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Comment by 31reasons | Hacker News Reader

- Quickest way to make more money is to reduce your expenses. See where you are wasting money and optimize for that. Work remotely for the same amount of compensation and move to a place that has very low cost of living/rent etc (even within US).

- Decide how much more you want to make? Is it purely a greed or do you really need that much money. You alway have to pay some cost to increase your income beyond certain point, it could be your time, safety, health. Calculate those factors in. Earning $50k more then if you end up spending that much on health would not be a good idea.

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I think $140k/yr per single male is about the perfect "mix" of "I have money" and "I don't want to push it".

But that isn't San Francisco dollars. I guess it would be closer to $180k/yr there.

At $140k you would struggle to afford real estate in the major US cities. Sure, it's enough for a single male with few hobbies to live in a studio apartment and eat fast food whenever he wants, ignoring the prospects of retirement and starting a family -- but that's not really enough, now, is it?

Are you kidding? How narrow is your definition of major US city. That's a reasonable salary in Salt Lake City for a senior developer. And with that you can easily handle property, retirement, and eat quite well.

Why would you choose a city in the middle of nowhere with air pollution issues as your example?

I pick it because I live in this middle of no where city with my 1.1 million closest hillbilly friends. We have air quality issues which we are working on. But frankly I grew up in Los Angeles and went to school in Pittsburgh and both had horrible air issues.

I've worked in all three cities and I have made a similar salary in all three cities and I have to say it's not hard to live on this kind of salary in cities like Salt Lake or Pittsburgh and both give a beautiful quality of life.

Feel free to pick whenever you'd like to live. But don't insult a city just because you don't want to live there.

Wow, it's so surprising how people "can't" live well on $140k in major metro cities (e.g. NYC). I feel like that is a good salary. I wonder what people are spending their money on. Is it because most have student loans to pay? I want to know the breakdown of expenses before one can declare this salary is good or bad.

Yeah, I'm not sure what these people are talking about.

I lived quite well as a single male working in Manhattan proper with a sub six-figure salary; living in Hoboken, and commuting maybe 15-20 mins everyday on the PATH. This was around 2013-14. And I lived like a king in my opinion... was able to save money, build my credit, eat out wherever, never pay attention to price tags when shopping, and take trips/vacations, etc.

Maybe things have changed.

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