Where you live is a lifestyle choice. If you find a place that's 1/4 as expensive as SF, is it going to be 1/4 as nice to live there? Considering that rent in SF is only around double what you pay in most other american cities, the 1/4 figure implies you'd be living somewhere undesirable. Is that a worthwhile trade-off?

We could easily get into picking nits, which I don't want to do, but I'll clarify that the difference is much more notable on the ownership side. You can get a very desirable house for $300k in the midwest that would simply be way out of your price range in SF. Unattainable.

The ownership comparison looks more like this: 1) in the midwest you can buy a large home; 2) in San Francisco you don't buy at all.

Sure, you can get a big house cheap in the midwest. But then you have to live in the midwest. Is that what you really want? Living in cities, especially SF, is expensive because people want to live there. A high standard of living in the suburbs might not make you as happy as a lower one in the ciy. And while maintaining a high standard of living in SF is extremely expensive, maintaining a comfortable lifestyle on an engineer's salary is still perfectly doable. People tend to make lots of money and spend it all on things that don't really make them happy. If you want to live in San Francisco or New York or London, then just go do it.

I agree with most of what you've just said, except that it's not like the entire Midwest is suburbs. St. Louis and Cincinnati and Indianapolis and so on all have their hip, walkable, urban areas. No, they're not as cool as The Mission. But they've got all the same stuff that The Mission does, just on a smaller scale. How much are you willing to pay for the extra coolness?

If you want to live in San Francisco or New York or London, then just go do it.

Couldn't agree with this more. If you want San Francisco, then you're not going to find anything like it in the Midwest. But don't be fooled into thinking your other option is a farm.

The argument is living on the outskirts of SF and commuting 4 hours per day to make a 130k salary make sense for a family... I've never lived in SF but I can't imagine living 2 hours away gives you the same amenities as actually being in the city.

You'd have to be insane to commute two hours each way. At that point you're not even living in the bay area anymore, you're living in Sacramento or Modesto or Santa Cruz. Affordable (relatively speaking) housing is available within walking distance of a BART stop if your standards are realistic, and plentiful if you expand your radius to a 30 minute drive.

So back to that trade-off. Cost of living in San Francisco is 60% higher than cost of living in Los Angeles. Do you want to live in SF at least 60% more than you want to live in LA? Then it makes sense. Your standard of living will be lower in SF than it was in LA, but that lost happiness will be offset by the increased happiness of living where you really want to.