> spending $3k a month on day care
It costs $3200/mo to pay someone $20/h for 40 hours a week, in what world does day care (where one caretaker takes care of multiple children!) cost $3000/mo? The average cost of child care in California, which has _the_ highest cost of labor in the US, is $956/mo [2]. If you use the infant care cost it's $1400/mo, still nowhere near $3000. Maybe in the middle of New York City it costs $3000, but that's not a realistic living scenario for a plumber.
If your spouse makes $3000/mo then the rent increase (call it an extra $800/mo to get to $2k/mo) and childcare cost ($1000/mo) are more than covered by their extra income.
Please just look at the data and take a moment to understand what expenses outside of SF/NYC/LA look like.
[1]: https://www.kff.org/report-section/ehbs-2020-summary-of-find...
[2]: https://www.epi.org/child-care-costs-in-the-united-states/#/...
Tell me you have no children without telling me you have no children?
The daycare my child went to is $2500/month. Not quite $3K but I'm not in the most expensive areas. I have no doubt it can go over $3K in SF/Palo Alto/etc.
Not only an ad hominen, but changing topics?
> I just looked and a Platinum plan in CA for a family costs $1400.
I don't know where you looked but it's wrong.
I literally just went to https://www.coveredca.com/ and filled in details for a quote.
A platinum plan with Blue Shield is $2530.04/month.
With Kaiser, it is $2637.23/month.
i'm not a parent and don't want to be one but know enough parents to know that daycare is bloody fucking expensive, usually thousands/mo, unless the parents have a support system, but even then it's a trade-off.
the silver lining of course is that it's a temporary expense.
The link you provided says $1,412. And this shows roughly $2500 in LA County and $3300 in SF County.
https://insightcced.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/INSIGHT_C...
> The average annual cost of infant care in California is $16,945—that’s $1,412 per month. Child care for a 4-year-old costs $11,475, or $956 each month.
$1400 for an infant, $950 for a 4 year old. And that's in _the_ highest cost of living state in the country. If you put Michigan it drops to $905/741.
> And this shows roughly $2500 in LA County and $3300 in SF County
Your link comes off as incredibly biased. In literally the second sentence it says "Black and brown people and women of color experienced profound losses of health, community, income, and business at rates far more severe than white households" There's a clear ultra-left political lean to it.
I also literally said that SF/LA/NYC are not representative of costs in the rest of the country. If you're a plumber in SF you make over 6 figures, easily. A plumber makes $80k in a random Midwest city, not in SF/LA. The state of California reported median plumbers in the East Bay made $115k in 2021 [1]. You are fundamentally trying to mislead by using Midwest wages and San Francisco costs. Not to mention that the inflated cost of living is caused by a housing shortage which subsidizing healthcare and childcare doesn't fix.
[1]: https://www.labormarketinfo.edd.ca.gov/OccGuides/Summary.asp...
also assumes that you are mentally strong enough to live like a pauper to hopefully afford the bare minimum required to scrounge up a downpayment.
doesn't assume building a maintenance fund (2% of home value per year), closing costs (2% of home value, one-time cost), purchasing stuff to fill the home (like furniture/appliances), etc.
If your typical rent is $1200, that means property values in your area are almost certainly low enough to qualify for FHA loans, which only require 3.5% down due to government subsidies. 3.5% of $450k is $16k - so it only takes about 3 years to save for that down payment.
Home prices are high _because_ FHA loans allow people to have greater purchasing power (among many other reasons like NIMBYism).