6 ms·

What's left after-tax in the Bay Area for this kind of salaries?

hueving 11y ago
Awful. Then it gets even worse when you consider that you pour a huge chunk into rent and you make too much to get any deductions for student loan payments, rent, etc. Don't forget to tack on the higher cost of living as well. If you get an SF offer and are comparing it to normal US cities (not NY), just chop 40% off. This will give you an idea: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=moving+from++San+Francisco+to+St+Louis+salary+%24150%2C000 https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=moving+from++San+Franc...
- githulhu 11y ago
  Sure, but then you have to live in St. Louis, Missouri. I'm sure I could move to a third world country and have an even lower cost of living. As though it were otherwise equivalent to living in a top US city.
  - xirdstl 11y ago
    Not everyone considers SF to be a top US city. To each his own.
  - eloff 11y ago
    Speaking as someone who lives in a developing world tax haven, I'd almost rather live here than in SF, even if they cost the same. But it's not even close. I told the Google recruiter that they can't afford me, so please stop emailing me. They can't pay me enough to make up for the difference in cost of living.
  - fixermark 11y ago
    I've visited SF and the outlying areas. It's nice. But with all the car traffic to get anywhere outside the mass-transit grid (and the West Coast sprawl that's a side-effect of having enough land to sprawl onto), it's not nearly nice enough to justify the outsized cost of living. Maybe in the future my attitude will change, but as of right now you literally could not pay me enough to move to the SF / MTV area.
  - smm2000 11y ago
    Mountain View is a typical upper-middle class suburb that exist in every US city with >100k population. It's single family houses with strip malls and horrible commute from anywhere. Really nothing to boast about. Minority of employees live in SF and waste 2.5 hours of their life on commute.
  - pyrophane 11y ago
    SF is a tech echo-chamber with terrible public transit and rental market that probably wouldn't be so expensive if anyone were allowed to build anything. On top of all that it has managed to attract more douchebags ("tech gold rush") per capita than Manhattan. I'm not sure the density of craft cocktails bars and farm-to-table restaurants, or the fact that it never gets too hot makes up for the drawbacks.
    - wutbrodo 11y ago
      I've yet to meet someone who feels this way who's actually tried getting out of their house beyond going to the aforementioned cocktail bars. If you're an uninteresting person and uninterested in exploring, the city you're in isn't going to magically be interesting the second you step out the door. But hey no complaints here, that just means the fun parts of sf are all the less crowded. Complaints about the rent and transit are obviously legitimate, though you may be overestimating the quality of transit in most other cities.
      - pekk 11y ago
        I would take a short commute time over a higher-quality transit system with long commutes every time.
      - orangecat 11y ago
        Complaints about the rent and transit are obviously legitimate, though you may be overestimating the quality of transit in most other cities. Other cities either have similarly insane rent and much better transit (NYC), or similarly bad transit and much cheaper rent (basically everywhere else).
    - ryanobjc 11y ago
