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Comment by pedrosorio | Hacker News Reader

Single person $150k gross pay (salary, stock, bonus). $94k net pay according to this: http://www.paycheckcity.com/calculator/salary

Not being very frugal:

  - rents $2000K/mo 1BR apartment (single but wants some comfort in the Peninsula, no hellish commutes from East Bay)
  - transportation $200/mo
  - free lunch (and possibly dinner) at the company - eating out and groceries $300/mo
  - entertainment $200/mo

That's $2700/mo. Let's round it up to $3000/mo because you're a well paid software engineer and can spend $300/mo on top of what I listed whenever you feel like it.

So far, $36k expenses + $50k savings and you still have $8k left to go on ski trips to Tahoe, Outside Lands and other non-frugal lifestyle expenses.

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A decent 1BR on the peninsula (in San Mateo, Redwood City, Mountain View, etc.) is likely closer to >$2,500 a month plus $200/month for utilities/renters insurance. For transportation, I pay $200/month for a 15 year old Civic with liability insurance. If you have a moderately nice car that isn't paid off, you are going to pay >$200/month (especially if you commute daily). If you cook moderately nice meals and drink some alcohol, that food budget is likely going to be >$400/month. Plus going out to happy hour once a week, which isn't that uncommon, can easily cost you an extra $30-50 a week (or more). A good number of people have college debt as well, so add a monthly payment for that. I agree with you that saving is definitely possible when single and making >$100,000. I just think you low balled most of your numbers to prove your point.

If we're talking about low balled figures, I guess we need to consider the income side of the equation as well. The original question depends a good deal on what kind of job you're doing in the Bay Area. If it's someone coming to the Bay Area to work for Google/Facebook or similar, the figure I used is way too low, for example.

"A decent 1BR" - It all depends on the definition of decent. I pay $2k for a 1BR walking distance to Redwood City downtown/Caltrain.

But forget about renting an apartment, if you want to save and you're single, having roommates allows you to rent in the Peninsula for much less than $2k/mo.

Also, I added $300 discretionary spending which lets you to cover some of the things you described, and you're left with $8k at the end of the year.

Can you easily save $50k while spending $3k on rent+utilities to live in a fancy apartment in the Peninsula ? Maybe not, but you certainly don't need to be "eating garbage dumped by grocery stores".

> Maybe not, but you certainly don't need to be "eating garbage dumped by grocery stores".

Nice strawman :) I was specifically talking about the situation conditional on saving the 100k in 18 months, my comment was a response to the comment above it.

Separate point: your figures seem very low. I thought SF is roughly equivalent to NYC in terms of cost of living. In which case 300/mo is a zero off as an estimate for all food expenses.

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