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Even Apple and Google Engineers Can't Really Afford To Live Near Their Offices (fastcompany.com)
That's according to the Y Combinator-backed real-estate startup Open Listings, which looked at median home sales prices near the headquarters (meaning within a 20-minute commute) of some of the Bay Area's biggest and best-known tech companies. Fast Company: Using public salary data from Paysa, Open Listings then looked at how many software engineers from those companies could actually afford to buy a house close to their office. Here's what it found: Engineers at five major SF-based tech companies would need to spend over the 28% threshold of their income to afford a monthly mortgage near their offices. Apple engineers would have to pay an average of 33% of their monthly income for a mortgage near work. That's the highest percentage of the companies analyzed, and home prices in Cupertino continue to skyrocket. Google wasn't much better at 32%, and living near the Facebook office would cost an engineer 29% of their monthly paycheck.
Why do you think those campuses let you keep pets in your 'office" and have huge multi cuisine cafeteria? You are not supposed to live near the campus. You are supposed to live in the campus. And work way more than 8 hours a day. Immerse yourself with so much of company amenities, and befriend other company employees you don't think of moving to a start up. duh...
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Maybe you've heard of taxes? In a place like California, between paying local, state and federal income taxes, plus social security and medicare taxes, the government is probably letting you have only HALF of your paycheck. Perhaps 60% of you're lucky. So of the 50-60% you're allowed to keep, spending 28-30% of it on a place to live is going to give you maybe 20-30% for ALL other expenses. I certainly wouldn't want to live that way.
I'm in CA and I lose nearly half of my paycheck before it gets to me due to federal taxes, state taxes, health insurance, etc.
If I want to spend any of my money, the sales tax takes it over the 50% mark.
This state is broken.
Well, you are also a two income household where the study is indicating a single income household. So, given a spouse that makes as much money, they'd be looking at 11-16%. Your 6% is good. I doubt others near you have an equally great deal as that is typically far below the historical average, and I'm guessing you got a really good deal or are living below your means (lower than other people of similar pay anyway). Actually, the deals for the high tech workers isn't bad and is near past historical (middle class) averages where housing now (and has been for decades) the largest household expense as the past largest (33-50%), food, has dropped drastically along with clothing.
Yeah - I was going to mention the whole two vs one income thing. And you're right. And yes, she makes basically the same money I do. So even as SINGLE people, either one of us would basically be paying only 11% or so on our house. Of course, as single people, we would buy less house and be paying even less. Probably more in the 9-10% range. But you hit on another point. The real key is living below your means. We didn't get any great deal on our house (we probably paid a little too much), but we did buy MUCH (MUCH MUCH!) less house than we could have. We also drive old and/or crappy cars. The people in our neighborhood would be totally shocked if they knew how much money we make. Food and clothing...our food budget is about the same as our house payment (we're a family of 3). Clothing? Shit. Not even a blip on the radar. At the end of the day, the key to having money to buy shit is to STOP BUYING SHIT - including houses you can't afford.
What is this CA lifestyle thing?
How many Californians does it take to screw in a light bulb?
Californians don't screw in light bulbs; they screw in hot tubs.
Long-distance view from Maryland. Some artistic license applied.
Got to love living in poverty making $100+K/year
Eh, there are plenty of places you can live in California for less; they're just not places you'd want to live. From what I've been able to determine, all slums across the continental United States reflect about the same standard-of-living at the same income level. I've lived in the lowest income areas around Baltimore for nearly a decade now, and I've prodded at data around the country to see if I could live on the same minimum budget. I found several neighborhoods outside Seattle and down in California with comparable rent (about $1/sqft in 2014 for an apartment) and food prices (pretty much identical, sometimes a few pennies off).
I imagine such places are drug- and crime-ridden ganglands filled with rats and broken-down housing. That's okay: the majority of people in this rotting ghetto are good people, and the high crime rate is perpetrated by a few individuals who of course are constantly active and so cause a lot of trouble. It's probably the same out there.
I should get out more and see the city for what it is. These may very well be the last few years we get to see classic American poverty. I wonder what the next generation will think when we try to explain it to them...
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