      SF is def way more than just those things you cherry picked. Also, the "more douchebags per capita than Manhattan" -- you're going to need a citation for that. Personally, I like the people here - both counter cultural, and also scientific. Very friendly to us aspy-leaning folks. A place where someone can say "I quit my job and am doing {teaching yoga, making the aforementioned craft cocktails, etc}" without judgement. A place where, quite literally, the core of our technological world is being invented. The weather is a bonus, and the accessibility to the great American west. So yea, quit knocking my town!
  - michaelochurch 11y ago
    Sure, but then you have to live in St. Louis, Missouri. Seattle, Portland, Chicago, Austin, Minneapolis, and Boston are more affordable than the Bay Area, and generally considered to be good places to live. (I won't say anything either way about St. Louis, because I don't know anything about it. I was there about 12 years ago and will probably be there this year for Strange Loop, but that's it.) There isn't a lack of affordable, good places to live in the U.S. There isn't even a lack of affordable, good places to live in cities: Chicago is still the Second City, culturally. L.A. is just a company town for the entertainment industry and way too spread out. New York is expensive but actually worth it in terms of urban amenity (unlike SF). There really isn't anywhere in the U.S. that has that urban density, so if that's what you want, NYC provides it. San Francisco, on the other hand, wouldn't be on the map except for the VC industry. It has more of a one-dimensional economy than Los Angeles.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
  - jsolson 11y ago
    Seattle is pretty alright. Substantially cheaper than the bay, no state income taxes, lower sales tax, and competitive comp.
- Nimitz14 11y ago
  I wonder what sort of sheltered life you have lived to think earning 100k+ anywhere is "awful".
  - cbhl 11y ago
    It's awful in the sense that if you want a market-rate one-bedroom apartment in San Francisco you end up spending 60-90% of your post-tax monthly income on rent. So you compromise -- you split a bedroom with a roommate, or you convert your living area into a bedroom, or you live in a pre-1969 rent-controlled unit and have the people who used to live in those apartments throwing rocks at you on your way to work. Or you live somewhere in north/east bay and deal with a two hour driving commute.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
  - hueving 11y ago
    It's awful in the sense of how much is gone to taxes and cost of living. Earning 100k+ that effectively becomes half of the real number because of exorbitant cost of living puts you in a crappy spot. You lose all of the tax breaks and everything else that people get who have your same take home pay at a lower net income (e.g. student loan tax deduction). Also, you have to deal with ignorant people like yourself that look at salary numbers in a vacuum and assume the person talking is over-privileged. One of my younger friends moved out to the bay at a 90k salary and he cannot afford to live by himself in a one bedroom apartment in the south bay, let alone SF. Consider that, he can't afford a shitty one bedroom apartment in a suburb.
    - Nimitz14 11y ago
      The fact you assume I wasn't taking taxes and cost of living into account says a lot about the intelligence of the people you prefer to hang out with. People get by in SF with much less than the numbers that are being quoted here. I'm not saying you shouldn't complain, I'm saying be reasonable about your problems.
    - 11y ago
malyk 11y ago
Roughly $100k after paying roughly 40% +/- in taxes. Very rough numbers of course.
skylark 11y ago
I make 117k in San Francisco My take home: 3300 / 2 weeks My rent: 2600 / month (on the high side, but not ludicrous)

