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Comment by dsfyu404ed | Hacker News Reader

What the title should read is "couldn't afford a lifestyle I felt was befitting someone making six figures in the bay area"

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"a niceish $40,000 car,"

ish.

High on the list of signs that you've bought far too much into lifestyle inflation is thinking that a car costing 70% of the US median household income is only "nice-ish."

Lets take the product of Silicon Valley, the Tesla. Even take the cheap one at $35,000. I don't think that is much to expect in a lifestyle also considering you make more than most people.

Henry Ford back in the day raised wages and cut hours because he noticed not even his employees had money or time to enjoy his product.

I think Silicon Valley is at this same point. Work your butt off to not enjoy life. If your single I think the economics work out but for families the area is very hostile.

I don't understand why someone having trouble supporting their family would buy a new car at all. A nice used car is not that different and significantly cheaper.

Nobody "deserves" or should "expect" a lifestyle. Life is simply a series of choices. If you choose to have a $40,000 car on 100K income, then you choose to take money from your stocks because you choose a lifestyle over substance.

I make more than 100k, and I have never bought a car for more than $14,000... why? Because I choose my family over my lifestyle.

And no one deserves customers. What silicon valley is doing is destroying the consumers that would be buying its products.

The guy doesn't work at Tesla, but if the average employee in Tesla can't afford their standard model and have enough money left over to live they are not a viable company, as Henry Ford figured out more than a century ago.

It's capitalism 101, you cut labour costs only to find that you've cut demand as well.

Tesla is a luxury brand. You can get a new car for half of that. A used one for even less. And a six figure income is barely higher the median for the area.

I hate this argument.

Perhaps you wouldn't consider spending $40k on a car. But I'm sure that there are items that you would splurge on, even if you didn't.

Some people really enjoy cars. I mean, yeah, you're not going to get sympathies from people about the Bay Area being "so hard" to live in (let's be real: it is really fucking expensive to live out there), but at the end of the day, it's your cash.

Then again, I'm biased; I would never drive a cheap beater car. Too uncomfortable, too unreliable, too much sadness. I like cars.

No, I'm just saying that when you've inflated your idea of reasonably comfortable living to require a $40k car, that you should at least be somewhat self-aware that you're making a very deliberate tradeoff and spending far more than is required to achieve "nice." A newish Camry is "nice." It's reliable, it's comfortable. In fact, it's one of the most long-term reliable cars on the road. It's not exciting. It's not spectacular. It's obviously not what the person in the article wants. It's ~$23k new. Prius V. The list continues.

There's a large gap between a $40k car and a "cheap beater." It's full of ... nice cars. There've been plenty of other examples in this thread.

The author of the article didn't want a nice car. He wanted to indulge an expensive passion for high-end cars. I'm not going to criticize the passion - I'm in the middle of a hideously indulgent kitchen remodel (which is costing quite a bit more than that car, alas). Where I disagree is with the implied lack of awareness that these expensive hobbies are one of the underlying factors that rendered his lifestyle incompatible with his salary.

"I love expensive, fast cars, and found that by getting a good job in a low-cost-of-living area, I could feed my family and still indulge my passion" -- good on you! Three thumbs up for making that move. I just moved back to Pittsburgh from Palo Alto. You'll get no disagreement about the cost of living in the bay area in general. Housing is offensively expensive there.

The author and I both make the same, about 90th percentile income for the nation so we "deserve" 90th percentile cars, which is probably much more expensive than $40K. I mean $40K isn't even enough for a fancy pickup truck or fancy SUV.

I thank God every day that I don't live in California, so my standard of living at the same income is awesome and times are great for my entire family. All because I won't work in CA.

It's all dropped down the endless real estate rabbit hole in the Bay Area.

Seriously.

I have a cushy tech-job yet still drive the hatchback I bought fifteen years ago for $2000. Choices...

I still drive a no frils Chevy I bought 10 years ago what happened to me was a wife + kid. Sure I could have bought wife a 19K car but with everone driving around trucks and SUVs it doesn't matter how great your air bags are the laws of physics are not in your favor. 40K is easy for a decent sized car/truck/suv

If you're working a high-end job (one that not many people would qualify for, presumably), making well over $100,000 per year (FAR above the average family income in the US), then why should you settle for a near-poverty lifestyle?

Let's not exaggerate. $100K/year in the Bay Area (as a single person) isn't living it up, but it's not "a near-poverty lifestyle." It's a "living in the East Bay with roommates, commuting at least an hour, (very) occasionally going out," lifestyle but it's eating good food with a roof over your head. If that sounds like poverty, well, you should see real poverty sometime.

""living in the East Bay with roommates, commuting at least an hour, (very) occasionally going out," but it's eating good food with a roof over your head."

