Ask HN: Any tips for living cheaply in SF? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Any tips for living cheaply in SF?

45 pointsmannicken77 comments

Hi!

I'm a young wannabe-hacker looking to move for a summer to SF area. I'm working on a web project (Rails) and will try to reach ramen profitability over summer. If I fail I'll go back to living with my parents/continue college in the fall.

I can't move until June 13 since I'll only be 18 then (and be able to rent). So 2.5 months of living.

I already have around $3000 (paid taxes recently) and mainly telecommute part-time on C++/COM gigs. I might continue working with my current employer down there but I don't think I should rely on that. I'd rather rely on what I already have rather than hope I don't get cut off :)

Can somewhere answer these questions:

a) Will it be easier to pick up some part-time C++/Rails gigs in SF bay than Seattle? I'd really like to have some continuous source of income so I'd have money to come back/extend my runway.

b) Is it possible to live on $1000/month in SF? I subtract $600 for transit gas, emergency, etc.

For the rest, I summed up rent+utilities to be around $700, $100 for food, and $200 for everything else.

Am I correct in my calculations? Is there anything I'm missing?

c) How is the weather down there? Is it much hotter than Seattle?

e) Am I fucking crazy?

Thank you much.

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If I fail I'll go back to living with my parents/continue college in the fall.

Why not just do it from home? I don't really see the benefit of moving to SF. You'll reach Ramen profitability a lot more easily if your costs are $0. You might even start college with something that most students can only dream of: income.

I'd say it would be 10x easier to do it in SF/bay area. You'll find 10x more entrepreneurs and hacker types. This will help you learn a lot more in a lot shorter period of time. And probably have more fun.

I've found job and contract opportunities are 3-4x more plentiful so you could probably earn a decent income on the side.

I don't think you can live on $1,000/month in SF. The absolute lowest I was able to live on for 1 month was $1,500. I think $2,000/month would be a much better min to shoot for. If you're here for 2.5 months, then you only need to make $2k on the side to have that.

I would recommend trying to get a job or internship and working on your project at night. If it's a website, it will take time to get users and crystallize anyway, and you really can't speed that up by spending 60-100 hours a week on it. So why not spend ~20 hours a week on the site and spend the rest getting paid for things people need right now?

my 2 cents.

> I don't think you can live on $1,000/month in SF

I think you can, if you really want to, and it sounds like he does, so I say: go for it.

You can get a room share for $600. http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/roo/

That leaves $13 per day to spend, which is tight, but livable if you really want it. Suggestions: bring a cheap bike, so transport costs nothing; make your own lunches; $5 burrito dinners, etc; work from the public library and/or work from coffee shops and spend as little as possible/nothing; go to all the free events (there are lots, and some are free for the first x visitors) - some even feed you for free (saves $5), and give you booze.

And if you do come to SF, I'll stand you one Chicken Shawarma for dinner, because I think moving to SF for the summer when you're 18 is ballsy, so I'll put $8 behind that. (I spent the summer I turned 18 alone working in Scunthorpe, UK - believe me, SF will be better..)

if you come to SF you can also hit me up for a free dinner.

It's a trap.

Being somewhere in person helps a lot. I think it is worth moving just for the better network. Networking is exactly how you can maintain a steady stream of projects.

Sure, but this guy is 18... I'd say, go to university and enjoy life first. You can also build an excellent network of both friends and professional acquaintances there, and it's a lot of fun, and you learn a lot of cool things that you'd never learn as an entrepreneur. And it'll probably make you a more interesting person too ("I left school at 18 and have been working in start-ups ever since" is pretty one-dimensional).

If he was out of uni, then fair enough, go startupping or freelancing and avoid getting a regular job if you can... but at 18, seriously, just go enjoy university life, have sex, take drugs, take philosophy classes, and all that...

I don't really see the point of sacrificing your university life to go freelancing. If your start-up is taking off big time, AND it requires you to stay on it full time, then fine... but to give up uni to "make some contacts"... that's silly. The contacts can still be made 4 years later, there's really no need to go there right this minute.

There is nothing exclusive with working on a startup and sex / drugs / reading philosophy, etc.

It is wrong to say "go to uni to do X" if there is nothing stopping you from doing X outside of university. Also, avoiding the infantilizing effects of university would do lots of people good.

