As I said, apartments are easily found for that price: http://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/sby/apa?max_price=2000 http://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/sby/apa?max_

As I said, apartments are easily found for that price: http://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/sby/apa?max_price=2000 http://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/sby/apa?max_price=2000 But anyways, $3500/month (what I mentioned above) is 42k/year in take home pay. Doing some very rough back-of-the-envelope math, that would be a pre-tax salary of about 50k. Obviously that's not reality, but 60k is definitely livable around here. You'd drive a cheap used car and you wouldn't save anything, but you'd be comfortable and wouldn't have to worry too much about frugality. Someone making 85k would be more than okay.