5 ms·

Because a tiny apartment in the Bay Area is going to cost you as much as a McMansion in rural Kansas.

esoterica 8y ago
And if it costs you as much but you get paid way more, then you have way more money to spend on other shit. The math is not that complicated.
- burfog 8y ago
  Yes, you can save money if you are willing to live in a dystopia, crammed in like sardines. The quality-of-life comparison is not that complicated.
  - esoterica 8y ago
    Not everyone has been brainwashed by their suburban upbringing into believing that living in an apartment is “dystopian”.
  - sershe 8y ago
    Yeah, it's easy. Living in the burbs effing sucks.
    - burfog 8y ago
      It may, compared to rural, but it beats city life. That is, it does unless you actually like stepping over homeless people and being mugged.
      - sershe 8y ago
        I think burbs combine the worst of rural and urban; it's still noisy and everyone can see you and there's often enough crime to not feel quite safe; but it's also soul very inconvenient in every way and you have much more house maintenance to do. And you get unique things like rural house work is sometimes combined with crappy HOAs enforcing same; and also unlike both rural and urban cases finding a place with good views / lots of open air is very hard. It's just literally hell made to raise kids. For every other purpose it's about as good as a HS building that you cannot leave is in the rankings of the good buildings to spend time in.
sershe 8y ago
What if you don't care about a McMansion? It's like a restaurant where they give you a 3-pound steak, but it tastes kinda crappy and you cannot box it. We have a 1300sqft house in HCOL and it still has a bunch of unused space; we used to have the same problem even in a 1100ft apartment. My friends have a cheaper big house a 40-minute drive away; the reason they have a big house is because they want to be near certain outdoor activities, and there are no small houses in that area. Half the house is literally unfurnished, nobody ever goes there. Come think of it, my two main problems with my house is that (1) it's too long of a walk to a bus (like, 7 minutes) and bars/etc. (like, whole 5-15 minutes); (2) (didn't affect us directly yet) heroin addicts stealing stuff. Both of those would be worse in a typical LCOL where I could afford a McMansion I wouldn't bother fully furnishing. I'm not in BA and I think BA is vastly inferior to where I'm at, but for me an apartment in BA >> a 4000sqft house in rural Kansas. It's like, not even on the same level. Judging by the prices, many people agree :P
- souprock 8y ago
  Those problems listed in your 3rd paragraph would not be issues of concern at all. Nobody wants to take the bus. It doesn't run 24x7. It doesn't go direct, door to door. At the beginning and end of the trip, nobody wants to walk 7 minutes in unpredictable weather while lugging a bunch of stuff. Nobody wants to endure a slow trip, stopping every couple blocks, with a couple bus changes that take a half hour each. Before you get your groceries home, either your ice cream melts or your hot chicken gets cold. You just wouldn't do that. You'd hop in your car, go a couple miles without any traffic, and use the free parking. Heroin addicts aren't normally a problem in reasonable non-city areas. Yes, you could choose to live in the worst neighborhood, maybe renting for $200/month, but that isn't normal for a "software-engineering" person. More likely you'd be in a neighborhood where calling the cops about a suspicious person would get the cops there in a couple minutes, and/or you'd be in a place where burglars get shot at with full approval of the state legislature.
  - sershe 8y ago
    I actually want to take a bus, or walk. Taking the bus for groceries is insane, only someone living in suburbs could come up with that ;) You should be walking for groceries. Buses save a lot of time since you don't have to drive so you can read or even work; even in my location where buses are far away and there's no express bus nearby (so I make a transfer), for my commute in realistic, not over-the-top traffic the bus is only about 1.5-2.25x slower counting parking time in the free garage, so the net wasted time is actually higher by car; buses are way cheaper (same commute, $2.75 by bus, $5-6 by car before even counting tolls and with free parking); less bad for your health, esp combined with walking; much less stressful; you don't have to bother with parking that is often scarce in the areas you'd actually want to go; you can drink 3 beers and not worry about who will drive; if the weather is terrible like now in Seattle, buses mostly keep running even though most people cannot drive and Ubers are non-existent. Mind you, that's all in the city where buses actually kinda suck. Where I'm from, subway runs 19 hours a day, and peak hour train interval are 50 seconds, up to 7 minutes at night. Many people still drive (it actually takes much longer at rush hour), well as I say, why stop the self-inflicted suffering, there are all kinds of kinky people :) The way I see it, driving yourself is a menial job that makes about as much sense to do as pumping your own overflowed sewer with your own advanced plumbing gear. If you cannot pay someone else to do it (no plumbers or buses/ubers accessible), either you live really far in the mountains, or the place you live in is run by idiots. Crime rates, except for the most benign property crime like car prowls and package theft, seem to be way higher in the LCOLs I looked at, ~4 years ago when we were deciding where to move to. I was actually surprised how much higher, although I don't remember the details. Anecdotally, someone I know lives in a LCOL in Texas and they got burglarized no problem in a gated burb that is way far out, you cannot get there in any way other than by car.