It certainly requires dedicated to learn as an autodidact, but I'd bet many people could get a better applied computer science education in 4 years by trying to become an active developer.

The exception is stuff like math (and math needed for CS like machine learning and graphics).

For personal context, I want to undergrad & grad school, and learned a lot of math required for the CS areas I specialized in.

I'd bet many people could get a better applied computer science education in 4 years by trying to become an active developer.

I'd say perhaps a better applied programming education. Programming != CS. The things which I learned in my CS education and the things that I learned in real-world hacking have a relatively small overlap, however, having that CS background did open up some possibilities for working on interesting problems.

That's not to say that you have to go through formal education to get a good grounding in the theoretical elements of CS, but it does facilitate it.

This entirely depends on the kinds of problems you try to solve.

There is nothing exclusive with working on a startup and sex / drugs / reading philosophy, etc.

Well, there is, because you won't have all the free time that you have as a student (which, btw, can also be used to start your start-up and acquire all that experience).

It is wrong to say "go to uni to do X" if there is nothing stopping you from doing X outside of university. Also, avoiding the infantilizing effects of university would do lots of people good.

There is also nothing to stop you from doing Y while you're also doing X at uni... So why not do both?

It certainly requires dedicated to learn as an autodidact, but I'd bet many people could get a better applied computer science education in 4 years by trying to become an active developer.

I'll agree with you on CS - I did physics, however, and I certainly wouldn't have learned all that outside of uni. I personally don't advise studying a computing-related subject if you want that to be your career - as you say, you'll self-teach all the useful computing stuff when you need it.

Beware that a lot of networking events take place in 21+ places (read: bars) so that may or may not be a problem.

You're planning ahead a lot more than most kids that move to SF for a summer. Most end up homeless on haight street before calling their parents for a ticket home (I've hosted two separate street kids who moved here with starry eyes and ended up on the street before they went home...) -- so kudos for planning ahead a bit more than them :)

I moved here with $7,000 + a $2,000/month contract gig and settled in nicely. You're cutting it close, but it's possible. My $0.02x4:

(a) It's possible once you have the network and people who will vouch for your skills. Be aware that CL is full of red herrings; people are not hiring as many contractors in the downturn, but it still happens. Expect to see far less C++ than RoR/python/PHP.

(b) It will be challenging, mentally and physically, but it's possible if you're strategic about it. $700 can get you a sublet __if_you_look_long_and_hard__, but $100 for food is tough. You probably won't have much of a kitchen to prepare your own food. When I went through YCombinator I lived off of Vietnamese sandwiches and Dim Sum for days at a time; you'll get sick of it but $3 sandwiches and $4 for a plate of dim sum is hard to beat. $7 mission burritos are also a good bet, El Farolito's has burritos that'll easily feed you for a whole day.

c) SF is going to be cold during the summer. You should have been able to find this out, it's no longer 1968 ;)

e) You're in high school, you get to be crazy. :)

This is the best advice so far.

I want to chime in and say DON'T move to the east bay or one of the cheap places on the peninsula. The 'savings' are misleading. There's a good chance you'll spend as much in transport as you'll save in rent.. For example, from downtown Berkeley to 16th and Mission is $3.55 each way. If you go back and forth every day, it's $210/m. Thus if you find a $500/m room in Berkeley but you still go into the city all the time, it's the same as having a $700 room in the Mission. Also, there is little chance of finding a cheaper room in the east bay that is within reasonable walking distance from BART. The east bay is way more spread out and chances are that you'll have to walk quite a ways to get to the BART. In fact I'm going to risk criticism and say that anyplace you find a shared room cheaper than $700 in the east bay is going to be a sketchy neighborhood. YMMV, but the shady parts of berkeley are the only places in the bay area I've ever been mugged or physically threatened by people.

I speak from experience. When I moved here in 2001 I paid $700 for a place in Berkeley, which was about as cheap as it got. I worked on 17th and Harrison in the outer mission. I had to walk almost 30min to get to Ashby BART each way. If something happened late into the evening I'd have to crash on a friend's couch or take a $40 cab ride back to Berkeley cuz the BART stops running at midnight. It mostly sucked.

