We should only share our TCs converted to San Francisco cost of living?
Folks in bay area love to rub in our faces their HCoL TCs, anyone in non bay area / NYC cities should use a cost of living calculator to share their TC. For example I’m in Phoenix making $125,000 + 12% bonus. But after using a calculator… TC: $281,831
Peak cope
Those calculators don’t matter if you have significant extra income. I only spend a fraction of my income and the rest goes into investing. So if cost of living is 10% higher that’s only 10% on the fraction of my income I actually spend.
I can assure you it's not a 10% difference in Phoenix. I have a $1500 mortgage for my 4 bedroom 3k sqft SFH with backyard, pool, greenbelt etc, 15 minutes from the airport and great quality of life. I also have a vacation property in the mountains, worth more than the primary home, and is used as short term rental with positive cash flow. I make about the same as OP, and I wouldn't move to CA and give this up for $281k. Not a chance. Even 500k I'd be sad to accept, because then you'll have to live in the bay.
But cost of living doesn’t scale linearly as a percentage of income, it may cost me 3x as much to live in sf than phoenix, but that makes my total cost of living here around 60k/ year vs whatever I would spend in phx, but considering my sf salary is 300k my take home after expenses is still considerably higher than had I worked my career in phx at 125k
Exactly for 12 years I stayed in Florida making less than $100k because I thought cost of living was too high and it didn’t justify the prices. With less than $100k salary I could barely save and had a negative net worth even after 10+ years due to college debt and family accidents. 4 years ago I moved to Seattle and took a $200k job offer and now make $300k at G in Seattle. My net worth is around $600k after just 4 years. Is housing expensive? Yes. However more income means more chances to save more money. My only regret is not doing this 10 years ago. I could have probably retired by now.
I’ve been working in Phoenix with 5 yoe and 400k net worth lol. I’ll never have to grind because I have 400k in index funds. On track to be multi millionaire soon.
tell the bank you identify as bay area dweller and ask for conversion of your $$ to bigger number 🚀
Yea everything scales here - if you can live on x percent of your tc in both Phoenix and SF the amount leftover will be larger in SF - so more savings and investments.
COL calculators are generally pretty inaccurate for real life usage. They’re ok for general usage. But take them with a grain of salt.
Those calculators are BS and assume you want to maintain a similar size house in places where they don’t exist. It’s especially bad for single people
“It costs millions to buy a 3-bedroom home in the bay, and $300k in Phoenix!”
This is pure cope. Col is a limited cost that does not continue to scale with tc. When you're making 2-4x more, rent costs become negligible.
In the post Covid world it doesn’t matter. Anyone can get a SF/NYC size offer for full remote.
does plaid even offer remote?
It does indeed (but I’m leaving anyway)