Rent a room in a house close to any BART station. Berkeley is nice and cheap (it's all relative), as is the peninsula Redwood City and up, until you get to SF. The peninsula isn't actually connected to BART, it only runs south to Millbrae. You can, however, use Caltrain, which runs from san jose to sf, with BART connections in Millbrae.
The Bay Area's public transit is pretty bad, but if you're lucky enough to live and work near BART or Caltrain, you'll be fine and it'll actually work quite well.
Great tips for affordable, sane living: -Use BART/Caltrain whenever possible -Know Caltrains somewhat limited schedule (dont get stuck in Millbrae at 9pm) -GO TO THE FARMER'S MARKET. The food is a bit more expensive, but is lightyears above local markets (Safeway, etc) in quality. --The Bay is very close to one of the world's largest and best agricultural systems, and the only way to benefit from that relationship is the Farmer's Market. Safeway's food is nasty in comparison. Every town has a market at least once a week. --And it's not just produce. They have a lot of local meats, eggs, and restaurant booths too. All sorts of great stuff. It is marginally more expensive, but just do yourself a favor and buy a tomato when they are in season and compare to Safeway. Yes, they are $1/lb more, but, it doesn't matter and you'll see why. -Use Yelp to find good cheap restaurants. If you like ethnic food (asian, indian, etc) you'll eat for cheap and love every second of it. There is never, ever, a reason to eat at place like the Olive Garden or Chevy's. EVER. EVVVERRRR. Between the Farmer's Market and cheap foreign food, you'll eat food better than almost anywhere in the US.
Farmers market are awesome, and to get good deals go there late, around 2pm-ish, when the farmers are wraping their stuff, they'd rather give a lot of their food for half the price then bring it back.
If you live in SF, there is a awesome small grocery (only fruit and vegies) store at 4th and Geary. Very fresh, and very very cheap. Half the price you get in your local safeway/lucky's/calmart.
Ah, and stay away from wholefoods. Horribly overpriced.
1. Save up some dollars
2. Move to a city in India that has good infrastructure (Coimbatore is the city I have in mind) =$1200
3. Release and iterate till you get good traction =$200/month/person
4. Move to Silicon Valley do the mating dance etc =$1200
Personal burn rate while at India would be as low as $200 per month without compromising on any comfort.
After success, I plan to buy a big house there where visiting hackers can stay for free :-)
> I want in
Email me at (gmail kirubakaran) and I'll keep you updated.
(gmail kirubakaran)
If you do go to India, consider Goa. I am told it is very beautiful, very European, and the Goans speak English.
Problem with Goa is that it is very expensive due to all the tourists. It is comparable to the west, I hear. Coimbatore has mild climate, a dozen engineering colleges, inexpensive housing, great public transport, great food etc.
The downtown area is reasonably nice and, if you wanted an office, there's a bunch going up right now in the heart of downtown. If you really need a big city, you can get to chicago in ~2.5 hours.
The down side: if you drive more than 10 miles in any direction, you might start to regret your decision. Central Illinois is flatter than you might be able to conceive if you're not from the midwest. There's really just endless fields of crops in every direction outside the city - they say you can see 10 miles in any direction on a clear day, 20 if you stand on a tuna can. Also, it was in the low 60's 2 days ago... today it snowed about 6 inches with sleet and plenty of wind. I guess you get what you pay for.
Holes:
1. Connections, funding, publicity. Kiss those opportunities goodbye.
2. Travel expenses will cost you, add another $2000(?) just for that.
3. I didn't speak the language at all... Makes it extremely hard to get a good deal on housing. Affects quality of life.
4. Places with very low costs of living and relatively high quality of life tend to attract lots of annoying foreigners. Locals then tend to dislike foreigners.
5. Moving can have big overhead. Basically all of the apartments were occupied in the city I moved to for the first 3 weeks. Pre-made plans fell through.
I moved to France two years ago. I did it just for the experience while contracting with companies in the US. If you work for a company here, then the Euro rate won't be so bad. That said, you'll have to get used to a much lower rate than people in our line of work are accustomed to. Of course, if you're reading YC--especially this post--then this isn't really a consideration.
Europe has the Schengen Agreement, which allows people from the US (and other participant nations) an automatic visa to stay for 3 months. Anything beyond that takes an enormous amount of time and red tape.
Getting a place to stay is very difficult for a foreigner. First, you have to get a bank account, which is difficult. They want 10's of K Euro and often several K frozen in case you have an overdraft, which is regarded very severely.
