Barely making ends meet on 250k in SV is just part of the problem. Another part is what kind of people surround you. If all your friends make much less than 250

Barely making ends meet on 250k in SV is just part of the problem. Another part is what kind of people surround you. If all your friends make much less than 250k, then sure, 250k sounds like a good deal. But if you make 250k but all your friends (who are no smarter than you) make at least double that, then you start feeling like maybe you should too. Making 250k in SV feels like the center of middle class. Not even upper middle class. Not happy with public school education? Want your kids to go to nice private schools? Sorry, can't afford it (assuming ~2.5k/mo per kid). But your friends at Google can. Want to drive ModelX like they do? That's going to be tough with all those bills you're already paying. Yeah, you can send your kids to community college - to save money - while your friends don't have to. And again, my friends are not geniuses. They are not executives. Not successful business owners. They didn't get lucky in any way, they just applied to work at big tech, and now work there as regular software engineers. Doing the same thing I do at a startup. We are social animals, and no matter what you tell yourself, if we don't measure up to our peers we feel like losers.