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Comment by 2c2c2c | Hacker News Reader

My first job was at a startup for $95k in SF in 2018. This felt like the "peak" of rent here, where I was paying $2350/mo.

I'm kind of lost how this salary should feel like 36k/mo. To me this is a salary that reminds me of my childhood-- paycheck to paycheck, looming foreclosure from being behind on house payments, constant fliers from electric threatening to shut us off.

That isn't remotely what my experience was. I maxed my roth ira, paid into my 401k up to what my company matched, and had plenty left over month to month. I paid off the small amount of student loans I had within the year. I didn't have to think or care about what I spent money on. I went to bars weekly spending $12/drink. Work comped my dinners, and I ate out everyday for lunch.

Articles like this have created this perception online that you will starve to death on a salary like this in SF. I guess my question is, 100k here feels like 36k where?

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Yeah but were you raising a family on that money? Living alone, or as a childless couple, is remarkably cheaper than having kids.

I lived in Switzerland for a couple of years between 2005 and 2007. I made like 65k CHF/year, which is not bad for back then for being a postdoc (at least), but my housing costs were high (because Switzerland is expensive). Still, I was able to save 50% of my salary, travel, and so on.

You can save money easily if you don't have wife/kids to worry about, and your income is reasonable, no matter how high the COL.

These articles are written by people completely out of touch with your average American. The median household income in the US is around 70k.

There are comments on this post that just suggest an ungodly level of consumption. Saying you can't live in NY comfortably on 150k salary. I buy $800 jackets and feel like a jackass, WTF are these people spending their money on to say this shit?!

Housing.

NYC median rent this year is $3350. That's over $40k per year. On a $100k salary, which is about $60k after federal, state, and local taxes, rent is 2/3 of the take-home pay for someone making $100k.

More concretely, if you get $60k take-home pay per year after taxes, that's $5k per month, and if you pay median rent that leaves you with $1650 for everything else, and that rent price does not include all the utilities! That is pretty hard to live on if you have dependents. If you have to feed and clothe multiple people on $1650 a month you are going to feel pretty poor, even if you don't own a car!

median rent is inflated by manhattan, which should be off the table at this salary rang. brooklyn rent is comparable trending towards cheaper than SF rent.

i think dependents are probably what drives the disconnect. COL differences per area are amplified based on family size. but this isn't spelled out anywhere, nor does the fact that most people aren't trying to raise families in major cities in the first place

Median rent in Brooklyn seems to be ~$3200 which is not a lot lower. Queens and the Bronx are a bit cheaper.

Median NYC household income is $70.7k [1]. That suggests a single person on a $100k salary should be able to do OK.

Median household income in Manhattan is just under $100k [2].

[1] https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/newyorkcitynewy...

[2] https://furmancenter.org/neighborhoods/view/manhattan

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