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Comment by WhitneyLand | Hacker News Reader

That's a tough argument to make that SF beats SLC in net savings.

You should try living with your family in a house with a backyard, it's quite enjoyable and could be pretty cheap over time if you see any appreciation.

Secondly there are a lot more taxes on a lot more things in SF, are you factoring that in?

Also I'd bet you are worth more than 105k in SLC if you looked around longer.

I love SF and it's great to live there for many reasons, but I don't think "cheaper than utah" is one of them.

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While we'll probably end up in a house with a yard eventually, I don't feel a pressing need for that lifestyle at the moment.

I am factoring in taxes and cost of living. The difference doesn't make up for the $55k wage gap. It's possible that I could have done better than $105k if I had looked harder, but based on how much my friends in that area make I doubt it. My salary in the Bay Area also has a lot more headroom to continue growing.

The calculus worked out better for SF in my case because I'm saving most of my income either way. If I wanted a higher-consumption lifestyle (big house, two cars, lots of eating out etc.) then a lower-income lower-COL area might have been a better deal overall. But I'm at a stage where I don't mind "sacrificing" a bit for a better future. And honestly, it doesn't feel like a sacrifice anyway -- my wife and I are still living a lot better than we were until recently as university students, and enjoying every day. There's no reason why consumption has to scale with income!

> While we'll probably end up in a house with a yard eventually

How, might I ask? Assuming $1.5M for a townhouse or a house in the Bay Area, Google's mortgage calculator says ~7k monthly in payments. At $160k and 25% tax, you're left w/ 10k/mo; you'd be spending 70% of your income on housing, not counting maintenance. You'd need to make a significant downpayment (which even then, IDK if it helps, since I've seen housing easily range to more than $2M+, and I feel like I'm lowballing it (ha!) at $1.5M) or have your partner also pull a decent income, no?

(I've never bought a house, so please, feel free to inform me, b/c from where I'm standing, it's incredibly daunting.)

> I don't plan on living in the Bay Area long-term

You can live in a similar house with great schools in the east bay for 800k so that's about $4000 payment, very doable to live comfortably and even save up a bit making $160k/year.

Heck, rather than spend that much on a home in the city, a house in a rural northern state will only run you around 100K, maybe 200K for something newer. The remote work dream.

You can make money in one place, save it, then spend it somewhere else. This is why people in nice but cheap places are so afraid of Californians.

What do you mean saying "This is why people in nice but cheap places are so afraid of Californians."?

In much of the west coast, and near western state, local housing prices are often driven up by Californians leaving the state with either lots of savings and/or equity cashed out from the house they just sold. So there has historically been a lot of anti-Californian backlash in places like Seattle and Portland, whose house markets haven't always been hot in their own right.

Imagine you live in a place where the average salary is $50k, but it's a nice place, and often people will move to your place from somewhere where the average salary was $200k. Economically, it is difficult to compete with those people for things that are already scarce (housing).

Grand Jct Colorado. Full of California retirees.

It's rare to be worth a lot more than $105k in SLC; wages are pretty low and deep specific expertise isn't often bought so much as grown in house. Especially with a startup.

If you're looking at $105k in SLC, you should be asking for $225k+ in SF by my experience.

We did the calculation between $125k in SF and $45k in SLC a decade ago and SLC came out well ahead for a family of four.

I think SLC salaries vary a lot by technology too. There's a lot of developers I know in that range here that would be around 135 in SF. Completely agreed on how much better of a value it is here though.

Same with Seattle. Houses going for 300-500k, Salaries 110k+, minimum. I really don't think it's true either for my region.

If you love the startup world, hard to beat SF.

Not much left in Seattle under 500k. The market is pushing the prices even higher.

South Seattle, West Seattle and some parts of North Seattle are still fairly affordable, for an engineer at least.

>You should try living with your family in a house with a backyard, it's quite enjoyable and could be pretty cheap over time if you see any appreciation.

You should try living in a cabin in the woods. Way cheaper plus you get fit from chopping up firewood for the winter. Obviously only a fool would live in a city in Utah when they could live in rural Alaska for cheaper!

"You should try living in a cabin in the woods."

This isn't even close to a reasonable retort.

It is if you have a preference for urban environments and your choice is between SF/NYC/London/etc and Salt Lake City, where it feels like every other street is as wide as the average block in another city.

To each their own of course.

Well, in SLC you are about an hour drive away from arguably the best skiing on the planet.

To each their own of course.:-)

To be fair, SF is far closer to and more practical for good skiing than London or NYC.

And yes, living in the Bay Area, I miss (from Switzerland) skiing being an hour's drive away. It's all relative...

Outside SF proper, the SV urban design is as bad as in Utah.

Appropriate username :)

I spent most of my time in Eden and Ogden so I don't know anything about SLC's urban design beyond my impression of the sprawl from brief visits. Personally, I think terrible urban design is the norm in the US (in no small part to suburban sprawl) and SF/Bay Area are easily some of the worst offenders in my limited experience. I can't really think of any well designed cities in California because the vast majority are parts of huge metropolitan areas where everything is so spread out that you end up driving through five or more different towns each with their own geographies and philosophies on urban design just on your daily commute.

I think I'm heavily biased though, because most of the old cities in Europe seem to me to be far better despite their chaotic growth over many centuries.

Although, interestingly, the SLC design predates cars: http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/plat-of-zion/

If Brigham Young could foresee how cars would abuse the design, he would have laid out Salt Lake City like Paris or maybe like Kyoto.

Alas, President Young had long since exhausted his outrageously lavish budget of divine providence just getting to Utah.

Yes, terrible urban design and bad infrastructure and bad policy is pervasive in the USA.

You can just look at neighboring Mexico with 1/6th the per capita income and correspondingly lower public budgets where transportation, urban maintenance, and quality of city life are routinely better. And not just relatively better: Mexican cities (outside the shady border region) are nicer than American cities to live in. If you could put a typical neighborhood from Puebla or Guadalajara or León or Mexico City into Dallas or Los Angeles or San Jose or Atlanta, it would be the best, nicest neighborhood in the city.

And that's not even bringing up the great cities of Europe at all. Because that would be completely unfair.

It's like the health care system: Even a great country does some things horribly wrong and suffers for it.

I went to Mexico city with my family about 10 years ago and it didn't seem as you describe. I remember looking out our car window and seeing huge expanses of what seemed like shacks. Many of the road were wide with seemingly no lane markings, and people making their own lanes. We were at one such intersection, and got pulled over by a corrupt cop who was on foot. Supposedly we came too close to one the of people who constantly surround our car whever we stop, trying to sell us stuff. The cop took my dad's driver's license and demanded 1000 pesos to give it back. My dad negotiated it down to 200 pesos. We went to a hotel specifically chosen because it looked modern and had wifi. The pool was normal sized, but only had 1 foot of water, and it was green.

What were you doing in a car in Mexico City? First time I drove there, it had me shell shocked for months.

Next time, get out on foot and see the city. You can't see anything from a car. [0]

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6r83MF9BRZA&feature=youtu.be

> SF/NYC/London/etc and Salt Lake City, where it feels like every other street is as wide as the average block in another city.

Funny you mention that because I make the same comparison with London vis-a-vis SF.

Why are you acting like I said Utah was better? I said there are many reasons to live in SF.

The point is I don't agree with the conclusion a family can save more living in SF.

As great as SF is for some people with a young family not having a house with a backyard is a big deal.

Regarding your final incorrect assumption, yes I would love living in a cabin in the woods and chopping firewood.

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