4 ms·

I'm not going to disagree, since your advice is good. If you're having trouble financially, don't go crazy on Christmas gifts, eat out all the time, or buy exp

by geebee 11y ago

I'm not going to disagree, since your advice is good. If you're having trouble financially, don't go crazy on Christmas gifts, eat out all the time, or buy expensive clothes. But keep in mind, in SF, a 3br house or apartment south of 280 (a bit blighted in spots, but far safer than its reputation) starts at 800K, and really, unless you're at the outskirts and buying a property in need of considerable work, you're probably going to shell out over a mil. Child care is easily over $2k a month, so 50K a year. So at least in SF, you're probably looking at about 90k+ on housing and child care. Health care is another huge cost, but it's hidden. What percentage of that is really spent on creature comforts like expensive travel or christmas gifts? New clothes? You're a parent, you've seen what things cost at lower cost spots like Old Navy or payless shoes. It's not a big expense. I do a lot of hand-me-downs (I have 2 kids myself), but in the end, I'd estimate very generously that clothing costs about 0.5% of the yearly budget. Now, one could certainly reasonably say that living in SF is a financially illiterate thing to do (though if this is the case, then many of the employers claiming a shortage of software developers are actually claiming that there is a shortage of financially illiterate developers, since these companies are generally located in SF or Silicon Valley). But is Boston, New York, Washington DC, Seattle, or LA really that much better? I think it just goes from impossible to difficult. The reason I mention this is that I believe the middle and working classes in the US are eroding, and while some of this can be self-indulgence (look at the way some people treated houses as piggy banks, for example), I wouldn't write off middle class struggles as financial illiteracy or excessive self-indulgence.

Bahamut 11y ago
In Northern Virginia, you can get a pretty nice house in Fairfax for $500k - the SF and Silicon Valley market is special for its terribleness (NY too).
- Yhippa 11y ago
  I thought you were BS-ing me but you are absolutely right (especially if you go up to $600k): http://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/Fairfax-VA/house,mobile,land_type/4655_rid/500000-600000_price/1855-2225_mp/days_sort/39.040653,-77.093983,38.715117,-77.40984_rect/11_zm/0_mmm/ http://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/Fairfax-VA/house,mobile.... For some reason I thought houses up there had gotten crazy expensive. Not too far from Reston and Tyson's and some of the best schools in the country. Can't beat that.
- geebee 11y ago
  500k isn't cheap, but of course vastly better than a mil (it sounds like fairfax is a fairly nice place, so you'd probably be comparing it to parts of SF that are more like 1.5mil). Any idea what daycare costs over there, typically? Though at 500k for housing, you have the option of one spouse scaling back on work, and if not, the lower mortgage cushions the extra cost of childcare. This is an aside, but when silicon valley companies say there is a desperate shortage of software engineers, Obama[1] nods gravely in agreement. Why doesn't he at least ask why they don't let people work from places like Fairfax? I understand that there are benefits to being in the valley, but if the shortage is that desperate, wouldn't they at least try? As for the original point, even if things get easier outside SF, I'd still say that you'd need to be taking some pretty serious shopping trips for kids clothes to approach the chunk of the budget that goes to health care, housing, and child care/education, even in a less brutal housing market like Fairfax. As for good public schools, well of course that's a relief once they get out of day care age, but you still shell out - I have two kids in public school, and just paying for the local YMCA run after care (so my wife or I can pick them up after work) is $6k per kid per year (so $12k total for me). We cancelled cable, which saved us about $1k a year. [1] not to pick on Obama, this is common reaction from politicians.
  - Bahamut 11y ago
    No clue on daycare costs, but keep in mind this - the counties all around the DC area have the highest median annual income in the US, and Fairfax is probably one of the richest in the area. The Valley companies in general don't like remote workers, despite all that is said about the shortage. The executives/managers want the convenience of being able to bother an engineer on whim. Amusingly, remote work is in practice more common in the DC area (and for more than just software engineering), in part because the federal government has driven telework as a huge perk.
    - geebee 11y ago
      I googled around a bit and found some discussion threads on this http://www.dcurbanmom.com/ http://www.dcurbanmom.com/ sounds like 2k a month isn't unusual, but you can get this down if you look around and find a more neighborhood based one. These exist in SF too, they are licensed but tend to be run out of someone's house. I'd say that for two kids, you'd probably be at over 3k a month easily in fairfax. Mortage on a 500k house with a 10% down would probably be about another 20k a year, so you're looking at a conservative estimate of $56,000 a year for childcare and mortgage costs (I know there's a deduction, but there are also property taxes and other housing related costs that in my experience offset this and then some). Keep in mind that if you're a 2 income professional family, your income is too high to qualify for a tax deduction for child care (I always wonder why people haven't identified this as one of the things that deters women from re-entering the workforce). This is perfectly manageable on a good tech salary with a second spouse working - in SF, those numbers would probably be closer to 100k. So what is perhaps impossible in SF is absolutely workable in fairfax, though of course this really just scratches the surface, I don't know much about life in DC. I'd still maintain that housing, health care, education/child care costs in both places probably still vastly eclipses the savings you can get from cutting back on things like cable, cars, or travel, unless you're extremely self indulgent or are in an unusual situation (such as a sick family member living at some distance from home).