And if it costs you as much but you get paid way more, then you have way more money to spend on other shit. The math is not that complicated.

burfog 8y ago
Yes, you can save money if you are willing to live in a dystopia, crammed in like sardines. The quality-of-life comparison is not that complicated.
- esoterica 8y ago
  Not everyone has been brainwashed by their suburban upbringing into believing that living in an apartment is “dystopian”.
- sershe 8y ago
  Yeah, it's easy. Living in the burbs effing sucks.
  - burfog 8y ago
    It may, compared to rural, but it beats city life. That is, it does unless you actually like stepping over homeless people and being mugged.
    - sershe 8y ago
      I think burbs combine the worst of rural and urban; it's still noisy and everyone can see you and there's often enough crime to not feel quite safe; but it's also soul very inconvenient in every way and you have much more house maintenance to do. And you get unique things like rural house work is sometimes combined with crappy HOAs enforcing same; and also unlike both rural and urban cases finding a place with good views / lots of open air is very hard. It's just literally hell made to raise kids. For every other purpose it's about as good as a HS building that you cannot leave is in the rankings of the good buildings to spend time in.

sershe 8y ago

What if you don't care about a McMansion? It's like a restaurant where they give you a 3-pound steak, but it tastes kinda crappy and you cannot box it. We have a 1300sqft house in HCOL and it still has a bunch of unused space; we used to have the same problem even in a 1100ft apartment. My friends have a cheaper big house a 40-minute drive away; the reason they have a big house is because they want to be near certain outdoor activities, and there are no small houses in that area. Half the house is literally unfurnished, nobody ever goes there. Come think of it, my two main problems with my house is that (1) it's too long of a walk to a bus (like, 7 minutes) and bars/etc. (like, whole 5-15 minutes); (2) (didn't affect us directly yet) heroin addicts stealing stuff. Both of those would be worse in a typical LCOL where I could afford a McMansion I wouldn't bother fully furnishing. I'm not in BA and I think BA is vastly inferior to where I'm at, but for me an apartment in BA >> a 4000sqft house in rural Kansas. It's like, not even on the same level. Judging by the prices, many people agree :P

souprock 8y ago
Those problems listed in your 3rd paragraph would not be issues of concern at all. Nobody wants to take the bus. It doesn't run 24x7. It doesn't go direct, door to door. At the beginning and end of the trip, nobody wants to walk 7 minutes in unpredictable weather while lugging a bunch of stuff. Nobody wants to endure a slow trip, stopping every couple blocks, with a couple bus changes that take a half hour each. Before you get your groceries home, either your ice cream melts or your hot chicken gets cold. You just wouldn't do that. You'd hop in your car, go a couple miles without any traffic, and use the free parking. Heroin addicts aren't normally a problem in reasonable non-city areas. Yes, you could choose to live in the worst neighborhood, maybe renting for $200/month, but that isn't normal for a "software-engineering" person. More likely you'd be in a neighborhood where calling the cops about a suspicious person would get the cops there in a couple minutes, and/or you'd be in a place where burglars get shot at with full approval of the state legislature.
- sershe 8y ago
  I actually want to take a bus, or walk. Taking the bus for groceries is insane, only someone living in suburbs could come up with that ;) You should be walking for groceries. Buses save a lot of time since you don't have to drive so you can read or even work; even in my location where buses are far away and there's no express bus nearby (so I make a transfer), for my commute in realistic, not over-the-top traffic the bus is only about 1.5-2.25x slower counting parking time in the free garage, so the net wasted time is actually higher by car; buses are way cheaper (same commute, $2.75 by bus, $5-6 by car before even counting tolls and with free parking); less bad for your health, esp combined with walking; much less stressful; you don't have to bother with parking that is often scarce in the areas you'd actually want to go; you can drink 3 beers and not worry about who will drive; if the weather is terrible like now in Seattle, buses mostly keep running even though most people cannot drive and Ubers are non-existent. Mind you, that's all in the city where buses actually kinda suck. Where I'm from, subway runs 19 hours a day, and peak hour train interval are 50 seconds, up to 7 minutes at night. Many people still drive (it actually takes much longer at rush hour), well as I say, why stop the self-inflicted suffering, there are all kinds of kinky people :) The way I see it, driving yourself is a menial job that makes about as much sense to do as pumping your own overflowed sewer with your own advanced plumbing gear. If you cannot pay someone else to do it (no plumbers or buses/ubers accessible), either you live really far in the mountains, or the place you live in is run by idiots. Crime rates, except for the most benign property crime like car prowls and package theft, seem to be way higher in the LCOLs I looked at, ~4 years ago when we were deciding where to move to. I was actually surprised how much higher, although I don't remember the details. Anecdotally, someone I know lives in a LCOL in Texas and they got burglarized no problem in a gated burb that is way far out, you cannot get there in any way other than by car.