I don't want to hate on the east bay, it has it's charms. But unless your job and social life is all on that side of the bay, it's better to live in the city. You can definitely find a $700 room somewhere in SF. That's what I paid for a room in the mission until 2006 (then moved into my own place).

Also don't drive here, having a car is a huge expense in SF. My car was paid for and it still cost me around $400/m for parking, gas and parking tickets. You almost always get a virgin america flight from SEA to SFO for $49 if you travel on any day besides friday or sunday.

If I were doing this I'd bring nothing except a backpack with a few clothes (you can buy more stuff here if you need it) and a laptop. Then I'd just float around different cheap places on AirBNB until I figured out what I was doing.

I'm planning to sleep in the car if something happens. And I can't work on a laptop, I'd have to bring my large 22'' display here, and keyboards, so I'd end up walking around with a very very huge backpack :)

Yeah, I want to chime in. Not only is having a car expensive, but it even when you can afford it, it does not make anything easier. You don't necessarily get parking spaces closer to your destination than where the bus stop is. Often you're walking farther to and from your spot, than where the bus/MUNI/BART/cab would drop you off.

Also, in a city, you're always having to move your car even when you don't need to drive it anywhere for street cleaning days. If you're lucky enough to have a garage for it, it will be hundreds of dollars a month. You're already cutting it pretty close with your budget. Really, really, really don't bring it.

Otherwise, I think your plan sounds amazing, and I hope you post here from time to time about your experiences.

I didn't read the car part in your original post. Your car is an additional "mouth to feed", in terms of lodging and gas. If things go crazy, you should have enough $$ for some days of hotel and a flight home.

Bringing a car full of computer stuff is a liability; unless you're doing lots of graphic design I'd drop the display and rock a cheap laptop.

Good luck dude.

I live in SF, it's a great city, and if "living in SF/bay-area" is your dream, go for it.

But that's not quite the same dream as "reach ramen profitability on my web project". In fact, the two dreams may conflict. Moving to and learning a new area takes a bunch of time and money, and the bay area (especially SF proper) is expensive -- compared to Seattle or living with family.

For a young techie, the biggest benefit I could imagine being in the bay area versus Seattle is a larger job market and scene of potential collaborators. But are those what you need to make your project ramen-profitable -- or do those opportunities represent other paths entirely?

http://www.paulgraham.com/startuphubs.html

This, and "I-really-want-to-try-to-live-Cali-and-get-out-of-my-parents'-bedroom" reason. I think this is enough to spend $3000.

Basically, I'm making myself a little YC experience :)

From what I gather, the 'YC Experience' includes easy access to lots of people, a big network of founders, pg & company's advice, and a lot of other stuff - that's why so many people are keen to get in. I honestly don't know how much of that you can recreate on your own in a short period of time, but my guess is 'not too much'.

One thing might be to consider a shorter trip down there to see if you can connect with some people in the course of a couple weeks, scout out places to live, and so on, and then do a more permanent move at a later date.

BTW, Berkeley might be a better option in some ways - with students leaving for the summer, maybe you could swing some cheaper housing there. It's not a bad place, either.

That's reasonable, just be sure to seek out the same sort of peer group, learning curriculum, and maniacal focus on execution-while-living-cheaply. (Startupness is not just acquired by osmosis once in the silicon valley air.) And remember too YC's biases against single-founder startups and doing other things (like contracting) simultaneously... I believe those are a key part of their formula, which helps offset what could otherwise derail young startupper migrants to the bay area.

See if you can hook up with a YC team and sublet a room with them or something, keeps costs low and keeps you surrounded by the right sort of people.

I’d do it if I were you.

I won’t lie. In my opinion the chances of success are slim to none. But this is the best time of your life to take a chance. The more adult you get the less able you are to take huge chances. So as long as you hang on to enough money to get yourself home should things go bad I don’t see a down side (where as if you don't you could end up regretting it for the rest of your life)

That said, two pieces of advice....

First, get this book: http://www.amazon.com/Ask-Moon-Get-Percy-Ross/dp/0722529465/...

Percy Ross went from nothing to being a millionare and he attributes most of that to getting help from the right people. In that book he gives his 10 rules on how to ask for people's help and get it. The most important thing to remember if you do this is that 90% of the people in the bay area tech scene have been where you are (aka chasing a dream). If you need help and you ask right I suspect most will do what they can to help you succeed.

