Comment by arcticbull | Hacker News Reader

Comment by arcticbull | Hacker News Reader

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Consider that your cost of living may be dramatically higher in the US and what you can do with what you have left over may not leave you any better off.

Certainly, you're not talking about working in the Bay Area because a $115K total compensation is borderline impossible to live on anywhere between SF and SJ.

Your thinking could be right, however I would say it depends heavily on where you're living now and where you plan on moving to. 70K CAD in Ottawa or Montreal is going to get you infinitely further than 115K USD in SF or SJ. You'd probably need closer to 200K in SF to match that lifestyle.

Instead of comparing your $70K CAD salary at home by converting to $52K USD at market exchange rates, you should adjust it via purchasing power parity (as you are looking to figure out how far your new pay would take you in your new home relative to what you have now -- not make a purchase in the other country with foreign money). $70K CAD, adjusted for PPP is $75K USD. If you did the same notional conversion for $115K USD in San Francisco (where real estate is 7X the national average price per square foot) you'd probably wind up at $50K.

Now if you're planning to save money and send it home, that's different.

> Certainly, you're not talking about working in the Bay Area because a $115K total compensation is borderline impossible to live on anywhere between SF and SJ.

People raise families on less than that. If this person is single, they can certainly live very comfortably in the Peninsula.

Sure that's fair, that may be hyperbolic (outside SF and SJ), but I stand by the idea that 70K CAD in Canada will go just as far if not further than 115K USD in the Bay Area.

Let's break it down:

- 70K in Ontario per year is $4400CAD per month after tax.

- A two bedroom apartment in the Glebe in Ottawa (~Mission type vibe) is about $1800-2000 per month on Zumper, leaving you with $2200-2400 after tax.

On the other hand:

- 115K in California is $6400USD per month after tax.

- A two bedroom apartment in the Mission is $3800-4500 per month on Hotpads in the heart of COVID after a 10% y/y drop, leaving you with as little as $1900-2600 per month after tax.

Even before you factor in that everything is more expensive in San Francisco, you'll see quite quickly that you're better off taking a 70K/yr CAD Ottawa salary than a 115K/yr San Francisco salary. You'll have a better lifestyle and you'll probably be happier too.

The math changes when you make a lot of money, I suppose, or if you're going to send it back, but otherwise, it's by no means sufficient to use the exchange rate as a proxy for your lifestyle (50K vs. 115K).

[edit] Not to mention the definition of a low-income household in the Bay Area is $117,000 so, while close, $115,000 is actually considered low income. [1] On the other hand, the definition of a low income household in Ottawa is $56,000 CAD, so you'd actually be 25% over the threshold.

[1] https://fortune.com/2018/06/27/bay-area-six-figures-housing-...

First off, you're probably earning more than 115k in the Bay Area.

I moved from Canada and went from $90k CAD to $180k USD. Even with the high cost of rent, I can save more here than what my take home pay was in Canada. I'll admit though that I don't have kids and I don't have health conditions. That would change the equation a lot.

Additionally, the ceiling is higher here. I felt like I was approaching the ceiling in Canada unless I wanted to move to Toronto.

I agree, I was specifically using the numbers OP provided without geographic hint and saying that blanket rules don’t apply and you should really use PPP instead of exchange rate to compare against a notional dollar — and consider the PPP of the city or state you want to work in the US.

What matters isn’t how much you’re making but how far it will take you in the new home you’re considering as compared to how far your current salary will take you in your current home. Of course, if you’re making $500K-600K as a staff engineer in the Bay Area there’s a different conversation to be had.

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