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Comment by crowdpleaser | Hacker News Reader

>Aside from housing, cost of living isn't that different, at least if you don't have kids. Things you buy from Amazon cost the same. Maybe it'd be a different situation if I had children.

Transportation costs are much higher in the bay area than normal parts of the country. Gas is usually $1/gallon more expensive (bay area electricity is about 2x as costly as the national average), car insurance is high, and the congestion is substantial.

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It's very non-uniform though. My 10-year-old car has 30k miles on it; at 40mpg and $3.50/gal gas, that's about $260/year on gas. That's because I lived 2 miles from work and biked in during the summer while I was at Google, and I've been working from home while I'm at my startup.

A lot of FANG employees pay nothing for transportation because they take the shuttle and don't have a car.

If they live in a place with walking access to a shuttle (and enough walking distance amenities that they don't need a car), they're paying a lot in rent.

I wager you're paying more for car insurance than you spend on gas - car insurance is more expensive in the Bay Area than the rest of the country.

The price of gas certainly affects the contingent workers (guards, cooks, cleaners) whose work schedules don't line up with the shuttles.

I pay $30/month in an average month for electricity and $0/month for gasoline (TBH I don’t own a car, so a more realistic measure is I’ve probably spent about $50 this month on a Lyft ride, new brakes for my bike and a few transit rides). The point being, energy doesn’t have to be expensive if you aren’t blasting the heat, driving everywhere and doing who knows what else.

Also, housing is always the majority of what "cost of living" even means.

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