Once you have your bank account, you need to prepare a dossier for the real estate person to pour over. That will involve three years of tax returns, your bank accounts, letters from employers, etc. Most landlords require a personal guarantor--someone who will pay the rent if you don't. And that's for the natives! If you don't have a company to do that for you, well...I guess we got lucky (a big deposit probably helped). This is probably because it's common for people to stop paying when it cools off. There's a law that makes it illegal to evict during the cold season. The leases here are three years. Landlords can't terminate it and you can't break it without significant cause.
There are other things to consider, such as the driver's license. Mass transit is great near Paris. Otherwise, you'll probably need one. You have a year on the US DL. If you're from one of the small states with a specific agreement with the French government, you can exchange. For the rest, it's very costly and difficult. Hoops include mandatory drivers school at several K Euro. The test takes almost 1K. Retakes cost as well. There is no English option. Questions are timed (unlike most/all of the US). Sometimes no answer is correct, sometimes multiple answers are correct. Examiners try to trick you or trip you up on technicalities.
France definitely is the most difficult. Most other European countries are a little easier along one dimension or another. Regardless, though, the Euro/Dollar conversion is punishing.
That's about double what I pay to live in Florida.
I have to disagree about public transportation, having come from the East Coast. It's godawful. There are five discrete transit systems (BART, Caltrain, MUNI, SamTrans, VTA) that are actually more expensive to use than driving. You really need a car out here.
It's double what I paid in Dallas, but I think it's worth it.
To connect them all, use google transit. The bummer about Bay Area transit isn't the cost, it is inexpensive in relation to driving. The bummer is coverage. If you want to get somewhere in San Jose from Berkeley, it'll take you 3 hours, as opposed to 1.5 hours driving.
But yea, I don't own a car, and Google Transit has changed my life. It's soooo much easier to get around now!
edit: i'm buying this http://www.amazon.com/P3-International-Kill-Electricity-Moni...
if your 5 computers take 150 watts each and it's 12 cents per kilo-watt hour, then your bill would be $65
they must spend a lot of time asleep or something.
I've lived in downtown San Jose and Berkeley - SJ is cheaper, but I prefer Berkeley because of the weather, college atmosphere and good looking women (mostly ;)
Cost of lving (I lived alone) SJ rent for 1 bedroom: $1,350 // Berkeley rent for 2 bedroom: $1,850 (Both included all utilities except electricity)
Food: Dont skimp on food or toilet paper! ;) I like to cook, so I prepared my own food for the most part to keep costs relatively cheap - ex: cooking a nice cut of tri-tip with veggies can last a few days, etc. $200-250/mo
Internets: ~$70/mo for static IP
Extracurricular: $250/mo
Gas/Transportation: Variable depending on whether you drive or bus / Bart
we are moving out in april/may and we are looking for a 2 bedroom.
$1000 is the starting price for rent on a decent studio and can get as high as you want, depending on the neighborhood.
Food can be cheap enough if you shop at Trader Joe's and eat out at Tommy's Joynt. (Say, $300 a month.) I like to eat out more often and spend $600-$700 on food each month for me and my girlfriend. We don't go out drinking very often, but when we do, it's easily $100 a night for several drinks, pizza, and a cab ride home.
I don't own a car, but when I did it was $150/month for a spot in a garage and $40 for parking tickets. Public transportation is great and the city has a strong bicycle advocacy group, so that's what I choose.
I highly recommend living in the city if you aren't bothered by crowds, and there are plenty of software companies here. (For anyone that is a PHP and JavaScript pro, I can pass on a resume to the hiring manager here at Trulia.)
Let me know if you have any questions!
I've lived in Minneapolis, Chicago, LA, Providence, Fresno and now the Bay Area. And, it's the most expensive city we've lived in. There is usually a gentleman's competition ongoing as to what area is more expensive to live in: Bay Area or New York City. I think that Manhattan generally wins as to a specific region, but if compared to New York City as a whole, I think that Silicon Valley probably wins the competition.
It's expensive.
But, you can make it work for you. It just takes work, and a willingness to do stuff differently than you're used to.
If you're moving here, consider Craigslist to be your Bible for rental listings. Every one advertises on Craigslist, even the large corporate apartment complexes. Search around there for a few months. Then use the neighborhood designations that Craigslist uses to research the specific neighborhoods that you're interested in.
As to what your burn rate will be in the Valley, it all depends on how you want to live. If you're going to share an apartment with roommates and eat ramen noodle/frankfurter surprise 3 meals a day that will cut costs dramatically. If you want to get your own studio or one bedroom and eat out at Chez Snooteee 7 days a week, that raises prices a lot.
