4 ms·

Can they afford a middle class lifestyle with just 100k? My understanding of costs of living in California puts people in that range in the working class with a

by kubb 1y ago

Can they afford a middle class lifestyle with just 100k? My understanding of costs of living in California puts people in that range in the working class with a very low rate of savings (no hope to escape into middle class even with compounding) or they could afford a small family and no savings.

varelse 1y ago
[dead]
mschild 1y ago
What does the alternative look like though? Sure tech companies pay engineers well, but there's plenty of other jobs requiring a college degree that don't reach that salary level.
- kubb 1y ago
  I didn’t say that there was an alternative. Just that 100k doesn’t make them rich.
  - globular-toast 1y ago
    Apple, Tesla et al tell you you're not rich, but you can be if you want to be. Learned helplessness.
    - hellisothers 1y ago
      … but not in most cities in CA is the OP’s point, actually not even is most large cities on either coast. Which isn’t to say it’s not possible, you could definitely live well elsewhere on that salary but there is an obsession with coastal cities.
madaxe_again 1y ago
Outside of the Bay Area, sure - California is a pretty big place, and trades are in demand all over.
- kubb 1y ago
  Will they make the 100k in the lower income parts of Cali though?
  - fakedang 1y ago
    There's this really innovative practice done called commuting.
    - kubb 1y ago
      It can take 16 hours to drive across California. I can’t believe you’re trying to be sarcastically condescending with this kind of comment. It’s difficult to respect that.
      - FreakLegion 1y ago
        They're just matching your energy. $100k is an entry-level number in this conversation and, yes, solidly middle class in most cities in California. There's no shortage of homes in nice neighborhoods available here for under $600k, including in large metros like Sacramento. You aren't going to find that in the Bay Area, but the Bay Area isn't representative of the whole state. Not even close.
      - fakedang 1y ago
        They're not going to take jobs across California. They could just move further inland and take jobs towards the coast. In fact, I met many blue collar folks who did precisely that. Stockton to SF is just a bit more than an hour. Next time try rebutting in good faith.
hiAndrewQuinn 1y ago
Let's run the numbers. If I were an 18 year old financially savvy person making $100k a year in California, I would probably take home about $70k. About $1k, maybe $2k at the highest would be set aside for rent with roommates because I'm 18 and there's very little upside to me having my own apartment yet. Groceries here in Finland are more expensive than I remember them ever being in the United States, and so based on my current budget I would set aside about $300 per month for food for myself. Maybe $400 if I wanted to go to restaurants more often. $500 is reasonable too. Over $1000 and you are deluding yourself or need to buy a rice cooker. I'm still saving about $40,000 per yer, over half of my take home pay, conservatively. I'd consider that really good! What I do with that is my business, but on one extreme, if I threw all of that directly into my retirement fund, at a 7% real rate of return (reasonable given past index fund performance, already adjusted for inflation), I would have roughly $1 million in today's money by the time I'm 65. But of course that's ignoring the real elephant in the room, which is that wages are famously sticky, and getting paid $100k by 18 is probably the single most surefire way to get paid $1 million by 30. The kinds of things and the kind of person you have to be to pull that off are where that price signal is coming from, and so I take away from this that, as is often the case in finance, these kids are probably not going to have to worry about that much money-wise even if they don't stick to a strictly calibrated plan.
- kubb 1y ago
  They’ll way to start families, not live with roommates.
  - hiAndrewQuinn 1y ago
    At 18? Who is starting a family at 18 years old in that climate? Claude Opus's Fermi estimate of the number of 18 year olds, making at least $100,000 a year, in California, with children, to be about 8 people. Not 8 thousand, not 8 hundred. Eight. Single digit. In a state of 40 million people.
    - rat9988 1y ago
      Then what is this 100K good for? Paying for food and living with roommates? This is not great.
627467 1y ago
Are you accounting for debt? I hope people are also ditching massive student debt on top of widening career options

by kubb 1y ago

varelse 1y ago

[dead]

mschild 1y ago

What does the alternative look like though? Sure tech companies pay engineers well, but there's plenty of other jobs requiring a college degree that don't reach that salary level.

kubb 1y ago
I didn’t say that there was an alternative. Just that 100k doesn’t make them rich.
- globular-toast 1y ago
  Apple, Tesla et al tell you you're not rich, but you can be if you want to be. Learned helplessness.
  - hellisothers 1y ago
    … but not in most cities in CA is the OP’s point, actually not even is most large cities on either coast. Which isn’t to say it’s not possible, you could definitely live well elsewhere on that salary but there is an obsession with coastal cities.

madaxe_again 1y ago

Outside of the Bay Area, sure - California is a pretty big place, and trades are in demand all over.

kubb 1y ago
Will they make the 100k in the lower income parts of Cali though?
- fakedang 1y ago
  There's this really innovative practice done called commuting.
  - kubb 1y ago
    It can take 16 hours to drive across California. I can’t believe you’re trying to be sarcastically condescending with this kind of comment. It’s difficult to respect that.
    - FreakLegion 1y ago
      They're just matching your energy. $100k is an entry-level number in this conversation and, yes, solidly middle class in most cities in California. There's no shortage of homes in nice neighborhoods available here for under $600k, including in large metros like Sacramento. You aren't going to find that in the Bay Area, but the Bay Area isn't representative of the whole state. Not even close.
    - fakedang 1y ago
      They're not going to take jobs across California. They could just move further inland and take jobs towards the coast. In fact, I met many blue collar folks who did precisely that. Stockton to SF is just a bit more than an hour. Next time try rebutting in good faith.

hiAndrewQuinn 1y ago

Let's run the numbers. If I were an 18 year old financially savvy person making $100k a year in California, I would probably take home about $70k. About $1k, maybe $2k at the highest would be set aside for rent with roommates because I'm 18 and there's very little upside to me having my own apartment yet. Groceries here in Finland are more expensive than I remember them ever being in the United States, and so based on my current budget I would set aside about $300 per month for food for myself. Maybe $400 if I wanted to go to restaurants more often. $500 is reasonable too. Over $1000 and you are deluding yourself or need to buy a rice cooker. I'm still saving about $40,000 per yer, over half of my take home pay, conservatively. I'd consider that really good! What I do with that is my business, but on one extreme, if I threw all of that directly into my retirement fund, at a 7% real rate of return (reasonable given past index fund performance, already adjusted for inflation), I would have roughly $1 million in today's money by the time I'm 65. But of course that's ignoring the real elephant in the room, which is that wages are famously sticky, and getting paid $100k by 18 is probably the single most surefire way to get paid $1 million by 30. The kinds of things and the kind of person you have to be to pull that off are where that price signal is coming from, and so I take away from this that, as is often the case in finance, these kids are probably not going to have to worry about that much money-wise even if they don't stick to a strictly calibrated plan.

kubb 1y ago
They’ll way to start families, not live with roommates.
- hiAndrewQuinn 1y ago
  At 18? Who is starting a family at 18 years old in that climate? Claude Opus's Fermi estimate of the number of 18 year olds, making at least $100,000 a year, in California, with children, to be about 8 people. Not 8 thousand, not 8 hundred. Eight. Single digit. In a state of 40 million people.
  - rat9988 1y ago
    Then what is this 100K good for? Paying for food and living with roommates? This is not great.

627467 1y ago

Are you accounting for debt? I hope people are also ditching massive student debt on top of widening career options