So how do all the people making under $250k survive in those HCOL areas? It still seems lifestyle choices are a factor.
It's always been an unspoken truth behind the "the people with really high student debt have huge earning potential" counterargument for student-debt cancellation: yup, they do, those are your doctors (in particular). They go into tons of debt to get there, they forego many years of income due to an extended educational/credentialing period. And generally, so few people are willing to take that risk that we already have a massive shortage of them.
And unless you reform the educational system, the cost of that student-loan debt all gets rolled into the cost of their services and we all pay it. And it does show up as income in this fashion. It's one of the reasons that fixing the problem is so tough - it's really at the nexus of several broken systems that have complex problems with many stakeholders who are all reticent to reform.
Where do you get $200k from? The average student loan debt for a bachelors degree is $26-36k, depending on type of institution: https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=900
https://educationdata.org/average-graduate-student-loan-debt....
This doesn't include people who get graduate degrees paid for by their parents or by the company they work for. I got a Masters and didn't take on any debt because the company paid for most of it and I only needed to pay a few hundred in fees each semester.
Now is a good time for me to say that it was still a waste of money and time. It was no benefit to me and didn't increase my comp. It would have been better to just work 2 extra hours at my job every day instead.
Both the share of the population with any student loan debt and the average student loan debt to income ratio consistently goes down with increasing income (even though the average student loan debt itself goes up with income until you reach the top decile, which has lower average student loan debt than the next highest decile.)
* There are more subsidies for the poor. It sounds funny to type, but the $250k families might have a harder time to make ends meet than the $60k ones. Childcare being a big example. This is specific to a HCOL city like NYC where subsidized child care starts at 6 weeks old, but a $250k family will probably be spending $3k+ per child per month
Yeah it sounds funny to type because it's not true
I make 235k in the bay area and just rent + daycare for 2 kids would be 10k a month - on a net income of 12k a month.
Most likely they live quite far from where you are eating and with more roommates than you had in college. Or they still live at home, outside of the city in the suburbs they grew up in.
You don't even have to ask servers, go ahead talk to non-engineers/PMs at your company. They all likely both don't live in the city you work in and have an uncomfortable amount of roommates.
And maybe you can write off "living without roommates in your 30s" as a "lifestyle choice", but it certainly represents a decline in the standard of living from my expectations growing up.
For instance, I teach high school English. Cost of living in my city is 40% below SF, but I still couldn’t afford to live in the community where I teach. I commute from a cheaper area. Even then, I am actively planning an exit from teaching after this year because my wages aren’t keeping up with rising costs (10 yoe, TC 52k).