Second, look into hostels: http://www.hostels.com/us.ca.sf.html

Hostels are basically cheap dorms for anyone to stay in. They’re not very popular in the U.S. but in Europe there are tons of them and they serve young people with little money very well. The bay area has more than just about any U.S. city so you should be able to find a cheap place to sleep (and most have free wifi)

Anyway, hope it helps.

I highly recommend the Hostelling International hostel at 312 Mason St. It's like $25/night, super-clean, and they feed you breakfast, too! I've stayed there a few times while going to WWDC.

I don't, and could tell you bad stories about it. I used to manage another hostel (below) and we got quite a few 'refugees' who had had a bad experience at the Mason one. I rate the International Guest House at 2976 23rd street. Call ahead and see if they have a spot free. There's only room for about 24 people. It's cheaper, there's free coffee, and if you have the right attitude it's easier to extend your stay (frankly, this basically depends on whether you're cool or not). It helps if you make up some BS like you just came back from Europe or something - they want you to have some evidence of internetional travel if space is at a premium.

Downsides/danger include attractive people of both sexes, easy availability of booze and weed, failure to complete coding projects because you stayed up until 3am the previous night. The main benefit is that the place is low turnover, so your friendships there aren't transient like at a lot of bigger hostels. Mind you, I haven't kept in touch for about 4 years, and lots of places go through different phases.

HI hostels have a maximum stay restriction. I think it's around two weeks. They certainly don't let you camp out for an entire summer.

I'd assume he has sometime line where, if he doesn't start getting work within the first couple of weeks, he gives up. The Hostel is just there to give him the chance to get his feet on the ground and try to drum up some connections

I just saw some pictures of that place. Looks great! Great tip thanks!

Why? Is there really a point to moving to SF? I see no plan here and really no reason for you to take such a leap, so why bother wasting your money just to move locations for the summer. Anything you would be doing there could be done from where you are. Save your $3000, continue working on what you have, and if it seems to be a good idea, invest it into that product. You gain nothing by moving there (unless you find actual work). I really don't understand why everyone here is telling you to do it. I know at 18 it can seem glamorous to do something so crazy but if you sit back and think about it for a second, its pretty stupid. If you have a finished product and have something to gain by moving there (like finding people to work with or for you on it) then I could see it. If you were simply planning on looking for work then I could see it. I just see no plan and it seems like a big waste to just do something so irrational.

notdarkey,

Those people who are telling him to do it probably have done it themselves (that includes me). After moving in the Bay area, I asked myself why I didn't do it earlier.

I have lived in 4 US cities and no city comes close to the startup environment in SF. It's like watching the Superbowl in person versus watching it in your own house. The energy is just different.

He's 18. If he fails, so what. Sometimes, it's better to regret things you have done than regrets things you didn't do. (Ok that doesn't include committing crimes.)

I think your argument is pretty one-sided. This is clearly a decision people have to make for themselves.

(Background: I came from grad school in Seattle to SF for my job.)

(a) Freelance work is heavily dependent on contacts. If you don't have contacts then it's a crapshoot. Maybe you'll luck into something, maybe you won't.

(b) For housing, scan http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/sub/ ; $700 is not impossible, but you'll be living in a spare room of someone's house, and even then that's the low end & you should expect compromises. SF housing is much more expensive than Seattle, as in 2x the cost for equivalent space. I don't know where you got the idea that the costs are comparable (are you mistakenly including East Bay or South Bay prices instead of SF city prices only?). $100 for food is doable if you know how to buy cheap food in bulk and cook it yourself. As for "everything else", heat/electric/broadband can easily consume close to $200 if you're living alone. In a share it should be less, but you should ask about utility costs in your housing situation. On that budget, you should not count on spending any money on entertainment. There's some free entertainment to be had if you're scrappy, but expect to get most of your entertainment from walking around the city or riding your bike through the parks.