Awful. Then it gets even worse when you consider that you pour a huge chunk into rent and you make too much to get any deductions for student loan payments, rent, etc. Don't forget to tack on the higher cost of living as well. If you get an SF offer and are comparing it to normal US cities (not NY), just chop 40% off. This will give you an idea: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=moving+from++San+Francisco+to+St+Louis+salary+%24150%2C000 https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=moving+from++San+Franc...

githulhu 11y ago
Sure, but then you have to live in St. Louis, Missouri. I'm sure I could move to a third world country and have an even lower cost of living. As though it were otherwise equivalent to living in a top US city.
- xirdstl 11y ago
  Not everyone considers SF to be a top US city. To each his own.
- eloff 11y ago
  Speaking as someone who lives in a developing world tax haven, I'd almost rather live here than in SF, even if they cost the same. But it's not even close. I told the Google recruiter that they can't afford me, so please stop emailing me. They can't pay me enough to make up for the difference in cost of living.
- fixermark 11y ago
  I've visited SF and the outlying areas. It's nice. But with all the car traffic to get anywhere outside the mass-transit grid (and the West Coast sprawl that's a side-effect of having enough land to sprawl onto), it's not nearly nice enough to justify the outsized cost of living. Maybe in the future my attitude will change, but as of right now you literally could not pay me enough to move to the SF / MTV area.
- smm2000 11y ago
  Mountain View is a typical upper-middle class suburb that exist in every US city with >100k population. It's single family houses with strip malls and horrible commute from anywhere. Really nothing to boast about. Minority of employees live in SF and waste 2.5 hours of their life on commute.
- pyrophane 11y ago
  SF is a tech echo-chamber with terrible public transit and rental market that probably wouldn't be so expensive if anyone were allowed to build anything. On top of all that it has managed to attract more douchebags ("tech gold rush") per capita than Manhattan. I'm not sure the density of craft cocktails bars and farm-to-table restaurants, or the fact that it never gets too hot makes up for the drawbacks.
  - wutbrodo 11y ago
    I've yet to meet someone who feels this way who's actually tried getting out of their house beyond going to the aforementioned cocktail bars. If you're an uninteresting person and uninterested in exploring, the city you're in isn't going to magically be interesting the second you step out the door. But hey no complaints here, that just means the fun parts of sf are all the less crowded. Complaints about the rent and transit are obviously legitimate, though you may be overestimating the quality of transit in most other cities.
    - pekk 11y ago
      I would take a short commute time over a higher-quality transit system with long commutes every time.
    - orangecat 11y ago
      Complaints about the rent and transit are obviously legitimate, though you may be overestimating the quality of transit in most other cities. Other cities either have similarly insane rent and much better transit (NYC), or similarly bad transit and much cheaper rent (basically everywhere else).
  - ryanobjc 11y ago
    SF is def way more than just those things you cherry picked. Also, the "more douchebags per capita than Manhattan" -- you're going to need a citation for that. Personally, I like the people here - both counter cultural, and also scientific. Very friendly to us aspy-leaning folks. A place where someone can say "I quit my job and am doing {teaching yoga, making the aforementioned craft cocktails, etc}" without judgement. A place where, quite literally, the core of our technological world is being invented. The weather is a bonus, and the accessibility to the great American west. So yea, quit knocking my town!
- michaelochurch 11y ago
  Sure, but then you have to live in St. Louis, Missouri. Seattle, Portland, Chicago, Austin, Minneapolis, and Boston are more affordable than the Bay Area, and generally considered to be good places to live. (I won't say anything either way about St. Louis, because I don't know anything about it. I was there about 12 years ago and will probably be there this year for Strange Loop, but that's it.) There isn't a lack of affordable, good places to live in the U.S. There isn't even a lack of affordable, good places to live in cities: Chicago is still the Second City, culturally. L.A. is just a company town for the entertainment industry and way too spread out. New York is expensive but actually worth it in terms of urban amenity (unlike SF). There really isn't anywhere in the U.S. that has that urban density, so if that's what you want, NYC provides it. San Francisco, on the other hand, wouldn't be on the map except for the VC industry. It has more of a one-dimensional economy than Los Angeles.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
- jsolson 11y ago
  Seattle is pretty alright. Substantially cheaper than the bay, no state income taxes, lower sales tax, and competitive comp.
Nimitz14 11y ago
I wonder what sort of sheltered life you have lived to think earning 100k+ anywhere is "awful".
- cbhl 11y ago
  It's awful in the sense that if you want a market-rate one-bedroom apartment in San Francisco you end up spending 60-90% of your post-tax monthly income on rent. So you compromise -- you split a bedroom with a roommate, or you convert your living area into a bedroom, or you live in a pre-1969 rent-controlled unit and have the people who used to live in those apartments throwing rocks at you on your way to work. Or you live somewhere in north/east bay and deal with a two hour driving commute.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
- hueving 11y ago
  It's awful in the sense of how much is gone to taxes and cost of living. Earning 100k+ that effectively becomes half of the real number because of exorbitant cost of living puts you in a crappy spot. You lose all of the tax breaks and everything else that people get who have your same take home pay at a lower net income (e.g. student loan tax deduction). Also, you have to deal with ignorant people like yourself that look at salary numbers in a vacuum and assume the person talking is over-privileged. One of my younger friends moved out to the bay at a 90k salary and he cannot afford to live by himself in a one bedroom apartment in the south bay, let alone SF. Consider that, he can't afford a shitty one bedroom apartment in a suburb.
  - Nimitz14 11y ago
    The fact you assume I wasn't taking taxes and cost of living into account says a lot about the intelligence of the people you prefer to hang out with. People get by in SF with much less than the numbers that are being quoted here. I'm not saying you shouldn't complain, I'm saying be reasonable about your problems.
  - 11y ago

malyk 11y ago

Roughly $100k after paying roughly 40% +/- in taxes. Very rough numbers of course.

skylark 11y ago

I make 117k in San Francisco My take home: 3300 / 2 weeks My rent: 2600 / month (on the high side, but not ludicrous)