Also, where you live matters a great deal in how much you pay for rent. San Francisco and Palo Alto are the two highest rent areas in the Valley. Prices go down the further out you live from there. East Bay prices tend to be quite a bit lower, but commutes can be quite nasty because of having to cross the Bay on one of the bridges. We found San Jose to be a great compromise. It's a nice city, getting around is pretty easy, has a decent little downtown for events/entertainment and rents are pretty reasonable considering the area. And, I commute opposite traffic because I work nights.
Food prices in the grocery stores are about 30% higher than we've paid in Boston, although there's ways around that. Safeway.com actually lets you order groceries online, and their prices are exactly the same in store as they are online. (We've researched it). But if you want to get a feel for what your grocery bill will be, save your receipt from your next trip to the grocery store, and create an account and a shopping list at: http://shop.safeway.com/register/default.asp?brandid=1 You can then compare the two and figure out what you'll be spending on groceries at the store.
Gas prices are usually 20-30% higher than the rest of the nation, with gas in San Fran usually topping the national price charts. Gas is about $3.50 right now for us in San Jose.
Restaurants are anywhere from %30-50 more expensive in the Bay area. After you've done your neighborhood research on Craigslist, look at Yelp.com for restaurants in that area, and look at their menu's. You'll see what I mean. My wife and I routinely drop $50-80 for dinner with a glass of wine at a mid priced restaurant like the Olive Garden. Back East, that'd be $30-50 a dinner.
Electric bills are some of the highest in the nation. We rent a 4 bed 2 bath house in San Jose, and our electric heating bill for Nov-Fev usually runs between $300-400 a month. If you can rent a place with utilities included, you're in luck. You only need air conditioning for 2-3 weeks out of the year in the South Bay. You probably don't need it in San Fran.
Water and trash is $50 a month.
Rents go down about %10-20 during winter and around Christmas, and up an additional %10-20 during the summer. So, if you move out here, you can get the cheapest rents in January or early December. It's a terrible time to move, but it really makes a difference when your paying $1800 for a 3 bed 2 bath house as opposed to $2400.
Cable and Internet are comparable to %20 higher than elsewhere.
If you can, get a place with utilities included. It's worth the extra money in rent. Utilities out here are expensive.
Public transportation stinks compared to Boston, New York or Chicago. People out here are thrilled that they can occasionally ride it to an event down town. It's rare that people use it to commute every day. However, people in San Fran can get by without a car. You can't in the rest of the area. A new perk some of the larger companies (Google, VMware) are offering is shuttle service to and from work. If you can land a job with a perk like that it'll save you $100-200 a month in gas depending on your car.
We rent that 4 bed 2 bath house in San Jose for about $2100 a month. It was more expensive to rent a house, but it gives us a lot more room for stuff, which ends up making in more economical for us in the long run. Here's what we did: We've turned our garage in to a mini warehouse lined with shop shelves, and we shop in bulk at CostCo (www.CostCo.com). I mean ++shop_in_bulk++. We buy 4-5 months of staples, paper goods, meat, office supplies at CostCo. We also have 2 freezers to store meat, prepared meals, etc... And, we're able to rent out a room to family. Yeah, it's a little weird, but it works for us.
There is great shopping in the area. Ikea is for all your furniture and low end household stuff. You can get great deals at Fry's electronics if you watch their sales papers. And, for everything else, shop at the Gilroy Outlets. They are actual outlets that sell overstock and seconds. They really are some of the best outlets in Northern California, and you can get some amazing deals on great products. Because of that, we actually pay less for household goods and clothes than we did living anywhere else.
All that being said, moving here is the hardest part financially. After you get here, things even out a bit, and salaries are high enough that they generally compensate for the high cost of living.
Good luck.
I've been hanging out on the rails business group: http://groups.google.com/group/rails-business?hl=en&lnk=... and I've gotten an email or two a month looking for contract developers in the area. Or you can go to some of the Rails meetups or Bay Piggies (Python users group) in the area and at least you should be able to meet some people and possibly pick up some contract work out here. You just have to make an effort to get out and meet people. Jobs don't seem to be a big problem right now.
Friend was a laser engineer, just got laid off after 25 years, but had 5 offers on the table in two weeks.
GOOG's stock price has taken a tumble, but they still seem to be hiring: http://www.google.com/support/jobs/bin/topic.py?loc_id=1116&...