(d) [you skipped (d)]

(e) SF is an expensive place to live. If this is your 2.5 months of adventure before college, then you just have to weigh whether you're willing to pay $3k for that experience. (Not a bad way to spend it actually.) If you're really trying to bootstrap into a sustainable living situation, SF isn't the best place to go with as little savings as you have; there's too much danger of burning through your seed capital before you get revenue-positive ;). I get the sense that for you it's more the former than the latter --- that is, there's not much downside if you fail --- so what the hell, go for it.

In response to b, c and e, I have one word. Oakland.

Oakland is a fine place to live, and I live there, but you have to watch the transit situation when living there. If you are too far from a BART or an express cross-bay bus, you will burn a lot of time waiting for bus transfers. See 511.org or Google Transit when researching potential places to live.

I really like some parts of Oakland (Rockridge in particular) but the good parts are nearly as expensive as SF. The inexpensive parts are inconvenient to anywhere a hacker wants to be unless you have a car.

Contact Justin.tv. They're looking for summer interns

Living on $1k in the city sounds rough. You'll probably be so stressed for money and busy that you won't even be able to enjoy it. If you're focus right now is building your website, don't distract yourself with contract work and city life. I would recommend just staying with your folks and getting down to it. Being in the city won't make your website any more successful.

But if you're dead set on coming out here, I would recommend looking in the east bay or the peninsula. Stay close to a BART or caltrain station so you can get into the city easily for networking events & to meet with clients.

If you really want to live in SF proper i would recommend looking for a room in the Tenderloin (despite its rep, its a great place to live, i loved it... lots of cheap food and close to everything) or in the southern or eastern part of the mission.

I wish you well, and I don't think your plan is totally crazy, but I think $3K is not enough runway for SF. $5K is better. But at $3K, everything has to go right. A single disaster would ruin everything, like:

- Your freelance gigs not paying you in time - Finding that your new roommates are impossible to live with - Getting tossed out of your new place when your housemate wants his girlfriend to move in - Some unexpected expense (car accident, hospital visit)

Also, you will not believe what some people are offering for those $700/month apartments. On Craigslist at that price, you might find generally terrible places with sketchy roommates and your "room" may literally be a former closet. Believe me, I have seen them. I am very frugal about rent so I have investigated those sorts of listings. There are $700/month rooms that are halfway decent but those don't tend to pop up on Craigslist. Working your friend network in SF might be the best option.

And, your estimates of expenses are too low.

Still, if you are looking to just break even, it might be worth a try. Just be prepared to go home or try to get a parental loan (if that's possible) if it doesn't work out.

Ditto on the false economy of living in the peninsula. Unless you are trying to get a job at one of the Palo Alto or Mountain View area startups.

There are a lot of cool things going on in Oakland so I would consider that as a possibility, but it's also more complex for a newcomer to figure out a decent place to live, and transit is considerably more expensive.

In a down economy, with huge unemployment in the valley (lots of competitors, unless you're unique in some way?) are you not better investing in yourself by continuing college?

Regarding the weather, I've lived in both places, San Francisco is much colder in the summer than Seattle. San Francisco, and most of coastal Northern California, barely has seasons. Though Silicon Valley and the East Bay (Oakland, San Jose, etc) do get warmer, San Francisco, being surrounded by water on 3 sides, just doesn't get hot in the summer beyond a random handful of days. (On the the other hand, it also barely has winter :D) Bring your jacket(s)!

I lived for seven years in Seattle, and there hasn't been a day since I've moved here that I've missed the weather.

The SF bay gets its summer later than Seattle, but it lasts longer, and the rest of the year is massively more enjoyable. Everyone here complains about the chilly weather in the spring, but a bit of springtime chill is far better than 10 months of gloom.

That's like a huuuuuge PLUS as I really don't like hot air. Now I have another reason to go: get away from hot Seattlish weather.

> Now I have another reason to go: get away from hot Seattlish weather

As someone who lives in Atlanta, this sentence about made me spit coffee out my nose... =)

(FWIW, I'd love to move to Seattle area, but it's just not in the cards for me.)

I moved here when I was 18 (in 2006) with $1500 in the bank (and no parents to fall back on.) It's tough but doable. I ended up taking a job with an existing startup, but at the time my first priority was being able to eat :)

If I were you, I would not move here to do the solo founder thing without having plenty of connections; you need a good support network (which will hook you up with contract gigs too.) Bring a co-founder or hook up with some people who are already here and can introduce you.

