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Comment by nateburke | Hacker News Reader

I feel like the young, single person's American dream is still alive and well in SF. If you're willing and able to bend your life around work, there are few better places to do it.

And for those with families, especially those with young children, I think life is pretty hard right now, just about everywhere.

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Only if you work in tech, and only if you're a software engineer or PM. It is straight up not possible to live in a reasonably safe area in SF on a salary less than $100k before tax. And the biggest reason is the toxic cost of living caused by refusal to build high density housing.

I know software engineers who went from living with roommates in a tiny apartment in SF to paying less for a penthouse in other big cities.

Not disagreeing, but I think it has more to do with not having kids. You can find a one bedroom on Craigslist in almost any neighborhood in SF for less than $2,000 a month. How much more do you need to survive as a single person? Another $2K a month? That puts you at $4k/month, or $48K a year, which most full-time jobs will pay.

Assuming healthy, no kids, and that the landlord agrees to rent you the place, which may be difficult if you’re a person of color or have a low salary.

A "safe" and not particularly conservative budgeting rule of thumb is to not spend more than a third of your take-home income on housing... so your numbers pretty much match up exactly with what GP said about <$100k salary.

Most of us live with roommates.

True, but I’ve read that most people don’t budget or spend conservatively, so it is theoretically possible to get by on a normal paycheck in SF. At that rate you probably qualify for stuff like BMR housing and may be able to own a home in the Bay well before someone earning $100K-120K. However, it’s very unlikely you will win the BMR lottery or qualify for the loan.

Pre-COVID you couldn't find a 1br in a safe neighborhood for less than $3-3.5k. Less than 2k gets you something in the Tenderloin, which is the opposite of safe. Add food (~$700 because high cost of living), car payments (~$450 for an econobox), car insurance (~$200 because SF has a lot of break-ins and theft), health insurance, utilities (also expensive as fuck in NorCal due to cost of living), phone/internet bills, and you can realistically hit $5k/mo in expenses.

According to this calculator [1] post-tax a $100k salary nets you $5500/mo in San Francisco. This is mostly due to high state taxes. So you are basically living paycheck to paycheck despite making 6 figures and living a pretty standard life, which is moronic no matter how much you look at it.

[1]: https://smartasset.com/taxes/paycheck-calculator#XhSaiPp5Sy

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