sjdb77

No, for a single person a gold plan for Kaiser is $500/month, so $6k a year, but yes if I have $40k in investment income then I'd qualify for a premium tax credit, in this case my premium is capped to $318/month with the rest as a tax credit.

I only just left my job this year. I chose not to get health insurance for rest of year because it's just for myself and I don't use it. (yes, slightly risky but in good health and don't plan to stay funemployed forever)

But if I did, there's the premium tax credit, which caps premiums to some % of your annual income. For a single person, 322% above the federal poverty line is $40k with a 9.56% cap, so you'd pay no more than $318 in premiums a month and whatever you pay extra (say $182 for a $500 premium) becomes a tax credit.

Ok got it - yeah looks like it's around 4% with a $4k standard deduction.

If I got into HBS or Stanford GSB I would definitely go still. If you do it right (e.g. invest in building relationships with other students, professors, investors) the ROI is massive.

Isn't short term cap gains taxed like earned income, which below $50k a year is 0 in CA? For federal if you make <$52k (w/ standard deduction) you only pay like a 11% tax rate.

I pay $2k in rent, so $24k. That leaves $1300/month for everything else. I'm easily below that most months. (No car, no drinking, cook during the week)

I don't find SF to be any more expensive than any other "big" city outside of housing cost, especially when you factor in not needing a car to get around.

Work for yourself eventually?

Yeah...seems to incentivize day trading.

Yeah...I realize I'm in a privileged position but just pointing out that if you're in a position to F.I.R.E. that taxes in California are actually low to nil for <$50k/yr despite its reputation as a "high tax state."

The trick is usually to get a job locally in SF, do well for a couple years, and then ask to work remote.

I'm not familiar with how freelancing income is different than other forms of income...isn't that just a regular 1099? Are you saying you didn't receive a tax refund during tax season?

Remote work is becoming more "real" by the day, so it's certainly possible in the age of the internet to work remotely in a low cost location while making a salary competitive with a higher cost of living city like SF/NY/LA.

I'm in a mini-retirement right now and living in SF. It was surprising to learn that below like $50k you basically pay 0 in income tax in California. As a single person I can very comfortably live off $40k/year in investment income and pay no taxes right now.

I feel like every YC batch must get 100 applications for a Meetup alternative. I wonder why nothing has sticked or worked. I find every aspect of Meetup to be very 2010 and hard to use.

This is purely anecdotal, but I worked at Uber and just looking through the ex-Uber alumni groups I can see a lot of people who I know worked in SF have moved elsewhere (to NYC, LA, Austin, etc.) Also, Uber's workforce is more "decentralized" than most and more spread out throughout the country. I would guess fewer than half of the layoffs were in the Bay Area, especially if this impacted ATG which has a large presence in Pittsburg.