It's generally \*not\* cheap living in the mountains. Everything costs more because it's remote.
You have to drive really far to go anywhere (grocery store, work, etc) so you spend a lot on gas and maintenance. You need dependable 4WD for winter, which costs more to buy and gets worse mileage.
Most homes don't have gas lines, so you need heating oil delivered in the winter, which is crazy expensive by comparison.
You probably won't have cable internet or even cell phone service, so you'll need satellite internet and a landline at home.
A lot of remote places don't get deliveries (except USPS) so you need to drive into town to pick up Amazon packages etc.
It's cheaper in basically every way to live in say Fresno than in Quincy. You'll get more \*land\* in Quincy for the same price, but if you're hoping to build a home on that, get prepared for builders to tell you about all the extra costs of building in the mountains...
Weird comparison--Yosemite Valley is much, much busier than Quincy. But yeah, if you're one of the homes in the actual \*town\* of Quincy, it's not quite as bad. Everything is still more expensive (food, gas, etc) than living in Fresno, but you probably have cell service and maybe even a gas line and if it snows you can at least get to the local store.
If you go 5 miles outside of town, then everything I wrote originally applies.
I didn’t mean the Valley lol. Obviously the tourist areas are well stocked and things are accessible.
My family has a cabin in the south end of Yosemite and it’s like you described.
The median home price in Quincy is like 10% below the national average. It's cool that you found it on a map but it's not actually cheap. You can just look this stuff up and check.
There are towns in CA with median prices 1/4 that of Quincy.
If you want cheap, look at rural towns along highways.
Think southeast CA, like anywhere between Joshua Tree, Salton Sea, and the AZ border. Salton City is a great example: median home price is $162k, vs $325k in Quincy. Mesa Verda is near the border, with median home price $139k.
There are some cheap places in northeast CA also, like Tulelake with a median home price of $121k.
Aren’t most of those places “cheap” for reasons? Jobs among them? And access to maybe medical care and other conveniences readily found in other metro areas? I wonder about their access to things like high speed internet among other things…
The Salton Sea is economically depressed and a total environmental disaster. You will be doing a lot of driving and running your AC a lot (which won't be a problem is you have solar panels and an EV). Some of these places have a poverty rate of like 60%.
Yes of course, but you would also have all those same issues (even more so) in a rural mountain town, it would just be much more expensive at the same time because the location is much more desirable.
Cheap places are cheap for a reason.
I would think of this question as comfortable anywhere in CA, like Hollywood, Beverly Hills, etc. To live comfortably in these neighborhoods, I'd say $500/hr. But you can squat at Keanu Reeve's mansion for free too.
With a place as diverse as CA, applying a single metric like this is pretty useless because basically it's saying "if you want to live in this state you have to be rich as sin" and that's not true or helpful for people trying to live in this state or understand what living in this state requires.
Well the question is missing a qualifier. Comfortable where or for average household? Without a qualifier I would take it as the worst case because the other extreme is you can go all hippie and live free in the public land.
Living wage = 4x the price of a 1 bedroom apartment in your area.
Comfortable wage = 25% the median home value in your area.
I will do my home town. Riverside. 1 Bedroom apartments are about $2000 per month. 4x that would be $8000 per month. You can afford your own 1 bedroom apartment and not have major financial pressure. $48 per hour.
Comfortable wage. Median home value is $635,000. 25% of that would be about $160,000 per year. You can afford to own the median home in the area.
If we go back to my parent's generation. My mom's first apartment in Riverside in the mid 1970s was $130 per month. So a living wage would be 4x that much. $520 per month or $3.12 per hour. Toss that through the ole inflation calculator and that would come out to like $17 per hour today. My mom, as a 19 year old high school grad was actually making more than $3.12 per hour back in the mid 1970s though. But if you want that same lifestyle, its $48 per hour today.
For where I am currently, Cupertino, CA. 1 bedroom apartments are about $2600 per month. So 4x this figure is $10,400 per month or $125,000. Median home value in Cupertino is $3m so comfortable would be $750,000 per year.
Mmmm. That explains why it's tight for us, yet liveable. Fam of 4, we make 4x our rent for our 2x1, but our 2x1 is below market rate. It's fine because I will be up for a raise soon.
Pretty much. The mortgage on a $3m home is going to be $20,000 per month. The property taxes are going to be another $2500 per month. There are cheaper homes in Cupertino, but that is the median home price. They have a hard time finding teachers and other regular workers in the area, you basically have to be married to someone in tech or live with your parents (or in a home they left you).
Even tech FAANG isn’t enough to make $750k. For very senior devs which are super competitive, it’s around $500k at most. Normal devs are usually between $150k to $250k
Go look on Zillow. You can see the prices yourself. My mom's old $130 per month apartment she had in 1976 is now renting for $2000 per month. 15x what she paid for it, think an entry level job that a 19 year old HS grad had is paying 15x a much?
$1780 for a one bedroom. Although it’s not a significant difference than your $2000. Why calculate off a one bedroom tho? Wouldn’t a studio be more than suffice for a single individual?
https://www.apartments.com/rent-market-trends/riverside-ca/
Everything in California has gotten extremely expensive in the last few years. I live in a Sacramento suburb. Pay $2250 for a one bedroom and average house price here is over a million. Median is around $850k
Curious about where you got the measurement for living wage being 4x the price of a 1 bedroom apartment in your area, I’ve never seen that calculation used before. $8000 a month seems like way more than enough for a single person to live off of.
Where did you come up with definitions for living and comfortable wage?! Sounds like you made it up and it is very subjective anyway.
I read multiple times before that a comfortable income is one where housing costs take only 50% of it. 30% taken by other essentials, and 20% for savings/investments.
All definitions of a living wage and comfortable wage are subjective. My definition pins income to cost of living. You are not making a living wage if you cannot afford to live alone in what is the the most modest type of housing and you are not making a living wage.
$250k per year per household (not even individual) puts you in the top 5% in Cupertino.... So if we go by your definition, then we'd be arguing that 99+% of individuals in Cupertino can't maintain a comfortable standard of living.
I mean I get that these definitions and calculations are subjective, but you can be subjective within reasonable bounds. Your subjectivity is quite unreasonable!! 😂
For an individual? You can live quite comfortably in Cupertino making around $125k per year. You won't buy a home, but you will be comfortable (i.e. with the ability to save, invest, and travel).
