>Relatively speaking you'd be having the same free cash flow proportionally. It's just that 10% of NZ$100k and US$400 is 4x the difference in absolute terms

I just don't think that's true. For two reasons:

1) I earn the equivalent of just under the median household income on my own, and 100% of my income is eaten by our expenses. It's really my wife's income that's left over after all that has been paid for, so none of mine is spare.

2) There must be hundreds of thousands of people who live in the bay area that don't work at FAANG and don't make anywhere near that, but still manage to live on the city somehow. It's not like if you make $360k you're barely scaping by, right!? Else basically everyone else would be homeless there.

I ran the numbers and I'd be able to save a lot more.

If you think that "crunching the numbers" is an appropriate way of comparing the cost of living in two completely different environments - you must be insane.

If you have the fiscal responsibility and live a completely ascetic lifestyle - you can easily save most of your free cash flow. But that is an extraordinary person.

If you are a reasonable person and are going to actually live in SF - you have to adjust your expenses accordingly. Your rent/mortgage, your shopping trips, your recreational activities, etc... and you realise that your social outing costs you $200, instead of $30... and you don't have the ability to host it at home, because all of your friends live 2-4 hours away or you have a $5000 p/m home in a convenient location.

The reason why I say this - I lived in Helsinki, Dublin, London, NYC, San Francisco, Palo Alto and back to NYC. Me and my husband are both SWE, well paid. I literally went through the change of attitudes towards "living a life".

>If you think that "crunching the numbers" is an appropriate way of comparing the cost of living in two completely different environments - you must be insane

I'm under no impression the lifestyle would be the same. Just that it ought to be possible from what I can tell. Where I live in my home country I'm optimizing for a reasonable level of comfort / quality of life. If I'm dragging myself halfway across the world for the top salaries in the industry, I'm not optimizing for comfort or quality of life, I'm optimizing for as much savings as possible over a short duration.

Unfortunately the value of going to Bay Area is long term, not "short duration". It's not just - I'm going to SF for a project and a payout. If you're moving there - it's going to be for a few years.

Also - if you're "dragging myself halfway across the world", it limits your ability to optimise efficiently. You don't have an easy fallback. (I'm from Lithuania and live in NYC. Optimising my living arrangements was not a possibility for a long time, because there's no family or LPR status)

2 ~ 3 years would be my duration. That's what I consider short term. I expect it'd be a little bit brutal, and that's ok.