exaggerating NYC income taxes. At $200k, your effective income tax rate if you file single, including FICA, is 33%, not 40% [0].

Heck, your marginal tax rate isn't even 40%, and all those numbers are without taking a 401k tax deduction.

People get this crazy idea that $200k isn't rich in NYC or SF. It is very, very rich, even for the area. COL adjustment for rent and groceries shaves off $15-30k, but it doesn't keep scaling up from there.

[0] https://smartasset.com/taxes/new-york-tax-calculator

> Heck, your marginal tax rate isn't even 40%

That's wrong. The marginal tax for even a $50,000/year earner in NYC is over 42%.

Source: http://arjun-menon.github.io/taxes-in-nyc/?income=50,000

There's actually no contradiction. Marginal tax rates go down 6.2% at 118,500 when social security cuts out, and they only go up about 3% from there to 200k.

It's kind of outrageous, marginal tax rates going down for high earners, but there we are.

But thanks for pointing out that I had the wrong zip code, so I missed NYC income tax, which is 3.65% marginal, bringing average tax rates at 200k to 36%, not 33% (albeit with zero deductions and exemptions, which obviously isn't reasonable, you'll deduct state income tax at the very least and shave off 1.4% immediately).

Your link is in error, it treats Social Security tax as continuing past $118k.

> Your link is in error, it treats Social Security tax as continuing past $118k.

Actually, the tool does stop adding Social Security after the income limit: http://arjun-menon.github.io/taxes-in-nyc/?income=200,000

> you'll deduct state income tax at the very least

The tool also factors in state income tax deductions. You'll see it deducted in the link above

The tool reports the marginal tax rate for a $200,000 earner as ~36%.

But yea, you're right, it sucks that $50k earners are taxed even more % than $200k earners. The employer pays payroll taxes of 7.65% (6.2% + 1.45%), so actual marginal taxes are ~50% from an employer cost perspective. It's truly insane.

> 3-4k is easily rent in NYC

Only if you insist on living by yourself, or renting a luxury apartment with your friends/family in Manhattan. Going under $2k a month is easily possible if you have a large, multiple earner family or roommates, especially if you live outside Manhattan/Brooklyn. Plenty of New Yorkers manage with incomes less than $60k, and if you can live like them, saving 10k a month on a $300,000 salary is easy.

There is nothing requiring you to spend a certain amount of money just because you are earning a certain amount of money. We don't have sumptuary laws, after all.

A lot of people make TL within 5-7 years, its not that uncommon (although we are talking about top 1-5% of programmers). Saving $1MM on west coast salary in 10 years is really doable. I am on track to do it in effectively 7 years or so.

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