The SF bay area is such an extreme outlier that none of the cost of living comparison calculators are accurate.
Taxes, housing, childcare, quality of schools, gas prices, and on and on and on pile onto the expense. Even things like traffic tickets add up: a red light ticket in California will cost over $500 before even factoring in higher insurance costs; this is roughly quintuple most of the country. I pay less than $0.08/kWh for electricity; bay area rates are 3-4x that.
I lived in the bay area for a long time before moving to a suburb of Seattle, where I own a nice home and live near excellent schools. I estimate that I would have to make at least 2.5x more to maintain the same standard of living in the bay area (forget about SF).
For example, you mentioned a red light ticket. That presupposes you drive a car, which is pretty much required in NC but far from a necessity in the SFBA.
Not to mention that while your expenses might increase substantially, there's no reason you have to keep your savings rate consistent. I'd much rather save 30% of $200k/yr than 40% of $80k/yr.
This is what most of these naive cost-of-living conversions tend to miss, by always assuming a savings rate of 0%.
High income earners like software engineers tend to be able to save a very significant percentage of their income, and the stock market grows at the same percentage no matter where you live (within the US), which compounds the difference in net worth growth.
This is why I vastly favor high cost-of-living, high salary areas when looking for work. Of course, if you project for yourself a 0% or lower potential savings rate at both locations, then the original naive comparison holds, but then you have bigger problems.
Exactly, especially when you're young. It's very possible to save 50+% of your income as a software engineer in a HCOL.
This is especially useful since nothing says you have to retire where you work. Even before then, lots of high-ticket purchases (like vacations) don't scale with your COL.
Your 2.5x figure is exaggerated.
https://www.redfin.com/WA/Gig-Harbor/2403-20th-Avenue-Ct-NW-...
Here's a comparable home in Vallejo for 10% more (but an extra bedroom) in Vallejo, which is 30 miles from SF or 25 miles from Berkeley
https://www.redfin.com/CA/Vallejo/9311-Big-Ben-Ct-94591/home...
The home you listed: in Vallejo, which is very undesirable; has $2460/year HOA dues; is in a borderline terrible school district; is on 4200 sq ft lot, with most of the windows blocked due to the neighbors being within normal talking voice distance.
The home I listed: is in Gig Harbor, which is very desirable; in an excellent school district; is on a third of an acre.
In short, the two homes are not at all comparable. For a good comp, you would need to find something in the south bay.
https://www.redfin.com/WA/Gig-Harbor/6010-106th-Ave-NW-98335...
You could go anywhere. San Ramon, Morgan Hill- Far off places. Yet very expensive.
Housing in and around Bay Area is very expensive.
Although I do agree that the common low $100k range for engineers is a joke. We're underpaid by a significant factor. Just like most other low status workers.
I pay over $4k/month for a 3 bedroom house.
Private school is what? 8-10k/year per kid? So $32-$40k/year?
I was asking how the parent commenter could afford private school and still save a significant amount.
By the way most people on a visa have to pay for private school (as it should be - but my point is it's often not a luxury).
Even if you think you can easily do better, you shouldn't "laugh" at salary offers in that range. The vast majority of people in the U.S. won't ever -- at their current (and for many, basically immutable) education level -- stand a chance of making anywhere near that much.
And being as it's just a matter of blind luck that we've been born at a certain time and place that enables us to make that kind of a salary.
For basically playing with shiny toys all day, and all.
The real game to be in here is real estate. Don't mine the gold, sell the shovels.
And the "game" for them is simply to survive.
Someone with a third of my salary gets a house, a car, and more disposable income which goes further. The one area where I'm really blowing them out of the water is my $5/mo health insurance that makes all care effectively free. That's a function of the company, though, not the salary. Our much lower paid, lower skilled workers in satellite offices get the same benefits package.
The point I'm trying to make is that, thanks in a large part of very some "boom" you and I riding on, a lot of people not only can't afford to live in SF (or other pricier parts of the Bay Area) with a car and travel money -- nowadays, they can't afford to live there at all. Whereas 20 years ago, while it was never easy to make it in the Bay Area -- at least theoretically they could, at their skill and education level.
So while $120k may seem like chump change to you, it'd be a godsend to them. They may still not be able to travel, and they may have to cut back in a whole lot of other areas -- but at least they'd be getting by.
Which is again, the real "game" for most people.
They're also very involved in the community and encourage a lot of small companies.
[Edit] I'll also say a good perk is this awesome beer on tap for free to members: https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/11036/65993/ ... going to go get one right now! Wish you were here to join!
For example, in housing, if you were living in a standalone house in the second most desirable neighborhood of Raleigh of 2000 square feet on a quarter acre lot, is the equivalent a standalone in the second most desirable neighborhood of San Francisco of 2000 square feet on a quarter acre lot?
If not, how do you define equivalent?
But the obvious criteria universally apply: commute time, square footage of the residence, crime rate in the area, quality of the local school district (YMMV), etc.
Most people when moving to a more expensive city compromise at least a little on all of those to keep rent manageable. So maybe a Bay Area resident spends three times as much on housing but they get half as much square footage and a much longer commute.
Perhaps, the least bad way to figure out what an equivalent salary in RDU and the Bay Area is to use revealed preferences and look at people that move between the two areas and what they are paid in either city.
There's a reason most US billionaires live in CA or NY.
Housing was a large part of it, but equally problematic was taxes. The more you make, each extra marginal dollar is taxed at the highest bracket. So each marginal dollar earned goes a little bit less far. Combined, the high cost-of-living and marginal tax rates make SF extremely expensive. I laugh at 120k offers in SF, that's like making 65k in a reasonable city.