That said, just being young and having the balls to move out here and give it a shot will open doors for you. Network aggressively, who knows?

As far as tips go: You can get a room for $500-$700 a month with varying levels of sketchiness; there are enough hacker houses around that you might find something helpful if you trawl CL long enough. Food is a matter of how gnarly you're willing to get :)

Don't bring your car and don't bring a bunch of gear; parking will cost you upwards of $150/mo and it's never included, and gearwise there's a non-trivial possibility you'll need to move fast if you're doing a cheap sublet or hosteling it.

Check out the Hacker House v2 http://tinyurl.com/cvtgyu. Pretty reasonable rent.

Sure you can do it. From 2002-2004, I lived on about that much per month, but it wasn't easy.

-Rent was under $500 - you can still get these prices. Sublet a room in a house with some other young people. - Electricity/internet bill - $35. - Cell phone - $50. - Bring down your bicycle and bike for transport - Free - If you cook every day, and eat mostly vegetarian and rice - not just MSG-infused ramen - you can live on $5 a day - that's $150 for the month. - Give yourself $250 for very infrequent meals out, beers, or BART/Caltrain trips - and surprises.

I'm guessing most of the people who said you can't do it for $1000 never tried. If you have to, you make it work.

Summer's a great time to live in SF for cheap - lots of free outdoor activities. 2 months isn't that long to tough it out. Come back again and enjoy the great city when you hit it big :)

Prices have gone up a bit since 2004. The cheapest shared living situations I've heard about here are in the $700/month range, and those tend to be dicey and hard to find.

Sometimes you can find a shared room for less, especially in the Haight. Those old houses have huge attics often with 3-4 hipsters in them. Would make it hard to work from home though.

"a) Will it be easier to pick up some part-time C++/Rails gigs in SF bay than Seattle? I'd really like to have some continuous source of income so I'd have money to come back/extend my runway."

--Probably. As a rough lithmus test, you could run searches on startuply/ craigslist for both cities and compare the number of returns.

"b) Is it possible to live on $1000/month in SF? I subtract $600 for transit gas, emergency, etc."

--It's possible. 100 for food seems low ($3 per day). A big expense is rent; if you could cut that down you'd be better off.

"c) How is the weather down there? Is it much hotter than Seattle?"

--Not sure, I'm from NYC =)

"e) Am I fucking crazy?"

--No. And keep us in touch!

Suggest working on how you're going to meet people now -- figure out which events you'll want to go to, which places to hang out, etc. That will help with contacts, which in turn should help with picking up consulting or a formal internship. You can then use this to help plan where you want to live and whether you need a car. Also, as pointed out in the thread, some venues are regrettably 21+.

In particular, a lot of events happen on the peninsula in the Palo Alto/Mountain View area. For example, SuperHappyDevHouse is something you probably want to attend, and it's recently been at places like Sun. While getting there by CalTrain is possible, you can't stay late without being badly stranded. So if you find yourself wanting to visit places in that area, you will want access to a car. Bringing your own is an option, there's also car sharing services like ZipCar or CityCarShare.

You might also find it fun to drop by Noisebridge, a hacker space near 16th and Mission, to see what's happening. Circuit hacking every monday! http://www.noisebridge.net (disclosure: I'm the secretary and a member)

Overall, you are not crazy, but do some prep work by reaching out to potential contacts, setting up meetings, and figuring out the right events now. While the Bay Area _is_ the kind of place where you can walk into a cafe, meet someone random, and then walk out with an incredible conversation that leads to your next opportunity, you will get a lot more out of your summer if you work it ahead of time. Posting here is a good start, but you probably want to do some investigation more closely targeted to your web project idea.

I'm a SF res about to graduate university. If you make it down here I'd be happy to help you survive/show you where locals have fun.

That being said, another student programmer and myself are working on a startup in Ruby. Interested angel, that kind of thing. If you think you can contribute, I'd be willing to pad your ramen budget. Added bonus: one of our early target markets is Seattle, maybe something will come of that.

email is dp4man@gmail.com

live in the east bay (oakland, berkeley, alameda), not the city. look for roommates, not a studio. move near a BART station. whenever someone starts the sentence with "hey want to go..." involuntarily say no.