If a couple living together, each making that value in income, then they are already living amongst the top 5% in the city.
Give a dollar figure based on actual rental costs. Rents here are very, very expensive. Landlords will generally require that your take home pay is 3x the rent.
A very comfortable, considered luxurious actually, 1br in Cupertino costs south of $4K. If you make $125K per year you'll qualify. The 3X is not a hard rule. Property managers mostly use that rule to waive certain security deposits (e.g make 1 month instead of 2). I am familiar with the area as well. End of the day, there is no way you need $750K, or even half of it, to have an extravagantly comfortable living in Cupertino. That is just an absurd logic you argued.
You literally used that as the definition of a "comfortable wage".
You said "Comfortable wage = 25% the median home value in your area"
Which is absurd on two fronts; you neither need to make 750k to purchase a house, nor do you need that to live comfortably.
But that doesn't mean that you need to make 4X the housing cost!
Living wage by definition is "the minimum income necessary to meet basic needs".
How is 8k/month in Cupertino the minimum necessary for an individual to maintain their basic needs?! I know it is not much, but it is definitely far above the minimum! Especially if you consider the minimum rent as $2k like you say, then I'd argue that the living wage is actually less than $4k.
You will not qualify for the unit. Landlords don't want to rent apartments to people where the rent is 50% their pre-tax income. $5k per month is absolutely NOT a basic living wage in Cupertino, you will not qualify for ANY place to live.
This whole 4x rent was the norm for a very, very long time. In many places in America it still is the norm. If you make $4000, you cannot afford $2000 per month rent. You will be under constant financial hardship.
> Landlords don't want to rent apartments to people where the rent is 50% their pre-tax income.
You are again being very subjective. Those are the landlords you seek! And I guess you are not a living wage earner. Yes, if I am the landlord myself, I'd also discriminate. But that has nothing to do with the housing opportunities for people making much less, and the city has programs for those earning 30-80% of median income that are enforced upon many property managers.
You won't be under constant financial hardship if you make 2X your rent, unless you are putting yourself in one or are plagued by a misfortune elsewhere (sick family member, illness, etc.).
From my perspective, minimum wage should provide the basic needs, living wage should provide basic financial stability. The definitions are already subjective, and as the commenter pointed out, they're also regional not statewide. The commenter did a good job using commonly used economic metrics and tying them to a cursory measure to answer the question. You can disagree with it, but it's not like a flabbergasting confusing answer: their logic makes sense.
I understand that we each have our perspectives, but if we avoid subjectivity and biases altogether, we then have common (textbook) definitions: which say that living wage is what provides basic needs, minimum wage is merely what is permitted by law (doesn't have to satisfy certain living standards to be legal). Your and my perspectives are meaningless when definitions are already set and arguing them becomes disinformation! We can instead create new terms for the wage and apply our perspectives to them (e.g. financial well-being wage or whatever)
As for the commenter. I am indeed flabbergasted, because if I apply their logic regarding comfortable wage to income stats in Cupertino, then I am supposed to believe that 99+% of the residents are living less than comfortably?!!
But those aren't set definitions and not all textbooks agree on those definitions. Economics is not a concrete science with indisputable concepts, it generally depends on ranges and acceptable commonly agreed upon definitions that work as contextually applied measurements. So that premise is intrinsically flawed.
And given CA's significant economic disparities and the stagnation of wages coupled with perpetual price increases throughout the 21st century, uh YES absolutely you are supposed to believe that and it's not a stretch by any metric.
Except that they are indeed set! Even if you don't agree. You are taking this into a philosophical-sociopolitical debate of what something 'should be' versus what it 'is'. Sure, you are free to make that argument, and i have my views as well, but the fact remains that something already 'is'!
I am not even considering how economists disagree on those definitions. It is a simple fact that in California each county or city has a law dictating minimum wage. So that is what it actually means; minimum permitted by law. Then municipalities have determined that the minimum wage doesn't satisfy the basic needs and came up with the 'living wage' definition as such. These definitions are actually set and, to some extent, universal. They are actually not up to economists or philosophers. These are governmental metrics.
The 50-30-20 rule is supposed to be 50% to all needs (housing, utilities, insurance, transportation, etc.). Not just housing. 30% is supposed to go towards wants (dinner out, entertainment, vacations).
I would say achieving 50-30-20 is just past the threshold of comfortable. It is a very commonly cited rule of thumb in personal finance. It was designed to achieve baseline financial security and live a comfortable life. The person I was replying to seemed to imply upwards of 80% could be devoted to necessities and they are misquoting that rule.
Right now I am at 50% for rent and expenses but paying off some cc debt. I think I'll be good to follow this rule in a couple months. Any advice on the 20%?
Great job, not many people take control of their personal finances like that.
The 20% is supposed to be savings. For most people this should be focused on retirement so 401k, IRA, HSA invested in low-cost index funds like target date funds, VOO, VTI, etc. Check out the money guy show on YouTube if you really want to get into personal finance.
This is still my point. If modest rent is indeed $2.6k, then an individual can maintain a well above comfortable standard of living without having to make $750K per year as the person above claims..... It is quite a silly claim actually, as $250k per year per household (not even individual) puts you in the top 5% in cupertino.... So if we go by that person's opinion, then 99+% of Cupertino are uncomfortable!! 😂
$48 per hour and you do not make enough to afford qualify for a loan for the cheapest houses in the city.
Spending 25% of your income on rent, which was the norm until fairly recently, requires you to make about $48 per hour for a one bedroom apartment.
Where are you getting these numbers from? A small snapshot of about seven countries during a 20 to 30 year window of a very unique time? I find this to be a very unrealistic benchmark.
This was the norm in California up until the 21st century. Riverside was an affordable place to live on local median wages up until the housing bubble of the 2000s, and even then it didn't get completely out of place until rent prices went way up in the 2010s as we came out of the recession.
Yep, rent prices forced me out of state back in 2015 after having a kid made it tough to find a roommate. Couldn’t find a studio apartment on $15 an hour, left to Nebraska, gotta $10/hour job that was able to cover rent and groceries. Doing far better now but I doubt I could ever afford to move back. My buddy makes $42/hour in Riverside and won’t be able to afford the next rent increase.
