It reminds me of the retirement home where my grandmother lived for several years. Her room was like a one-bedroom apartment without a kitchen. I visited her for meals which were served in what looked like a hotel restaurant. Guests could pay for a meal individually. The total cost for her was not extravagant--cheaper than living in a house and making your own food.

When you say "cheaper than living in a house" are you talking about one with a mortgage or one you own and just pay taxes and utilities? Because the later is hard to beat.

If you're of the age or condition where you're living in a retirement home, there's likely the additional costs of at-home care, panic / fall systems, etc. to add to your "living in a house" costs.

Nothing is cheaper than another thing if you arbitrarily remove a sufficient almost of the cost. If you have equity you can use that to pay for your apartment.

But what parent was saying is that a small assisted living apartment is cheaper than a big unassisted house.

Sounds... improbable?

Are you sure you’re not just comparing two areas of different cost of living?

To be honest, it sounds like quite a lot of big 'luxury' blocks of flats (gym, pool, cafe / restaurant, concierge) with a slightly higher class of building management than usual (the centralised cleaning and interior decoration).

Heck, this is basically the modus operandi of most luxury student accommodation in London.

Most luxury apartment buildings have an affiliated cleaning service and can recommend an interior designer.

Find one with a restaurant on the bottom floor and you're done.

It'll cost close to 5K/mo all in for decent square footage. That's before food, which will probably run around 50/day at least. Still very achievable on a dev salary in a major market, as long as you don't make any other expensive life decisions (i.e., children). Not what I would spend my money on, but certainly an option if it's what you want

A good 1 bed in new luxury highrise in SF can be had for ~$4k in the current market (2019), which is affordable on a dev salary (I live in one).

Assuming you’d spend 50% of salary on rent...

4k per month is 48k per year.

That's 50% of your salary(after taxes) if you're making 140k, but 1/4th of dev salaries in SF start above that.

https://stackoverflow.com/jobs/salary/results?l=San+Francisc...

Yeah, this is maybe something more appropriate mid career than when just starting out.

Plus 1k for the cleaning and delivery services.

I believe it is. This part convinced me it had to be a joke: "True, working lying down brings its own challenges: it’s hard to avoid dozing off every few minutes. My solution is constant snacking, the fear of choking acting as a stimulant."