by geebee 11y ago

Bahamut 11y ago

In Northern Virginia, you can get a pretty nice house in Fairfax for $500k - the SF and Silicon Valley market is special for its terribleness (NY too).

Yhippa 11y ago
I thought you were BS-ing me but you are absolutely right (especially if you go up to $600k): http://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/Fairfax-VA/house,mobile,land_type/4655_rid/500000-600000_price/1855-2225_mp/days_sort/39.040653,-77.093983,38.715117,-77.40984_rect/11_zm/0_mmm/ http://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/Fairfax-VA/house,mobile.... For some reason I thought houses up there had gotten crazy expensive. Not too far from Reston and Tyson's and some of the best schools in the country. Can't beat that.
geebee 11y ago
500k isn't cheap, but of course vastly better than a mil (it sounds like fairfax is a fairly nice place, so you'd probably be comparing it to parts of SF that are more like 1.5mil). Any idea what daycare costs over there, typically? Though at 500k for housing, you have the option of one spouse scaling back on work, and if not, the lower mortgage cushions the extra cost of childcare. This is an aside, but when silicon valley companies say there is a desperate shortage of software engineers, Obama[1] nods gravely in agreement. Why doesn't he at least ask why they don't let people work from places like Fairfax? I understand that there are benefits to being in the valley, but if the shortage is that desperate, wouldn't they at least try? As for the original point, even if things get easier outside SF, I'd still say that you'd need to be taking some pretty serious shopping trips for kids clothes to approach the chunk of the budget that goes to health care, housing, and child care/education, even in a less brutal housing market like Fairfax. As for good public schools, well of course that's a relief once they get out of day care age, but you still shell out - I have two kids in public school, and just paying for the local YMCA run after care (so my wife or I can pick them up after work) is $6k per kid per year (so $12k total for me). We cancelled cable, which saved us about $1k a year. [1] not to pick on Obama, this is common reaction from politicians.
- Bahamut 11y ago
  No clue on daycare costs, but keep in mind this - the counties all around the DC area have the highest median annual income in the US, and Fairfax is probably one of the richest in the area. The Valley companies in general don't like remote workers, despite all that is said about the shortage. The executives/managers want the convenience of being able to bother an engineer on whim. Amusingly, remote work is in practice more common in the DC area (and for more than just software engineering), in part because the federal government has driven telework as a huge perk.
  - geebee 11y ago
    I googled around a bit and found some discussion threads on this http://www.dcurbanmom.com/ http://www.dcurbanmom.com/ sounds like 2k a month isn't unusual, but you can get this down if you look around and find a more neighborhood based one. These exist in SF too, they are licensed but tend to be run out of someone's house. I'd say that for two kids, you'd probably be at over 3k a month easily in fairfax. Mortage on a 500k house with a 10% down would probably be about another 20k a year, so you're looking at a conservative estimate of $56,000 a year for childcare and mortgage costs (I know there's a deduction, but there are also property taxes and other housing related costs that in my experience offset this and then some). Keep in mind that if you're a 2 income professional family, your income is too high to qualify for a tax deduction for child care (I always wonder why people haven't identified this as one of the things that deters women from re-entering the workforce). This is perfectly manageable on a good tech salary with a second spouse working - in SF, those numbers would probably be closer to 100k. So what is perhaps impossible in SF is absolutely workable in fairfax, though of course this really just scratches the surface, I don't know much about life in DC. I'd still maintain that housing, health care, education/child care costs in both places probably still vastly eclipses the savings you can get from cutting back on things like cable, cars, or travel, unless you're extremely self indulgent or are in an unusual situation (such as a sick family member living at some distance from home).