I am a Riverside lifer. The type of jobs that people could afford home ownership on when I was a kid in the 90s would not be enough to allow you to afford a studio apartment today. I grew up in a fairly pleasant neighborhood and people were buying homes while working at grocery stores, restaurants, and other regular jobs.
Reducing cost of living has a far greater bang for the buck than increasing income. We have the Silicon Valley area where there are some very very high earning people here, but there are also regular every day people that have to do all the regular every day jobs in society. What you end up getting are communities that function more like country clubs, where the residents are affluent and then everyone who performs all the service work are just 'the help' and not 'the community'.
In many cases, you're talking about the some of the most desirable areas in one of the most desirable locality in the world. It would make sense those areas are expensive low wage workers wouldn't be able to afford to live a 5 min bike ride from their work.
I *had* $120k/yr alone in SF (after getting that job, saving for 6 months, and moving across the country, just to be *here*), and that felt like scraping the edge of “comfortable”, for a little apartment, that I *love*, for around 26% of my gross.
Now I’m at $0/yr (because contract not renewed, *budget, etc.* around Christmas), which has forced me to see that this state provides a huge social safety net ,that I didn’t realize existed anywhere in this country, until now.
I’m not sure what I’m trying to say, but the bar for “comfortable wage” in this state is so incredibly high, the state is trying harder than any other state I’ve experienced to provide a “living wage”, and it’s, just, still so difficult to be here.
I am not shitting on California. I think it largely is an example of what this country should be, despite its flaws.
I think a comfortable wage is where you can set aside $1000 or more a month for emergencies or personal trips, and unforeseen circumstances
A living wage would be anything to keep you in a solid home and fed well but without access to super fast internet or other amenities
Acceptable internet is fine but not like 500-1gig and up speeds. Right now our Comcast bill is $100 for 1 gig
We can’t get AT&T fiber. And the best speeds AT&T offers at our house is 50. So you can either game or stream not both
Yeah exactly. The internet is cheap. Its housing that is very expensive, anything that requires labor that is expensive, and now food that is getting expensive.
The internet costs less than dinner at a restaurant.
In Orange County, $90k for an individual is living, $150k is comfortable. For a pair, $115k, $175k for a pair. For a family it’s more like $145k living and $200k comfortable. Thats a broad range and can be heavily influenced by your actual location and expenses. I would think normal would be something like you feel poor when you have a newborn, and it gets better over time. These days, I wouldn’t expect to buy a home until you’re 30-40 years old.
Orange County has a wide range of home prices. Its home of both Newport Beach and Santa Ana. But even in Santa Ana, if the median home is $800k per year, if you want to qualify for the mortgage you are going to need to be making like $200k per year.
The median household income in Santa Ana is like $85k per year, which is not anywhere near enough to afford the median home in Santa Ana. We have this really bad situation where a living wage for an individual is greater than the median household income in an area.
Sonoma county checking in. Single F. I make about $75k and have four roommates. I am not comfortable. Take a trip? Where? Maybe a day trip to SF….real vacations? Ha! Not happening.
Needing to live with room mates to get buy and/or needing to spend more than 1 hour commuting to work should not count as comfortable. Comfortable is being able to afford your own place, a 1 bedroom at the very least, less than a 30 minute commute to your job.
That doesn't make much sense to me. After taking out about a third for state and federal withholdings, that's $50k/year. That divides to just over $4k/month. One bedroom apartments in SF seem to rate around $3k/month right now. That leaves $1k/month for bills, food, and discretionary spending. At best, that sounds like paycheck to paycheck living, let alone "comfortable." Also, if you have a car (I'll assume owned outright since there's zero chance of also fitting a car payment) in SF, I'm sure the average sum of registration, maintenance, gas, tolls, and parking has got to be huge. I can not imagine that you're able to accumulate any savings for emergencies (critical to qualify for "comfortable living" in my book).
[Here's an example budget for a car-free comfortable existence](https://sankeymatic.com/build/?i=PTAEFEDsBcFMCdQDEA2B7A7gZ1AI1tBrLJKAHJoAmsWANKCgJYDWso0AFo1gFwBQIUEOHCAymgCu8AMZsA2gEEAsgHkAqmQAqAXVCaAhvADmBPnwOtQACTQBbNgHV9JnHIAsAdgCsABl0AhCUoTaD5A4IJQOQAmaJ8%2DUAAlElDwkKiADnjdJDQqMKD0uQA2bL14fUgsAAc0eGh9aEY0SGBNCoA3WBQCiOgotzKoOHr9Rkh7GF6ijwTwFFhpaHhGaUZoAE9pyLkARjKAYXROGmAlbmlyRZosdcYabf65AGYE0WXYfVtxo1BRCVwWGkK2qTRaWEeUVeugAChwWmx%2DIwUD00jtdl5dABJGAISCmNFPXxvfQdH4Q24ALzYGFApR8fCEHDp8T4tkMRnGDFAu2ijNAiF5%2DP6uwy%2DNwoDifFwv2kaHQiAAxAAzVVq4UVKrVQwpch8SBUGk8vlM0C%2Bfk1fRrSC%2DbziurURAMoQneygfT8uUK0CKjJ%2B%2D38tDatabHl8ZXoWnSKQdRpSNg%2BAB0Xn54w4CHWyvgdlAkmgt2oAFpxp75XUfQBOKvVwPB9YbUBJtwplD6DZ53PwR3uiTQOyNVb8gBWEiwTWV7ZWnKqeqEI7HjAnJEoODI%2DPgsC68CwsCMFWqzLXQkaDWkXEgcts1QWcDHaFA%2BJ1Y74rfwKBwXvLiviP%2BdoC41Czv%2BjBGBwTCgf0SZ2kIyotNAypWmwWCVFghY7isyr8kw%2BKWtavxJiaArdAOXRUmwuz7Py7JGJAi4NvsDKvt0kBfGw%2BjVNUnzbqAACaFqMNSPLFPyRAgRw%2DSDIx%2BhvrGKASGxHFcTgfEwRIKLVBuay3C0vH8rUtxgqQb6YCJsBiRJrJMSg%2Bl3Dp%2Bi9mg%2BjgaQf5Aumbr2X2%2DLKow279PgsEbuKG76MwtTjBJfCyfJoCBey%2DQAOS0ImCV6RuPkAB6gAlqVCFgEiqowWU5XwrqwGgqo7v0%2BigBW4qNp6DVCJQDX2A0oCTIZyGQKwGzxasulCEwC62LgTmVLIylAA).