I think you can totally live on that budget, if you play things right. You might also look into living in some neighboring cities that would allow you to commute for events, but you could live on that budget in San Francisco proper if you were careful.

I think you should just plan on the 2.5 months though and go to school afterwards.

I'm in a very similar situation. I'm taking a break from school (college), I have a bunch of savings built up, and I have a business that makes about enough for me to live off of.

I'm sharing a place now with some other hackers (we were in Palo Alto for a few months) and it's come down to $500-$900/month for rent depending on who gets a roommate. Not too shabby.

Coming from Boston, I thought it was really lame that there wasn't a central, unified subway system. But the busses here are just as good. There's one route that comes by my place every 5 minutes.

Also, I never realized how much the weather affected my emotions. I love how sunny it is out here.

A) Extend your runway – heh you may just find a reason to never leave, happens often there.

B) I don't know what your transit costs are going to be, SF has wonderful transit. You could make the investment in a Muni pass and be able to explore one of North America's most beautiful cities.

Many SF apartments include some of the utilities in the rent, just be savvy. SF, being an incredibly choosy market often forces 6-month or 12-month leases: this doesn't apply to you. You probably need to plan on getting a room in a house with some like-minded hackers

C) As Mark Twain said: The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco. Think LAYERS.

D) Where's D go?

E) Absolutely not. Take a risk, work hard, and meet dangerous fun people. You can live a lot of fun in SF on the cheap because, well, not everyone can be rich as Lergei.

I would really try to get a little bit of additional income, your numbers are very tight. Plus, you don't want to move to another city to stay in your room the whole time because you're broke, you want to enjoy your time in SF. $700/room is doable but still quite rare (especially without strange catches, like "3 bus rides away from X.") I'd put a bunch of energy into finding the room before you take off, maybe check out AirBNB? Have a separate post about housing hookup?

I have never lived in SF, nor have any plans to — but what are your reasons to be there? Surely it'd be easier (or should I say cheaper) to work out of Seattle?

I surely can't speak for him, but I can offer my own experiences. I was born in Chicago, but moved to Puerto Rico when I was a kid and lived there for 20 years. Puerto Rico is much, much cheaper than anywhere in the United States (My rent for the two-bedroom apartment I was living in was $250 per month). But after being stuck in a meaningless PHP gig (where I was more of the company sysadmin than a developer) and having a difficult time getting a programming job, I started looking to the U.S. for a better opportunity.

I landed a job in New York City, where I'm currently living at. The city is awesome and my job is fun. But in reality, the Bay Area was my first choice, and it's still dream of mine to be able to land a job over there. I'm in the process of getting more information to further my skills so I can begin actively searching for work over there.

I was doing well in Puerto Rico (earning more money than most people I knew, living close to beach with constantly great weather, all my friends and family living there, etc.) and I'm certainly doing well in New York City. But if I had the chance to move to San Francisco, I wouldn't think twice about it. Maybe I'm wrong, but the Bay Area is kind of like the Mecca for developers and aspiring entrepreneurs like myself.

Like I said, I certainly can't speak for mannicken. I'm sure he has his own reasons, perhaps even similar to my own reasons. But if he's really willing to do it, that should be reason enough, regardless of where he is now.

I compared living costs using Craigslist. Turns out apartment prices all almost the same. The only cheaper thing is 200 bucks for gasoline to go there/back.

EDIT: I think that the advantage that moving down there will give me will outweigh the $200.

I really wouldn't bring your car. There are no places to park, and you'll get parking tickets unless you're really good at getting up at 7:45 am to go drive your car until the street cleaners have passed. There's cheap airfare, amtrak, and craigslist rideshare to get down there.

Also, I generally found while looking for a place on craigslist, that while there are a lot of cheap places listed, they're heavily competed due to rent control. Places with a room for 500-600 will get hundreds and hundreds of responses, and you'll have to do an awkward interview for the room, which is like a combination date/job interview. It will take time to find a room. Nearly everyone I know that has moved to the bay area has crashed on a friend's couch for 2-3 months, or take an expensive, short term sublet.

You probably figured this out already, but living a little bit out of town (along the peninsula for example) can cut your rent by 40%, which would be more than the caltrain/bart fare to get you into town every day.

