That's a good point. It's also worth pointing out that percentages may not matter as much as absolute numbers. As a contrived example: it's worse to spend 50%

That's a good point. It's also worth pointing out that percentages may not matter as much as absolute numbers. As a contrived example: it's worse to spend 50% of your income on rent than 30%. But if you earn 200k a year and spend 50% of your income on rent, you still have $100k left over. If you earn 100K and spend 30% on rent, you have 70k left over. Bummer to lose that much to rent, but if you can keep other costs down, you may still accumulate more money by living in the Bay Area.