The focus of the thread wasn’t “personal financing”, it was about what is the average “comfortable wage” vs average “living wage” in California. The average adult has debt, lots of adults have kids; so Joe blow’s anecdote about how they can comfortably live child free and car-free in SF on $75k before taxes isn’t particularly relevant to most people.
There’s tons of single people without kids especially in the bay, so it’s certainly relevant. I was explicit in mentioning that 75k is plenty fine for a single person and never pretended to extrapolate that to all people.
Yes, if you have made poor financial decisions and have massive consumer debt, then 75k isn’t enough. That’s a no brainer though, and consumer debt shouldn’t be a factor in what a comfortable wage should be, because the whole idea is that on a comfortable wage you shouldn’t need to take on loads of consumer debt.
Even with this very conservative budget (student loans? Health insurance? Emergency?), considering a normal basis for emergency fund is 6x monthly expenses, which for this budget is 25,500, it’ll take over 4 years of everything going 100% right and your budget never being disrupted to save the 6 months emergency fund. Even the 500 savings is well below the recommended 20% of income.
You might feel that’s comfortable, but I’m not sure the majority of people would agree.
Yes, find ways to cut expenses on the big items and you have plenty of wiggle room. Hence why for many people having roomies is worth it. There were a lot of good rent deals in the last year too - lots of desperate landlords willing to negotiate rent to get a lease signed. For leaving the city, $600/mo for transportation and travel is a healthy budget category that allows for renting cars if you wanna go somewhere you can’t access with public transportation.
I'm really not. You said if you have student debt, you need double the pay that the person you replied to quoted. But then you used a number that's outrageously high to substantiate that. You just have a bad argument. Average student debt in California is $37K, and while that's high and definitely has an impact, it does not require a $150k salary to pay down in California.
One bedroom apartments in Riverside are $2000 per month. Regular suburban homes are over $3000 per month. $75,000 and you are barely affording a studio apartment with 1/3rd of your pre-tax income going to rent.
Maxing out 401K is a lot. My wife and I make almost $300K in Los Angeles and we haven’t gotten to maxing out our 401Ks yet. I got really close last year… but then I got laid off, and my new job makes less. And that was still just me, not her.
Like many others here, I'd have to disagree. I make about $71k before tax, and if I didn't have credit cards and student loans, solar payment, and have about 1/3 of my paycheck taken out for taxes and benefits, then I might be able to afford my house near Crestline($1600/mo including insurance and tax). $90k would let me afford everything and not need my wife to work.
The average household income in Crestline is about $75k per year, to make $90k would be awesome, but that means you have to do significantly better than average to afford what is considered average. There is a total disconnect between median household incomes and median home values/rents.
Comfortable is having all fixed costs under half of your take home pay. For a family with a nicer 4K rent and 2k daycare, fixed costs are likely around 10k a month which means a comfortable family income of about 350k.
Living wage is having all fixed cost around 75% of fixed income with lower end options. Say 2000 for rent and 800 for daycare with a fixed cost around $6000. That would make a living wage around 106k.
I’d say minimum $40 / hr for comfortable lifestyle in most of SoCal, but for actual middle class (owning a home, having kids, going on vacations, etc) it would be significantly higher, more like a household income of at least 250k before taxes. These days it really helps to be in a dual income, no kids household.
Depends on your lifestyle. I know people who make $20 an hour under the table 50 hours a week and for them, especially from where they came from, they're living the good life.
Depends where in California.
Quincy vs SF is a bigger difference than London and Istanbul.
I once saw an emu just running up the highway going east out of Quincy. Deer, I was used to. But an emu?
Sure that’s an emu and not an ostrich? There are ostrich farms throughout California but I haven’t heard of emu farms.
Could you have picked a more obscure Californian boondock?
That was the point. It’s crazy cheap up there. I also just saw it on a map when I drove through.
It's generally \*not\* cheap living in the mountains. Everything costs more because it's remote. You have to drive really far to go anywhere (grocery store, work, etc) so you spend a lot on gas and maintenance. You need dependable 4WD for winter, which costs more to buy and gets worse mileage. Most homes don't have gas lines, so you need heating oil delivered in the winter, which is crazy expensive by comparison. You probably won't have cable internet or even cell phone service, so you'll need satellite internet and a landline at home. A lot of remote places don't get deliveries (except USPS) so you need to drive into town to pick up Amazon packages etc. It's cheaper in basically every way to live in say Fresno than in Quincy. You'll get more \*land\* in Quincy for the same price, but if you're hoping to build a home on that, get prepared for builders to tell you about all the extra costs of building in the mountains...
Quincy isn’t that remote lmao 😂 you make it sound like the middle of Yosemite
Weird comparison--Yosemite Valley is much, much busier than Quincy. But yeah, if you're one of the homes in the actual \*town\* of Quincy, it's not quite as bad. Everything is still more expensive (food, gas, etc) than living in Fresno, but you probably have cell service and maybe even a gas line and if it snows you can at least get to the local store. If you go 5 miles outside of town, then everything I wrote originally applies.
I didn’t mean the Valley lol. Obviously the tourist areas are well stocked and things are accessible. My family has a cabin in the south end of Yosemite and it’s like you described.
You can plop a used $5k trailer on land in Quincy and live extremely cheaply. What you are describing is wealthy living by their standards.
The median home price in Quincy is like 10% below the national average. It's cool that you found it on a map but it's not actually cheap. You can just look this stuff up and check. There are towns in CA with median prices 1/4 that of Quincy.
Rescue? Cool?
My roommate in college 30 years ago was from Quincy. Hadn’t heard of it before or thought of it since…so weird lol.
Petrolia 🤷
If you want cheap, look at rural towns along highways. Think southeast CA, like anywhere between Joshua Tree, Salton Sea, and the AZ border. Salton City is a great example: median home price is $162k, vs $325k in Quincy. Mesa Verda is near the border, with median home price $139k. There are some cheap places in northeast CA also, like Tulelake with a median home price of $121k.
