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Comment by dylrich | Hacker News Reader

You make ~$90,000 a year and are barely getting by with no debt or children? Where do you live?

Silly Valley, probably.

I was making 90k in the Boston area within the past few years.

On that salary I was able to support two adults, pay back student loans faster than needed, max out my 401k (company match up to $10k or something like that) and build saving at a rate of about $1k/mo, go out to dinner every 3wk or so and have enough to direct meaningful amounts into my hobbies and other discretionary spending.

That said, if you try to live like you're wealthy (shopping at whole foods, $2k+ rent, going out to drink, take uber everywhere, expensive cable, phone and internet, etc, etc) and generally hemorrhage money I can see how one could live little better than paycheck to paycheck on 90k in the Boston area.

One thing that probably distinguishes Silicon Valley from other high-cost areas is that it's almost uniquely difficult to get out of the high cost zone while maintaining anything like a reasonable commute.

Metro Boston/Cambridge is pretty expensive these days as are some especially tony suburbs but you can get out toward reasonable property/rents relatively quickly. And, with the exception of newer outposts of companies from SV and elsewhere, a lot of existing tech is outside the city anyway.

In the Bay Area, $90K is not sufficient. A one bedroom might cost $3500/month - that’s $40K of your net income.

If you are making $90k and living in SF you should be looking at studios or for roommates, not at one bedrooms. A one bedroom in a city like SF is a luxury.

Isn't that kind of the point of the original comment? That cost of living rises by location in almost perfect parallel to wages? So even though they make a relative lot of money, their standard of living doesn't actually increase much.

Wages don't rise exactly like that. There's a threshold under which it doesn't make much sense at all. If you're making under 100K - and certainly under 50k - I wouldn't be surprised if you could be much more financially comfortable in, say, Dallas. Chop your rent budget in half, lower your tax burden, you'll probably get a bigger chunk of monthly spending money.

No, your standard of living absolutely won’t increase. I would actually say almost everyone living in that kind of city is (perhaps unknowingly?) choosing to sacrifice in that column. Depending on what you value, however, your quality of life may increase dramatically. And any efforts in frugality will likely yield a greater absolute return than they would in a less costly locale.

You can’t build wealth on $90K in Monaco either, but that says something about Monaco, not about “capitalism”.

That's what I don't get. People with high rent are typically living in one of the most expensive areas of the country. They are still wealthy, they are just spending it on living there.

90K is comfortably above the median per capita income literally anywhere in the Bay Area:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_California_locations_b...

I'm not saying 90K is a lot, but it is complete hyperbole to say it isn't sufficient to live in the Bay. 90K is right up there with the highest median household incomes.

$3500 if you want to live in a new building. I've been looking at 1 bedrooms and rent has come down in SF. Not hard to find one for less than $2500 now (in a good neighborhood).

No matter where you work in the Bay, there are decent 1br apartments within a fifteen minute bike ride that cost less than $2500 a month.

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