kevntrace

It is expensive in the bay area, the commutes generally suck (mine is from the Tri-Valley area to San Mateo). But if you are in technology, this is one of the best places to be career wise, at least for a little while.

I came over in the mid-nineties on an H1B. Wife came along on H4. We've since had one daughter and my wife has basically been a stay at home mum, meaning our only real income is my salary.

I've been fortunate to have jobs that involved bonuses (varied from quarterly to annual), stock options (if pre-IPO), restricted stock units (if post-IPO) and employee stock purchase plan (if post-IPO). In addition to that I've been able to purchase a house and be left with a reasonable monthly mortgage.

So there can be upsides to life in the bay area job wise. But certainly no guarantees. All this from a guy who had no clue about stock options, IPOs and all that jazz when I first moved here.

malch

It's certainly expensive. Most of my usage is charged at $0.27612 per kWh. If I run the a/c heavily and hit Tier 3 rates, I pay over 40 cents per kWh. That compares with an average of around 12 cents for the USA as a whole.

Enron happened in 2000 to 2001. It really has no impact on electricity rates today. Rates are high because of the tons of money thrown at renewable subsidies and the fact the CA has hardly built any power stations for decades. Hence a lot of power is imported from out-of-state.

The greens would have you believe that wind and solar are competitive, even cheaper. But if you examine, by region, the cost versus the amount of electricity from wind/solar/biomass etc. the truth is very clear.

Pulaski

Part of that, led to the shortage of funds to invest in new power stations in the years after Enron, which created some of the problems still being felt today. Though there are other reasons in more recent years why conventional power stations haven't been built.

malch

The Enron mess created some uncertainty in the power market which certainly put the dampers on the willingness of investors to support new projects. But only for a few years. CA has the sixth largest economy in the world -- shortage of funds was never a major problem.

Regulatory controls and opposition from the tree-huggers is an issue and was so even before Enron. CA basically decided to import their power and leave the pollution in TX where they felt it belonged Later they decided they wanted to jump on the wind and solar bandwagon.

neill

Holy hell, i pay 8c/kWh.

We joke here about California, why anyone could really be so desperate to live there, but this thread has just reinforced everything I stereotype about it x10.

malch

Californian electrons are superior, better educated and more noble than the electrons in the flyover states. Well, that's what many folks here seem to believe.

Pulaski

There are people, even here on BE, who couldn't imagine the unspeakable horror, of having to live in a state such as Alabama, or NC, or anywhere, really, that isn't, well, California. In the worst case scenario, they might consider another state that has a Pacific coast, or maybe New York (the city, not the state), but anywhere else? Ugh! Nasty! .... Everywhere else is full of Deplorables.

Seriously, WTF!

LouisB

SF, nice city, super expensive to live. Salary rates tend to be better to help, but I'm not sure it's enough. Anyway, people do it, just be aware long term plans vs. Living costs. Even surrounding areas, Oakland etc on the rise.

Does have some delightful suburbs, Palo Alto and close by is nice, over the water the Berkeley hills are like a dream, if only, one day...

sherbert

Oakland has one of the worst rental markets in the region (recently ranked as something like 147th in the entire country out of 150!), imho worse than SF itself: massive demand and low supply, quality of properties is low and asking price is high, there are still many, many parts of Oakland that are not safe. I spent 5 months looking for a place in Oakland (twice a day, every day I scoured Craigslist) and then gave up. In that time I only found one place interesting enough to view - $3,500 month, tiny two bedroom (nicely renovated and modern though) on a street full of broken down cars, shifty people shouting and hanging on the street corners, a good 20 minute walk to the BART. Berkeley Hills are indeed stunning but if you can afford a place out there, you're miles from the nearest BART and highway access is a pain so it would depend on your commute.

And no way can you describe Palo Alto as a suburb of San Francisco. It's actually much, much closer to San Jose and takes at least an hour on the train and at least an hour driving on a very, very good day possibly at 3am .

LouisB

Agree there. Not sure I'd want to live in Oakland although there are nice parts, Rockridge for example is nice if you can afford a house there. I think that's technically Oakland? It's like something out of the desperate housewives filmset.

2 bed for $3500, sounds like a bargain, try finding that here. Although area matters, no one wants to live in an unsafe inhospitable location.

You're right about PA. I get a skewed perspective, often staying outside of SF to the south, so from the start you're already part way there. I think it's about 1/3 to San Jose than SF. Surprising more tech companies don't relocate outside of SF, probably they will.

Difficult times to find affordable housing in some of these places, even with top jobs.

sherbert

Yes, I was looking in Rockridge and couldn't find anything within our pretty hefty 4k a month budget and in the end we decided it wasn't worth it to move and stayed put in suburbia.

texasbound

Wife and I have now lived in SF after first relocating to Dallas 4 years ago.

Bay Area is both very expensive and fantastic at the same time. Cool city, wine region on your doorstep, Lake Tahoe and amazing coastline.

We have a house in SF and my work is down in Redwood City, commute is ok. Generally under and hour each way in the car, taking the 280. When we first moved to SF we rented by the ballpark so had an easy Caltrain commute, number of people have mentioned ‘sardines’, I did not find it too bad. Start at the first stop and as long as you arrive 5min before departure then getting a seat is easy, way home I would get a seat 90% of the time.

Cost of living is high, very much feels like a London prices. We had a house in Herrfordshire so we’re used to higher monthly costs etc.

Overall if you can stomach the COL then I can’t imagine a better place to live.

Hope this helps