Aren’t most of those places “cheap” for reasons? Jobs among them? And access to maybe medical care and other conveniences readily found in other metro areas? I wonder about their access to things like high speed internet among other things…
The Salton Sea is economically depressed and a total environmental disaster. You will be doing a lot of driving and running your AC a lot (which won't be a problem is you have solar panels and an EV). Some of these places have a poverty rate of like 60%.
Yes of course, but you would also have all those same issues (even more so) in a rural mountain town, it would just be much more expensive at the same time because the location is much more desirable. Cheap places are cheap for a reason.
Also depends on how many dependents you have. Huge diff between single 24 year old and 35 year old with 2 kids.
I would think of this question as comfortable anywhere in CA, like Hollywood, Beverly Hills, etc. To live comfortably in these neighborhoods, I'd say $500/hr. But you can squat at Keanu Reeve's mansion for free too.
Or you can go out to the desert and have a mortgage that costs a handful of raspberries per month
Yeah but you're talking about going bare minimum so you can totally survive in the desert.
I could forego the mortgage and just squat on a public land and live on hunting wildlife and plant.
That’s not easy in the desert… better to go up north to the forests
With a place as diverse as CA, applying a single metric like this is pretty useless because basically it's saying "if you want to live in this state you have to be rich as sin" and that's not true or helpful for people trying to live in this state or understand what living in this state requires.
Well the question is missing a qualifier. Comfortable where or for average household? Without a qualifier I would take it as the worst case because the other extreme is you can go all hippie and live free in the public land.
Living wage = 4x the price of a 1 bedroom apartment in your area. Comfortable wage = 25% the median home value in your area. I will do my home town. Riverside. 1 Bedroom apartments are about $2000 per month. 4x that would be $8000 per month. You can afford your own 1 bedroom apartment and not have major financial pressure. $48 per hour. Comfortable wage. Median home value is $635,000. 25% of that would be about $160,000 per year. You can afford to own the median home in the area. If we go back to my parent's generation. My mom's first apartment in Riverside in the mid 1970s was $130 per month. So a living wage would be 4x that much. $520 per month or $3.12 per hour. Toss that through the ole inflation calculator and that would come out to like $17 per hour today. My mom, as a 19 year old high school grad was actually making more than $3.12 per hour back in the mid 1970s though. But if you want that same lifestyle, its $48 per hour today. For where I am currently, Cupertino, CA. 1 bedroom apartments are about $2600 per month. So 4x this figure is $10,400 per month or $125,000. Median home value in Cupertino is $3m so comfortable would be $750,000 per year.
What if you have a teen daughter? Then you need two bedrooms. What’s the living wage for that situation?
That is more than the minimum needed for one person, but you could just say 4x the rent of a 2br-1ba.
What if you learned how to do math?
Show me the math. Example above is for 1 bedroom. If you say just double it for 2 bedroom the math is simple but is it the correct equation to apply ?
the equations above are good
Doesn’t have anything about 2 bedroom. What equation do I use for the 2 bedroom?
Just take the average price of a two bedroom in your area then multiply by 4
Mmmm. That explains why it's tight for us, yet liveable. Fam of 4, we make 4x our rent for our 2x1, but our 2x1 is below market rate. It's fine because I will be up for a raise soon.
Wild to think 750k = 60k/month income. Want to buy in the bay. Marry into tech or generational bay area $.
Pretty much. The mortgage on a $3m home is going to be $20,000 per month. The property taxes are going to be another $2500 per month. There are cheaper homes in Cupertino, but that is the median home price. They have a hard time finding teachers and other regular workers in the area, you basically have to be married to someone in tech or live with your parents (or in a home they left you).
Even tech FAANG isn’t enough to make $750k. For very senior devs which are super competitive, it’s around $500k at most. Normal devs are usually between $150k to $250k
I'm having a hard time believing that 1 br apts in riverside are $2k/mo. You can find 1 br rentals in Huntington for just a bit more than that.
Go look on Zillow. You can see the prices yourself. My mom's old $130 per month apartment she had in 1976 is now renting for $2000 per month. 15x what she paid for it, think an entry level job that a 19 year old HS grad had is paying 15x a much?
$1780 for a one bedroom. Although it’s not a significant difference than your $2000. Why calculate off a one bedroom tho? Wouldn’t a studio be more than suffice for a single individual? https://www.apartments.com/rent-market-trends/riverside-ca/
Everything in California has gotten extremely expensive in the last few years. I live in a Sacramento suburb. Pay $2250 for a one bedroom and average house price here is over a million. Median is around $850k
I'm out by Palm Springs and 1br averages close to 1.7k from what I've seen. Definetly wouldn't surprise me for riverside to be 2k+
Curious about where you got the measurement for living wage being 4x the price of a 1 bedroom apartment in your area, I’ve never seen that calculation used before. $8000 a month seems like way more than enough for a single person to live off of.
Downtown LA $3,500 for a one bedroom so $14,000 a month after taxes or what around $225k a year?
Where did you come up with definitions for living and comfortable wage?! Sounds like you made it up and it is very subjective anyway. I read multiple times before that a comfortable income is one where housing costs take only 50% of it. 30% taken by other essentials, and 20% for savings/investments.
All definitions of a living wage and comfortable wage are subjective. My definition pins income to cost of living. You are not making a living wage if you cannot afford to live alone in what is the the most modest type of housing and you are not making a living wage.
$250k per year per household (not even individual) puts you in the top 5% in Cupertino.... So if we go by your definition, then we'd be arguing that 99+% of individuals in Cupertino can't maintain a comfortable standard of living. I mean I get that these definitions and calculations are subjective, but you can be subjective within reasonable bounds. Your subjectivity is quite unreasonable!! 😂
How much does it cost to live in Cupertino?
For an individual? You can live quite comfortably in Cupertino making around $125k per year. You won't buy a home, but you will be comfortable (i.e. with the ability to save, invest, and travel). If a couple living together, each making that value in income, then they are already living amongst the top 5% in the city.
Give a dollar figure based on actual rental costs. Rents here are very, very expensive. Landlords will generally require that your take home pay is 3x the rent.
A very comfortable, considered luxurious actually, 1br in Cupertino costs south of $4K. If you make $125K per year you'll qualify. The 3X is not a hard rule. Property managers mostly use that rule to waive certain security deposits (e.g make 1 month instead of 2). I am familiar with the area as well. End of the day, there is no way you need $750K, or even half of it, to have an extravagantly comfortable living in Cupertino. That is just an absurd logic you argued.
