> Am in Bay Area though.

That's the problem. The housing market isn't literally insane in the whole country.

This. One of my graduate students just bought a house here, because the housing market isn't utterly disconnected from reality. Could they afford to live in the Bay Area? No.

Can I afford to live in the Bay Area? Also no.

The UK, but our base stipend is similar to the US. Internships and part-time research contracts can make up your income to a workable level, and that applies in the US as well. I didn't earn a lot, but it was enough to get on with life like a normal person. I didn't eat dried ramen like the stereotype.

Ahh the UK where health insurance coverage is much easier to attain...

Where in the UK? What field? There are several important details you are leaving out.

Manchester, programming languages. Not superstar machine learning or anything like that.

Hey, I did a PhD in the University of Liverpool some 12 years ago. I had a scolarship from my home country, but had a blast in my 3.6 years in the UK.

I remember seeing colleagues from the UK who got a good stipend. I think in general in the UK doing a PHD was good at that time, specially because it usually lasts only 3 years.

Nevertheless, after spending other 4 years in academia, I turned to Industry and would never go back. Academia is broken at this point in time.

I did my phd in Indiana and had $90k in student loans by the time I was finished (of course that includes my undergrad and masters degree). I was in the humanities though.