That sounds like me as a part time student / part time grocery store minimum wage shelf stocker around 1990 in the greater Chicago land area (well, within a very distant orbit of Chicago). I suppose most people would have considered me very poor at that time. I was on no government programs (other than uni student loans like everyone else). I had no medical insurance but I ate good food when I wanted. On the other hand I couldn't afford good steak, it was cheaper, but good and healthy, food. I was financially very hand to mouth no savings couldn't afford to "go out". Probably why I don't go out drinking now, never got in the habit when I was young. There are certainly poorer people, but the best case scenario being I'd have to downgrade to a starving student lifestyle is incredibly unappealing.

In summary it sounds like if you work full time plus at Facebook in CA (admittedly in 2016), your standard of living will be the same as working part time as a grocery store shelf stocker outside CA (admittedly in 1990). Of course my commute was better, but the CA guy has already graduated so he doesn't have to balance work and school like I did, so it kinda balances out.

> In summary it sounds like if you work full time plus at Facebook in CA (admittedly in 2016),

I don't know by direct experience, but I hear even entry level hires are doing significantly better than $100K at Facebook.

It's 2016 though - before IPO, Facebook, like many other startups, could afford to pay employees less salary with the options.

On that same note, the author should count his blessings. He received options. He was able to sell those options (a move many of us are criticizing) to buy a luxury car. Most people don't, or leave before they vest years later.

Thank you, this is my point exactly. Why should anyone work hard to get an advanced education and build a good professional resume, then go to work at a job that pays far above the average family income for the US, just so he can live like a part-time grocery store worker?

The choice of words was poor, but living with roomates and commuting an hour when your salary is $100/year is, in my opinion, unreasonable. There's good food and roofing available all over the country.

But the living expenses in cities like SF and NYC are entirely different compared to the rest of the country. 100k is not really a magical number aside from the fact that it's six digits instead of five. You see similar things in other countries.

$100K/year is an entry level salary at many places these days. If you're not entry level and don't have absurd amounts of student loans, then you can afford to do better. You can have less of a commute, or maybe not live with roommates, and actually put some money into savings. It's still nowhere near poverty wages.

You could probably do better than that. East bay rents aren't that high (yet) and I'm guessing Facebook has shuttle buses.

I doubt you can do much better. You'll have to compromise on either the commute or the rent. Live near BART and you'll pay up for the convenience. Oakland is the 4th most expensive city to rent in the US; further out and you start looking at even longer commutes. You literally can't get less than an hour commute by public transportation into SF from the East Bay. Trust me, I've tried.

Live by yourself, and you won't find a decent place for less than $2k/month anywhere. Accounting for taxes, that's about $40K/year, which is more than someone with a $100K income should be paying for rent if they want to stay financially stable.

And while Facebook might have East Bay shuttle buses (though I don't think they do to any meaningful extent), what about all the other companies that aren't Facebook?

I believe you but your constraint is getting to SF. For someone working at Facebook (like in the article), they are on one end of the Dumbarton bridge. The East Bay is not that far away.

Wow. Not being able to drive a new $40K car, live in a big house with a yard (in the most expensive area of the US) and only have one spouse work is near poverty?

I want all my spouses to work!

I'd hardly call buying a car that's less than 40k "near-poverty.'

It's not that, it's the part about having to live with roommates in a tiny apartment. I did that in college. Why would I want to go back to that lifestyle? Why should I? If that's all you can afford by working at a super-high-end job these days, then what is the point? (Again, remember that $100k is well above the average family income in the US right now; a single guy making that much should be able to live very, very well.)

Part of the reason he's making that much is because he's in the Bay Area; Facebook would pay their employees less if they were based elsewhere. He can't say he deserves a certain lifestyle based on salary, and is being punished unfairly by location, because those are not at all separate factors.

I don't buy it. He deserves that lifestyle because the job he does requires an advanced education, and we're constantly told these jobs are critically important to society and that there's a massive shortage of these workers. Hence, they deserve pay high enough to afford an upper-middle-class lifestyle, which definitely does not mean living in a small apartment with roommates or anything like that.

If you're saying that he does not deserve an upper-middle-class lifestyle with a higher-than-median-price car, then we've been sold a bill of goods.

If I wanted to live in a tiny apartment with roommates and never get married and have a family (because what woman is going to do that with you when you can't afford your own place?), then why would I bother going to college for a difficult degree, racking up student loan debt, and working hard in a difficult profession to build up a professional resume and quality work experience? I could just go work at a grocery store, and/or get on welfare, right?

What exactly is the point of striving to accomplish something if you're not going to be rewarded for it at all?

> because what woman is going to do that with you when you can't afford your own place?

The good ones.

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