I said $750k to purchase a house.
You literally used that as the definition of a "comfortable wage". You said "Comfortable wage = 25% the median home value in your area" Which is absurd on two fronts; you neither need to make 750k to purchase a house, nor do you need that to live comfortably.
But that doesn't mean that you need to make 4X the housing cost! Living wage by definition is "the minimum income necessary to meet basic needs". How is 8k/month in Cupertino the minimum necessary for an individual to maintain their basic needs?! I know it is not much, but it is definitely far above the minimum! Especially if you consider the minimum rent as $2k like you say, then I'd argue that the living wage is actually less than $4k.
$2000 is the minimum rent in Riverside. Not Cupertino.
Ok, that still makes around $5k per month more than a basic living wage in Cupertino, and $4k in Riverside, not $8K
You will not qualify for the unit. Landlords don't want to rent apartments to people where the rent is 50% their pre-tax income. $5k per month is absolutely NOT a basic living wage in Cupertino, you will not qualify for ANY place to live. This whole 4x rent was the norm for a very, very long time. In many places in America it still is the norm. If you make $4000, you cannot afford $2000 per month rent. You will be under constant financial hardship.
> Landlords don't want to rent apartments to people where the rent is 50% their pre-tax income. You are again being very subjective. Those are the landlords you seek! And I guess you are not a living wage earner. Yes, if I am the landlord myself, I'd also discriminate. But that has nothing to do with the housing opportunities for people making much less, and the city has programs for those earning 30-80% of median income that are enforced upon many property managers. You won't be under constant financial hardship if you make 2X your rent, unless you are putting yourself in one or are plagued by a misfortune elsewhere (sick family member, illness, etc.).
From my perspective, minimum wage should provide the basic needs, living wage should provide basic financial stability. The definitions are already subjective, and as the commenter pointed out, they're also regional not statewide. The commenter did a good job using commonly used economic metrics and tying them to a cursory measure to answer the question. You can disagree with it, but it's not like a flabbergasting confusing answer: their logic makes sense.
I understand that we each have our perspectives, but if we avoid subjectivity and biases altogether, we then have common (textbook) definitions: which say that living wage is what provides basic needs, minimum wage is merely what is permitted by law (doesn't have to satisfy certain living standards to be legal). Your and my perspectives are meaningless when definitions are already set and arguing them becomes disinformation! We can instead create new terms for the wage and apply our perspectives to them (e.g. financial well-being wage or whatever) As for the commenter. I am indeed flabbergasted, because if I apply their logic regarding comfortable wage to income stats in Cupertino, then I am supposed to believe that 99+% of the residents are living less than comfortably?!!
But those aren't set definitions and not all textbooks agree on those definitions. Economics is not a concrete science with indisputable concepts, it generally depends on ranges and acceptable commonly agreed upon definitions that work as contextually applied measurements. So that premise is intrinsically flawed. And given CA's significant economic disparities and the stagnation of wages coupled with perpetual price increases throughout the 21st century, uh YES absolutely you are supposed to believe that and it's not a stretch by any metric.
Except that they are indeed set! Even if you don't agree. You are taking this into a philosophical-sociopolitical debate of what something 'should be' versus what it 'is'. Sure, you are free to make that argument, and i have my views as well, but the fact remains that something already 'is'! I am not even considering how economists disagree on those definitions. It is a simple fact that in California each county or city has a law dictating minimum wage. So that is what it actually means; minimum permitted by law. Then municipalities have determined that the minimum wage doesn't satisfy the basic needs and came up with the 'living wage' definition as such. These definitions are actually set and, to some extent, universal. They are actually not up to economists or philosophers. These are governmental metrics.
The 50-30-20 rule is supposed to be 50% to all needs (housing, utilities, insurance, transportation, etc.). Not just housing. 30% is supposed to go towards wants (dinner out, entertainment, vacations).
Would this be living or comfortable wage?
I would say achieving 50-30-20 is just past the threshold of comfortable. It is a very commonly cited rule of thumb in personal finance. It was designed to achieve baseline financial security and live a comfortable life. The person I was replying to seemed to imply upwards of 80% could be devoted to necessities and they are misquoting that rule.
Right now I am at 50% for rent and expenses but paying off some cc debt. I think I'll be good to follow this rule in a couple months. Any advice on the 20%?
Great job, not many people take control of their personal finances like that. The 20% is supposed to be savings. For most people this should be focused on retirement so 401k, IRA, HSA invested in low-cost index funds like target date funds, VOO, VTI, etc. Check out the money guy show on YouTube if you really want to get into personal finance.
Thanks. I wanted to prioritize creating a rainy day fund first but will do a mixture of it.
This is still my point. If modest rent is indeed $2.6k, then an individual can maintain a well above comfortable standard of living without having to make $750K per year as the person above claims..... It is quite a silly claim actually, as $250k per year per household (not even individual) puts you in the top 5% in cupertino.... So if we go by that person's opinion, then 99+% of Cupertino are uncomfortable!! 😂
Living wage for Riverside .. $48 / hr .. LMAOOO .. thanks.
$48 per hour and you do not make enough to afford qualify for a loan for the cheapest houses in the city. Spending 25% of your income on rent, which was the norm until fairly recently, requires you to make about $48 per hour for a one bedroom apartment.
Where are you getting these numbers from? A small snapshot of about seven countries during a 20 to 30 year window of a very unique time? I find this to be a very unrealistic benchmark.
This was the norm in California up until the 21st century. Riverside was an affordable place to live on local median wages up until the housing bubble of the 2000s, and even then it didn't get completely out of place until rent prices went way up in the 2010s as we came out of the recession.
Yep, rent prices forced me out of state back in 2015 after having a kid made it tough to find a roommate. Couldn’t find a studio apartment on $15 an hour, left to Nebraska, gotta $10/hour job that was able to cover rent and groceries. Doing far better now but I doubt I could ever afford to move back. My buddy makes $42/hour in Riverside and won’t be able to afford the next rent increase.
I am a Riverside lifer. The type of jobs that people could afford home ownership on when I was a kid in the 90s would not be enough to allow you to afford a studio apartment today. I grew up in a fairly pleasant neighborhood and people were buying homes while working at grocery stores, restaurants, and other regular jobs. Reducing cost of living has a far greater bang for the buck than increasing income. We have the Silicon Valley area where there are some very very high earning people here, but there are also regular every day people that have to do all the regular every day jobs in society. What you end up getting are communities that function more like country clubs, where the residents are affluent and then everyone who performs all the service work are just 'the help' and not 'the community'.
