While we'll probably end up in a house with a yard eventually, I don't feel a pressing need for that lifestyle at the moment.
I am factoring in taxes and cost of living. The difference doesn't make up for the $55k wage gap. It's possible that I could have done better than $105k if I had looked harder, but based on how much my friends in that area make I doubt it. My salary in the Bay Area also has a lot more headroom to continue growing.
The calculus worked out better for SF in my case because I'm saving most of my income either way. If I wanted a higher-consumption lifestyle (big house, two cars, lots of eating out etc.) then a lower-income lower-COL area might have been a better deal overall. But I'm at a stage where I don't mind "sacrificing" a bit for a better future. And honestly, it doesn't feel like a sacrifice anyway -- my wife and I are still living a lot better than we were until recently as university students, and enjoying every day. There's no reason why consumption has to scale with income!
> While we'll probably end up in a house with a yard eventually
How, might I ask? Assuming $1.5M for a townhouse or a house in the Bay Area, Google's mortgage calculator says ~7k monthly in payments. At $160k and 25% tax, you're left w/ 10k/mo; you'd be spending 70% of your income on housing, not counting maintenance. You'd need to make a significant downpayment (which even then, IDK if it helps, since I've seen housing easily range to more than $2M+, and I feel like I'm lowballing it (ha!) at $1.5M) or have your partner also pull a decent income, no?
(I've never bought a house, so please, feel free to inform me, b/c from where I'm standing, it's incredibly daunting.)
In much of the west coast, and near western state, local housing prices are often driven up by Californians leaving the state with either lots of savings and/or equity cashed out from the house they just sold. So there has historically been a lot of anti-Californian backlash in places like Seattle and Portland, whose house markets haven't always been hot in their own right.
Imagine you live in a place where the average salary is $50k, but it's a nice place, and often people will move to your place from somewhere where the average salary was $200k. Economically, it is difficult to compete with those people for things that are already scarce (housing).
You can live in a similar house with great schools in the east bay for 800k so that's about $4000 payment, very doable to live comfortably and even save up a bit making $160k/year.
Heck, rather than spend that much on a home in the city, a house in a rural northern state will only run you around 100K, maybe 200K for something newer. The remote work dream.
I am factoring in taxes and cost of living. The difference doesn't make up for the $55k wage gap. It's possible that I could have done better than $105k if I had looked harder, but based on how much my friends in that area make I doubt it. My salary in the Bay Area also has a lot more headroom to continue growing.
The calculus worked out better for SF in my case because I'm saving most of my income either way. If I wanted a higher-consumption lifestyle (big house, two cars, lots of eating out etc.) then a lower-income lower-COL area might have been a better deal overall. But I'm at a stage where I don't mind "sacrificing" a bit for a better future. And honestly, it doesn't feel like a sacrifice anyway -- my wife and I are still living a lot better than we were until recently as university students, and enjoying every day. There's no reason why consumption has to scale with income!