18 karma · joined August 6, 2010
Palm sells to HP in 2010 for $1.2Bn. 1Bn in first 10 years and only $200M in the 8 years that followed? Wow. Should have sold in 2002!
2. Always negotiate. Explain that when you started, you just finished high school. Now, years later with a lot more experience and a better understanding and nearly with a degree under your belt, you'd like to negotiate for pay. It isn't unreasonable to ask. Base on their response, you can decide what to do from there.
3. I think in the long run, depending on how the above two scenario plays out, you should be bright enough to play with the options you're given. But as you've said, you're broke, out of school soon, will probably go into repayment for student loans if you took any, and unless you got something else lined up, I wouldn't purposely fudge this and think of it as either or. Negotiate and talk to them. Figure out your choice after you've figured out what your options are.
Utilities are about the same everywhere you live. Public transportation is a bit spendier than every other city I've lived in (Caltrain and BART costs). Unsure about the Bus, it's probably comparable.
Sales Tax is ridiculously higher here than anywhere I've been. If you live in the city and eat out, expect an addition 3-4% health tax charged at most restaurants.
Parking sucks in the city. Street cleaning tickets of $53 to $103 dollars are VERY common. Expect to bankroll a ton of parking meters whether you live downtown or not or pay a lot in parking garages if you plan on using your car to get around the city.
Entertainment costs are also higher than most other places I've lived. A standard movie ticket here is like $11 or so up to $17 with IMAX per ticket per showing. That should give you a rough idea of cost.
Groceries and Household Shopping. I've compared cost of stuff like shampoo and what not to cost I use to pay outside of California and noticed that for the same size bottle or smaller, I am paying possible a couple dollars more even from the same store. So cost of goods is slightly more expensive here base on a few comparisons I've done.
That should give you a ROUGH estimate on how much things cost around here and what it would be like.