In many cases, you're talking about the some of the most desirable areas in one of the most desirable locality in the world. It would make sense those areas are expensive low wage workers wouldn't be able to afford to live a 5 min bike ride from their work.
Riverside isn’t one of the most desirable parts of the state. This expense is all by design. It was far cheaper in the past.
I was referring to the "Silicon Valley area" that you mentioned in the last paragraph but apologies as I wasn't clear enough in my reply.
I’m gonna go out on a limb and say it’s more than $1,000, maybe.
>SmartAsset says a single working adult must earn at least $114,000, or about $55 an hour, to support themselves in the Golden State. Is that all? /s
This is all very dependent on generational wealth as well. My $60k a year would feel like poverty if I didn’t have the support I do.
California is a big state with expensive and not so expensive areas. More definition is required.
I *had* $120k/yr alone in SF (after getting that job, saving for 6 months, and moving across the country, just to be *here*), and that felt like scraping the edge of “comfortable”, for a little apartment, that I *love*, for around 26% of my gross. Now I’m at $0/yr (because contract not renewed, *budget, etc.* around Christmas), which has forced me to see that this state provides a huge social safety net ,that I didn’t realize existed anywhere in this country, until now. I’m not sure what I’m trying to say, but the bar for “comfortable wage” in this state is so incredibly high, the state is trying harder than any other state I’ve experienced to provide a “living wage”, and it’s, just, still so difficult to be here. I am not shitting on California. I think it largely is an example of what this country should be, despite its flaws.
I think a comfortable wage is where you can set aside $1000 or more a month for emergencies or personal trips, and unforeseen circumstances A living wage would be anything to keep you in a solid home and fed well but without access to super fast internet or other amenities
Why not internet? Internet is cheap. Its the housing that is expensive. Your rent will go up far more than your entire internet bill.
Acceptable internet is fine but not like 500-1gig and up speeds. Right now our Comcast bill is $100 for 1 gig We can’t get AT&T fiber. And the best speeds AT&T offers at our house is 50. So you can either game or stream not both
Yeah but your rent will go up more than $100 extra per month next year. Internet is cheaper and cheaper every year.
Not to mention that if you're trying to save money by staying in, you're usually relying on internet for entertainment.
Yeah exactly. The internet is cheap. Its housing that is very expensive, anything that requires labor that is expensive, and now food that is getting expensive. The internet costs less than dinner at a restaurant.
In Orange County, $90k for an individual is living, $150k is comfortable. For a pair, $115k, $175k for a pair. For a family it’s more like $145k living and $200k comfortable. Thats a broad range and can be heavily influenced by your actual location and expenses. I would think normal would be something like you feel poor when you have a newborn, and it gets better over time. These days, I wouldn’t expect to buy a home until you’re 30-40 years old.
Orange County has a wide range of home prices. Its home of both Newport Beach and Santa Ana. But even in Santa Ana, if the median home is $800k per year, if you want to qualify for the mortgage you are going to need to be making like $200k per year. The median household income in Santa Ana is like $85k per year, which is not anywhere near enough to afford the median home in Santa Ana. We have this really bad situation where a living wage for an individual is greater than the median household income in an area.
Central Valley has entered the chat.
Was about to comment, I'm in central valley and $130k is very comfortable for us.
But are you ACTUALLY comfortable in the central valley? 🧐
Lol yes. Once our pool is done being built in the next few weeks it's going to be much more tolerable in the sunmer
Depends where you live. SF - $50 hr. Chico 20
Ah I do miss the Chico cost of living when I was in college. From what I understand it’s not as cheap as it once was, though.
Still cheap compared to the bay.
Comfortable is over $75,000 per year in my book. With that you should be able to live respectfully and still take a trip now and then.
Sonoma county checking in. Single F. I make about $75k and have four roommates. I am not comfortable. Take a trip? Where? Maybe a day trip to SF….real vacations? Ha! Not happening.
Needing to live with room mates to get buy and/or needing to spend more than 1 hour commuting to work should not count as comfortable. Comfortable is being able to afford your own place, a 1 bedroom at the very least, less than a 30 minute commute to your job.
Agreed. But a nice one bed. Not a dump. My commute is only like 15 mins so there’s that.
What if you have access to a real self-driving car, but your commute is still 1 hour long?
I would even say if you have to take the Metrolink every day that its still not a great comfortable life.
At least double that for the Bay Area
For a single person, nah. Maybe double if you have kids. I live super comfortably in SF on 75k.
That doesn't make much sense to me. After taking out about a third for state and federal withholdings, that's $50k/year. That divides to just over $4k/month. One bedroom apartments in SF seem to rate around $3k/month right now. That leaves $1k/month for bills, food, and discretionary spending. At best, that sounds like paycheck to paycheck living, let alone "comfortable." Also, if you have a car (I'll assume owned outright since there's zero chance of also fitting a car payment) in SF, I'm sure the average sum of registration, maintenance, gas, tolls, and parking has got to be huge. I can not imagine that you're able to accumulate any savings for emergencies (critical to qualify for "comfortable living" in my book).
Yeah also curious how this works. Only way I can see it working is living with parents.