Even the "big names" out here that are VC funded web startups, that would be at risk of taking a one way to the dead pool in the event of a "bubble pop", don't really have that many employees. Digg has 50 employees, Facebook had 300 at my last count but is still hiring like crazy: http://www.facebook.com/jobs/
It seems like there are a lot of companies that are coming and going, but there aren't the huge layoffs that hit the place so hard 6-7 years ago, because web startups have kept it pretty lean and mean. For the most part, the engineers still seem to be running the valley, not the biz dev guys.
Startups have been built without a lot of money, and are used to running on a shoe string. If the economy tightens up, I don't think that it will the startup guys that hard.
Some of the big hardware companies might shed some people if capital expenditures take a nose dive across the country, so that means that Intel, HP and Sun might shed some employees. But that's about it.
How about Boston / Cambridge?
Potential requirements would be: at least two separate rooms, which can be tiny (basically a bed and a desk in each), and it'd be fine if they're in a shared house, plus broadband. Is $1000/month doable for that?
if you are willing to live in somerville (parts of which are effectively cambridge due to its shape) or even medford, definitely.
compared to SF/SV, there is proportionally a much larger student population in Boston/Cambridge, so supply/demand/price varies with the academic calendar more than in other places.
You can make it work. You're a motivated developer/entrepreneur. You'll be fine. Work whichever variables (roommates, location, dining, etc.) you want to meet your budget, but this town is geared to you. You might spend a lot, but you'll make a lot too.
after a few visits, i can say that living in SF, and playing in SF is just fine without a car. SF will be expensive like living in the loop in Chicago, or in some parts of Manhattan, heck thats what you pay for being in the center of it. If you are coming from the suburbs you are in for a shock if you move to SF.
if you live out of SF, you will want a car/ or even better a moped or bike. public transportation is nice, but it adds up and is time consuming waiting for stuff. what i love about it is it runs late, so a night out can be had without driving into SF.
right now in MKE i am paying $770 a month as part of a 2 bedroom that is $1540 a month. For that we have 2 bedrooms, 1800sqft, a backyard, and a garage. In the valley i expect to have much less, but it still seems like i can get a 2 bedroom for ~1500-~1800 a month, or a 3 bedroom for 2100-3000 a month. i think rent is actually fairly reasonable considering the average median incomes and the number of people with degrees.
starbucks internet will cost you $40 a month, where in MKE i get cafe wifi all over the city for $22 a month. i might have to give in and get Att uverse internet in the valley so we can roam into a starbucks for free.
As far as food goes, i found that palo alto, and just outside of san jose are craazy expensive. in MKE a quiznos sandwich and drink might cost you 8$ but in that area, we paid $12-$13 50% more. I found food in SF cheaper. I do not know about the grocery stores, but its pretty hard to meet people for lunch and or coffee in your home, so I think Food may have its larges sticker shock.
as for location, we found that 90% of the events that we want to go to are in the sunnyvale, palo alto, and north/west san jose area. so it makes more sense for us to live there, well unless we are going to date...... there seems to be a lot of lovely ladies in Downtown SF on a daily basis, in fact most of them will smile back. It's kinda rare for a city to have that quality. So I would rank SF very high on women being approachable there.
Our plan for our 4 guys (1 of which is married) is to get a 2 bedroom with a great couch for the 3rd guy, and a when the married guy is in town, he can have a hidden mattress or an inflatable one. When it makes sense, we will get 1 more apartment come fall 08 or something.
A single-floor flat in a house with 3 general rooms, a bathroom and a kitchen (allocate rooms as you like to make bedrooms), in somewhere not terribly appealing (but not nastyville or dangerous either) costs around $2400/m. About 1 hour commute to the city centre via tube. If you want to drive into the city during business hours, it'll cost you $16 just for congestion charge. If you drive a big car (i.e. American-style SUV etc., based on emissions), that'll go up to $50 a day soon enough.
You basically can't get non-fast-food meals for less than $20 a head, to eat something fairly decent will cost quite a bit more.
Every time I visit the valley, I'm amazed at how cheap everything is.
- rent $1000 (unheard of lofty studio thing. )
- phone: $50
- internet connection: $50
- muni pass: $45
- food, entertainment, occasional car share: $300
personally about 1500 a month. no car. I'm cheap... you can obviously spend huge amounts of money on going to expensive restaurants, electronics, concerts, booze, cocaine, etc.
you will either be sharing for $700-$1100 a month or renting a studio/1BR for $1200-$2000/m. rent is the largest expense. a car will cost at least $500/m even if the car is paid for and you hardly drive (parking: $150, insurance $50, gas $3/gallon, parking violations: $200)
i lived in the outskirts of SJ i believe. ebay was a couple blocks away. i miss the bay area :(