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Comment by thesmallestcat | Hacker News Reader

What a dull truism. I'm not living paycheck to paycheck, I make silly good money for where I live. The fact that I could be making 400k+ total comp in Google Mountain View hell or Facebook Palo Alto hell does nothing for me.

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I have a hard time believing that the majority of people making 400k+ at either Google or Facebook would consider their work/life situation a type of hell.

I understand why some people don't want to work for those companies or in those areas, or aren't motivated by money. But I think many others do, and the ones that are living it now are doing so by choice and for their own reasons.

Well to give you and idea on how expensive it is to live, let's talk taxes. Let's say you are married and make 400k a year and live in San Matteo , CA. California tax rate is 9.3% and federal is 33%. So before living you owe have (400,000x(1-(.093+.33))=230,800.

Now let's say you want to house your family. You decide to buy a house. Well you only have $230,000 so you can't put 20% down on a home with an average price of a million won in San Mateo, so you put 10% down on this home ( random home in San Mateo.)[https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1715-Borden-St-San-Mateo-... ]

It's a 3 bed 2 bath home with 1400 square feet.I'm also assuming you have two kids.(each get their own room)

So now we're at 230800 - $110,000 = 120,800

Now you have to pay the yearly mortgage which is 5606 x 12 =67272

120800-67272= 53,028 left over to live in.

Well don't you need a car to go to work? What about a car for the wife? Car insurance? You are looking at 1200-1500 a month, if you buy a newer car and have great credit with insurance.

(1300x12) - (53028)= 37,028

You see how quickly it goes.

So the thing is I'm not sure if you can put a down-payment on a house less than 20%. That will take off on the mortgage (save you an additional 12-15k) ( I also assumed an interest rate of 4.37% for the 30-year fixed and I believe if you put more down you get a better interest rate)

Who pays a down payment out of a single year's savings?

Not many people. I expect that the more normal situation is years of apartment living, saving up, and then paying the down payment as a dual-income couple possibly with assistance from parents.

I assumed, that a person who would be moving there and would be buying a home and or have no savings...

I know hard for some people to imagine, but alot of people have no savings , leave paycheck to paycheck

Yeah, but unless you're putting the down payment on a house every year, that's an extra 110K (post-tax!) dollars every year after the first. I can't imagine how I could spend that much money, especially since the mortgage and car payments are already taken care of.

You are correct.

yeah you pay the down payment once. so this guys saying next year that person has ¢150k to live on.

no problem

You only pay 33% federal income tax on the income over $191,650. If you corrected for that, the amount left over would still be close to the median income for a family in the U.S ($59k).

You are correct.

https://smartasset.com/taxes/california-tax-calculator#NIGzB...

Total income after federal and state taxes is $241,739.

This is only true until the Republicans exciting new tax plan goes into effect. It kills the State and Local Tax deduction (SALT) to allow them to cut the Corporate tax rate to 20% and eliminate the estate tax while only increasing the federal deficit by $1.5 Trillion ($1 Trillion if you account for increased economic growth).

It's pretty unreasonable to believe you should be able to just move somewhere and put 20% down on a >$1M house after working for one year... If you are making $400k a year, you can rent a modest place for 2-3 years, and then you will be totally fine and able to buy a pretty nice home without issue.

Your math is way off. First, you don't pay the full 42% on all your income. The effective date will likely be in the 25-30% range. Then you assume that the borrower will keep paying 10% down payment every year. That doesn't make sense.

You (and the others in this subthread who are splitting financial hairs) are both missing and proving my point pretty hard. Which is that I'm not so money driven to care about doubling my earnings from their already high level, and more importantly, that the people who are out there do care about this and are happy, that is just fine, but that I personally find those opportunities and the people they please mighty drab and repellent. I hope that clears things up. Please re-read my first comment.

I'd stop going to work if they stopped paying me. Every unit of comp I am paid (and don't spend) now is 1+ units of comp I don't need to earn later. All other things being equal, getting paid more is frikkin' awesome. If you can live a life you'd want and make a lot, too, I highly recommend it.

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