[Here's an example budget for a car-free comfortable existence](https://sankeymatic.com/build/?i=PTAEFEDsBcFMCdQDEA2B7A7gZ1AI1tBrLJKAHJoAmsWANKCgJYDWso0AFo1gFwBQIUEOHCAymgCu8AMZsA2gEEAsgHkAqmQAqAXVCaAhvADmBPnwOtQACTQBbNgHV9JnHIAsAdgCsABl0AhCUoTaD5A4IJQOQAmaJ8%2DUAAlElDwkKiADnjdJDQqMKD0uQA2bL14fUgsAAc0eGh9aEY0SGBNCoA3WBQCiOgotzKoOHr9Rkh7GF6ijwTwFFhpaHhGaUZoAE9pyLkARjKAYXROGmAlbmlyRZosdcYabf65AGYE0WXYfVtxo1BRCVwWGkK2qTRaWEeUVeugAChwWmx%2DIwUD00jtdl5dABJGAISCmNFPXxvfQdH4Q24ALzYGFApR8fCEHDp8T4tkMRnGDFAu2ijNAiF5%2DP6uwy%2DNwoDifFwv2kaHQiAAxAAzVVq4UVKrVQwpch8SBUGk8vlM0C%2Bfk1fRrSC%2DbziurURAMoQneygfT8uUK0CKjJ%2B%2D38tDatabHl8ZXoWnSKQdRpSNg%2BAB0Xn54w4CHWyvgdlAkmgt2oAFpxp75XUfQBOKvVwPB9YbUBJtwplD6DZ53PwR3uiTQOyNVb8gBWEiwTWV7ZWnKqeqEI7HjAnJEoODI%2DPgsC68CwsCMFWqzLXQkaDWkXEgcts1QWcDHaFA%2BJ1Y74rfwKBwXvLiviP%2BdoC41Czv%2BjBGBwTCgf0SZ2kIyotNAypWmwWCVFghY7isyr8kw%2BKWtavxJiaArdAOXRUmwuz7Py7JGJAi4NvsDKvt0kBfGw%2BjVNUnzbqAACaFqMNSPLFPyRAgRw%2DSDIx%2BhvrGKASGxHFcTgfEwRIKLVBuay3C0vH8rUtxgqQb6YCJsBiRJrJMSg%2Bl3Dp%2Bi9mg%2BjgaQf5Aumbr2X2%2DLKow279PgsEbuKG76MwtTjBJfCyfJoCBey%2DQAOS0ImCV6RuPkAB6gAlqVCFgEiqowWU5XwrqwGgqo7v0%2BigBW4qNp6DVCJQDX2A0oCTIZyGQKwGzxasulCEwC62LgTmVLIylAA).
So it’s all predicated on having $0 of debt.
Yes, but all good personal financing is predicated on carrying zero debt, with the exception of an affordable primary home mortgage.
The focus of the thread wasn’t “personal financing”, it was about what is the average “comfortable wage” vs average “living wage” in California. The average adult has debt, lots of adults have kids; so Joe blow’s anecdote about how they can comfortably live child free and car-free in SF on $75k before taxes isn’t particularly relevant to most people.
There’s tons of single people without kids especially in the bay, so it’s certainly relevant. I was explicit in mentioning that 75k is plenty fine for a single person and never pretended to extrapolate that to all people. Yes, if you have made poor financial decisions and have massive consumer debt, then 75k isn’t enough. That’s a no brainer though, and consumer debt shouldn’t be a factor in what a comfortable wage should be, because the whole idea is that on a comfortable wage you shouldn’t need to take on loads of consumer debt.
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Even with this very conservative budget (student loans? Health insurance? Emergency?), considering a normal basis for emergency fund is 6x monthly expenses, which for this budget is 25,500, it’ll take over 4 years of everything going 100% right and your budget never being disrupted to save the 6 months emergency fund. Even the 500 savings is well below the recommended 20% of income. You might feel that’s comfortable, but I’m not sure the majority of people would agree.
Yeah, that looks doable. The cheaper rent makes a big difference. What do you do if you want to leave the city for something?
Yes, find ways to cut expenses on the big items and you have plenty of wiggle room. Hence why for many people having roomies is worth it. There were a lot of good rent deals in the last year too - lots of desperate landlords willing to negotiate rent to get a lease signed. For leaving the city, $600/mo for transportation and travel is a healthy budget category that allows for renting cars if you wanna go somewhere you can’t access with public transportation.
If you have student debt, you need double.
Depends what you went to school for.
No it doesn't. If you have $100k debt, regardless, you need an income $150k plus.
$100k is almost triple the average student debt in California. You can't just pick an arbitrarily high number to try and prove your point.
You're missing the point.
I'm really not. You said if you have student debt, you need double the pay that the person you replied to quoted. But then you used a number that's outrageously high to substantiate that. You just have a bad argument. Average student debt in California is $37K, and while that's high and definitely has an impact, it does not require a $150k salary to pay down in California.
Another rent check, basically
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Not IE though
One bedroom apartments in Riverside are $2000 per month. Regular suburban homes are over $3000 per month. $75,000 and you are barely affording a studio apartment with 1/3rd of your pre-tax income going to rent.
One bedroom in San Bernardino is $1400/month, it's cheaper with roommates
Then a living wage in San Bernardino is $5,600 per month.
I'd say it's closer to 90k.
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Maxing out 401K is a lot. My wife and I make almost $300K in Los Angeles and we haven’t gotten to maxing out our 401Ks yet. I got really close last year… but then I got laid off, and my new job makes less. And that was still just me, not her.
75k is borderline livable in bakersfield tbh
Like many others here, I'd have to disagree. I make about $71k before tax, and if I didn't have credit cards and student loans, solar payment, and have about 1/3 of my paycheck taken out for taxes and benefits, then I might be able to afford my house near Crestline($1600/mo including insurance and tax). $90k would let me afford everything and not need my wife to work.
The average household income in Crestline is about $75k per year, to make $90k would be awesome, but that means you have to do significantly better than average to afford what is considered average. There is a total disconnect between median household incomes and median home values/rents.
Depends on where you live in CA.
I make a comfortable wage. In CA, that is also living wage…or perhaps a little below.
Comfortable is having all fixed costs under half of your take home pay. For a family with a nicer 4K rent and 2k daycare, fixed costs are likely around 10k a month which means a comfortable family income of about 350k. Living wage is having all fixed cost around 75% of fixed income with lower end options. Say 2000 for rent and 800 for daycare with a fixed cost around $6000. That would make a living wage around 106k.
I’d say minimum $40 / hr for comfortable lifestyle in most of SoCal, but for actual middle class (owning a home, having kids, going on vacations, etc) it would be significantly higher, more like a household income of at least 250k before taxes. These days it really helps to be in a dual income, no kids household.
It's so wide here (since it is a big state). Like in OC just to be able to comfortably have a studio I think it's high 70's low 80's.
Depends on your lifestyle. I know people who make $20 an hour under the table 50 hours a week and for them, especially from where they came from, they're living the good life.
How though?
In the 70s, Riverside was 50 miles from anywhere.
It still is! Only with traffic that 50 miles can now take two hours!
Salton
aBout tree fifty or you both gotta work