Depending on your motivations, it could completely defeat the purpose of heading here though.

Take the train or fly, buy a bicycle or walk and take the bus. This city isn't that car friendly but the transit is alright. You're not coming here to sit in traffic or improve your parallel parking skills, are you? Thought not :-)

e) Am I fucking crazy?

Maybe yes, but taking a leap into the unknown is the kind of crazy thing that more people should do. Progress, unreasonable man, and all that. Go for it!

Random thoughts:

If you're looking for summer sublets around universities, have you considered Davis? It's an hour and some away with no traffic, but cheaper, and uh, a lot hotter. I don't know anything about the department but I've been impressed by UC Davis recent grads in CS /EE i've worked wtih.

people start hacker houses at random intervals

http://searchyc.com/hacker+house

On a related note - anyone familiar with the Berkeley area care to share some tips about housing (places/buildings to avoid, where all the free-wifi coffee houses are, etc)? Please drop me an email at me [at] euwyn.com

you still have few time, if you are capable work hard on sites like rent a coder and make some extra cash.. but I'm against going with $3,000 it's way too little and no one knows what may happen

LOL, no it isn't. I moved here from Europe with half that amount, twice. If you want to have your own apartment and stuff, then you need $1500/mo unless you get really lucky. If you're OK with roommates, you can do it for $1000/mo and have money left over for entertainment/parties/fast times.

Besides, the point of moving to a cool city at the age of 18 is to get into trouble, no? Look after your property, don't be too trusting, practice safe sex and and avoid over-friendly strangers whether on the street or behind a desk etc. etc.. Don't assume that coming to Sf will launch your career or you'll find a pot of money, treat the $3000 as the price of a useful learning experience and if you do luck out regard it as a bonus.

a) probably -- SF is full of programming jobs b) maybe -- rent isn't cheap (unless you live in a scary neighborhood) and finding a room to rent might be tough c) it's rarely hot in SF -- it's usually mild to cool during the day, and often cool to cold at night e) nope -- you should have a good time, especially if you live in a fun neighborhood (like the Mission)

you can get pretty cheap rent if you don't mind living in sketchy areas. I lived on treasure island for a few months, and besides feeling like the set of a zombie film, it was alright living for ~600pm

I lived in the mission for a little more. Definitely try the east bay for cheap rent- if you don't mind getting the bus/bart into the city the rent is a lot cheaper.

The catch of treasure island is that in an earthquake, it is at very high risk of liquefaction. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake_liquefaction

that, and the high density of crack/meth heads on the island. i checked a few places there that made me feel like i was living the american version of trainspotting (down to the baby scene).

i'd recommend avoiding treasure island.

somewhat related, scratch the north bay off your list. i never was able to find a cheap way to commute from there.

That's not necessarily the catch of TI, the Marina also suffers from that unfortunate side effect during earthquakes. The real catch is that nobody knows how toxic the soil is.

LOL. Good luck. SF is expensive. $100 for food? Yeah if you are a 90 lb asian female.

No the weather is not hotter than Seattle. It's cold here. Also, good luck trying to live off of $1,000 per month. Rent alone will be close to that.

It really doesn't help to live out here despite what everyone else says regarding the "networking abilities".

An 18 year old has no place in this city, tbh.

I upvoted you because this is a straight up reality check.

Live near UC Berkeley instead, and take BART to SF whenever you want.

b) Inside San Francisco proper, probably. Outside San Francisco, possible for sure! (I suggest living near BART or CalTrain so you can get around without a car.)

No, you're not crazy. Give it a shot. What do you have to lose really? Whether you will actually be able to find work is a question mark but as long as you have enough money so you won't be sleeping on a park bench, why not? Ah, to be 18 . . . worst year of my life . . . hope you make a better time of it than I did.

$3k isn't going to last you very long in San Francisco.

My honest advice to you is go to college and do drugs and drink booze and have sex, 3 things you've probably never done before in your life. College is an excellent place to do all those things for the first time. The corner of Geary and Polk is not.

Get that shit (into and) out of your system before you move to SF or you'll never make it out alive. Trust me on this one.

SF is a fucking dangerous place if you go there without your adventure meter properly calibrated.

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