Don't live in San Francisco or Bay Area.EmergDoc wrote:clubby wrote:
Can anyone explain to me how someone with a 2nd quartile income (let's say $50-80K) can actually pay California real estate prices and actually save enough money to call themselves a Boglehead? It seems impossible to me. I see houses in California listed at $2 Million that would go for $200K in Arizona, Nevada, or Utah. It's such a huge sacrifice it just surprises me to see so many making it.
Seriously. I am from Bay Area. San Jose is second most expensive city in the country? We owned a condo there - paid $260k. We then bought a $260k house in Sacramento. Bogleheads just have to be creative. We are not in tech or science, so this was probably a lot of our decision to leave Bay Area. Housing is such a large over-riding expense (Bought/owned these homes with $50k-$60k income) that everything else gives. We have never spent much money on cars, for example. We have enjoyed being able to raise our kids in a sprawling house with a yard, but it's not a deal breaker for us. WE can certainly afford to live in the Bay Area if we go small with the housing. Which we are fine with. Our first home was a condo because was all we could afford. (Could not afford rents). But, our takeaway was that we really enjoyed the low-maintenance home ownership. So we are itching to downsize again, anyway. (Ironically, the cost of living has taught us a lot about contentment, which bodes well for Bogleheads and frugality. We also are aware that we have a lot of options. We've already done one major lower-cost-of-living move and are very open to doing another).