3 ms·

Well, people who make $200k tend to live in places when you spend $40-80k on rent or mortgage, $10-$20k on food and utilities, god knows how much on medical ins

by Artlav 9y ago

Well, people who make $200k tend to live in places when you spend $40-80k on rent or mortgage, $10-$20k on food and utilities, god knows how much on medical insurance, and all after 30%-40% taxes, leaving you with about zilch to save. Or so i heard from this side of the ocean. In general, it's rather unusual for a job to pay noticeably more than the local median lifestyle cost. Me, i made that type of income if you scale to the local costs. I went to MSU, graduated with a specialist degree in computational mathematics and specialization in parallel computation, got a PhD for AI-related research while working for a supercomputer development company at average income. After getting the PhD i found a new job working on the backend of mobile internet provider (my first employer covered the PhD, so i couldn't leave before, on itself it's not worth much employment-wise), where i started getting serious money. Sadly the crash of 2014 quartered that income back to about average, but it was nice while it lasted. However, it was still nowhere near enough to buy, say, an apartment here in Moscow - one of the top 10 most expensive cities out there, since as i said before the income a job provides tend not to be too far above the local median costs. I could drive 200km to a nearby city and buy a 3-room apartment for a month's salary, but a 1-room one next to where i worked costs more than i made in my entire life.

hapbringer 9y ago
Very interesting insight. How much do you think this depends on the industry you're in? For example, right now, natural language processing and machine learning are all the rage; if you were a specialist in those areas, would you be making significantly more than people in other areas?
- Artlav 9y ago
  It certainly depends on the industry. I.e. here in Russia if you work in the oil industry you would be making mad amounts of money. It is hard to get into, however, and you would have to live in middle of nowhere, Siberia for years. Not quite sure about subdivisions in tech - i never worked for any buzzword "all the rage" things. I suspect that if you are a rare expert in a field with a lot of demand, you would get a good income regardless of the level of buzz.
seattle_spring 9y ago
> Well, people who make $200k tend to live in places when you spend $40-80k on rent or mortgage, $10-$20k on food and utilities, god knows how much on medical insurance, and all after 30%-40% taxes, leaving you with about zilch to save. Or so i heard from this side of the ocean. That's only true of people who either have kids with one working parent, or are extremely irresponsible with their money. * $80k is almost $7k / month in rent, or payment on a mortgage well over $1m. * Utilities are incredibly cheap in a temperate climate like SF, unless again you have an unreasonably large house to heat/cool. The rest of the "$10k-$20k" for food could buy a person a meal out everyday on the low end, and all meals out on the high end. This is especially crazy when you consider that most $200k jobs also provide catered lunch. * Medical insurance is always included with $200k jobs. Not true with contractors, but they are probably making a lot more than $200k, if they were able to pull that salary at a regular full-time job. If you're making $200k and not saving anything, you really need to reevaluate your priorities. Just because your parents lived in a $5m house in Palo Alto and paid your way through Stanford doesn't mean you deserve to continue that lifestyle immediately after graduation.
- Artlav 9y ago
  Perhaps it all goes down to lifestyle inflation more than any inherent expense scaling with income opportunities. I've heard of people in SF spending $1-$2 a day on food, living in a trailer and showering at work, while making 6 figures of $. I've also heard of people complaining about $2k a month not being enough for food, and bragging about being debt free aka "mortgage doesn't count. A car doesn't either. Credit cards are temporary. Other than that, debt-free!". It's a subtle beast - just before i got latter job i had $3k equivalent fall into my hands from a lucky investment. It was a big deal, and totally worth the effort of navigating the bureaucracy of extracting it into a spendable form. A few months later i got a new job and soon looking back it felt like a waste of effort and a bad decision, since i was now making that much in a month. For a while i just went through my wishlist of equipment faster, still managing to more or less break even every month. It took the crash of 2014 to really make it sink in why saving is important.

by Artlav 9y ago

hapbringer 9y ago

Very interesting insight. How much do you think this depends on the industry you're in? For example, right now, natural language processing and machine learning are all the rage; if you were a specialist in those areas, would you be making significantly more than people in other areas?

Artlav 9y ago
It certainly depends on the industry. I.e. here in Russia if you work in the oil industry you would be making mad amounts of money. It is hard to get into, however, and you would have to live in middle of nowhere, Siberia for years. Not quite sure about subdivisions in tech - i never worked for any buzzword "all the rage" things. I suspect that if you are a rare expert in a field with a lot of demand, you would get a good income regardless of the level of buzz.

seattle_spring 9y ago

> Well, people who make $200k tend to live in places when you spend $40-80k on rent or mortgage, $10-$20k on food and utilities, god knows how much on medical insurance, and all after 30%-40% taxes, leaving you with about zilch to save. Or so i heard from this side of the ocean. That's only true of people who either have kids with one working parent, or are extremely irresponsible with their money. * $80k is almost $7k / month in rent, or payment on a mortgage well over $1m. * Utilities are incredibly cheap in a temperate climate like SF, unless again you have an unreasonably large house to heat/cool. The rest of the "$10k-$20k" for food could buy a person a meal out everyday on the low end, and all meals out on the high end. This is especially crazy when you consider that most $200k jobs also provide catered lunch. * Medical insurance is always included with $200k jobs. Not true with contractors, but they are probably making a lot more than $200k, if they were able to pull that salary at a regular full-time job. If you're making $200k and not saving anything, you really need to reevaluate your priorities. Just because your parents lived in a $5m house in Palo Alto and paid your way through Stanford doesn't mean you deserve to continue that lifestyle immediately after graduation.

Artlav 9y ago
Perhaps it all goes down to lifestyle inflation more than any inherent expense scaling with income opportunities. I've heard of people in SF spending $1-$2 a day on food, living in a trailer and showering at work, while making 6 figures of $. I've also heard of people complaining about $2k a month not being enough for food, and bragging about being debt free aka "mortgage doesn't count. A car doesn't either. Credit cards are temporary. Other than that, debt-free!". It's a subtle beast - just before i got latter job i had $3k equivalent fall into my hands from a lucky investment. It was a big deal, and totally worth the effort of navigating the bureaucracy of extracting it into a spendable form. A few months later i got a new job and soon looking back it felt like a waste of effort and a bad decision, since i was now making that much in a month. For a while i just went through my wishlist of equipment faster, still managing to more or less break even every month. It took the crash of 2014 to really make it sink in why saving is important.