Is this a joke? $350k annual income puts you in the top 1% of earners in the US. Surely you don't believe less than 1% of people in the US can live comfortably and have a safety net, do you?
Startups in tech aren’t paying close to family raising salaries in the Bay. FANG does albeit reliant on stock continuing to grow like it did last decade. I am personally studying math/algos/leetcode and getting good at interviews. Its sad because it takes up all of my free time that I could spend building. It sucks to make $170k and feel like you can’t make it somewhere.
I finally had a breakthrough with my fiance last night and we are talking about moving to Salt Lake City! My current job would allow me to go remote and there does seem to be a scene there. $170k is more than enough.
Also, Phoenix is pretty reasonable cost of living wise and they have a growing number of opportunities tech wise. June 15 - Oct 15 suck but you get used to it.
The Bay Area has a combined population of over 7 million, with a mean household income of $137k. It sounds like you have unreasonable expectations if you need at least $300k to live comfortably.
https://sf.curbed.com/2019/2/25/18239828/report-middle-class...
https://smartasset.com/retirement/average-salary-in-san-fran...
https://www.sfgate.com/expensive-san-francisco/article/SF-ho...
It sounds like you either don't live in the Bay Area or you make about what I make and haven't realized if you don't make $300k and your options aren't very pleasant.
They are mostly hiring fresh grads anyway, who won't be raising a family anytime soon, so it's not a huge problem for them.
https://censusreporter.org/profiles/31000US41860-san-francis...
Median household income: $108k
Owner-occupied dwellings: 55%
I could pretty comfortably raise a family of 6 on $100K in a midwestern city, or a family of 6 on $80K in the rural midwest/south. Without sufficient retirement savings, mind you, and my safety net would be non-exisent. I'd need at least another $30K-$50K on those numbers to build a strong safety net (remember, it's a safety net for 2 parents + 4 kids, not for one person...).
Doing the same in SFBA would probably require at least $250K. Maybe more.
> Surely you don't believe less than 1% of people in the US can live comfortably and have a safety net, do you?
The number is larger than 1%, but probably still smaller than you think.
The average American definitely doesn't have a sufficient safety net. IME, the average American raising more than 1 or 2 kids almost certainly doesn't have a sufficient safety net.
So, no, you don't need to be in the top 1% of earners in the US to have a safety net. But if you have a large family, you probably have to be in the top 10% to live comfortably and have a safety net and retirement.
Why? Each child might consume, generously, an extra 5k of food and 2.5k of clothes and other inputs per year. This is an increment of $30k on top of housing. For housing, you could add one or at most two bedrooms for four children. This does substantially raise housing costs, but there are still places in Sunnyvale for $1M or just above that that have three bedrooms. They may not be the nicest houses, but they would do.
So, before you have kids, save your downpayment. On a 250k salary, this would take one to three years if you're thoughtful about it. Then buy the house and start popping out babies. Times will be tight if you need to pay for childcare, but that's a defined and short period of the childrens' lives. You're not going to be taking lavish vacations, but if you wanted those, you wouldn't have four kids anyway.
Ego seems to be at play here, a bit. No one wants to admit that they're in the same boat as the people sending their kids to "those schools," but they are. The numbers don't lie. Looking on the bright side: admissions look at class rank. An outstanding student at a mediocre school has better odds than a mediocre student at a "good" school.
My elementary and middle schools were 4/10 and 5/10 on "Greatschools" in North Carolina.
Judging by this subthread, it's a school where people who 'merely' make 170k/year send their children to.
You really don't want to get your kids mixed up with that kind of hoi polloi. /snark