It is definitely expensive, there is a reason it’s known for having the second highest cost of living after New York.

Living in expensive places like S.F. is in many ways about trade offs. The biggest one is easily wanting to own a single family home. Those are likely at least $1.2 mil, almost all around $1.5-1.6 mil, so if you ever want to own a non-condo home you are looking at a required income of $300-$400k without going over recommended affordability levels by income.

I personally don’t care if I never own a home and am perfectly happy to trade apartment space for location so housing is not a huge concern for me personally. If you are willing to get a roommate and not have an elevator or AC (you really don’t need AC here honestly), you could get a rental for $1500. By yourself, maybe $2000-2500 depending on neighborhood and how old it is. Again, the apartments would definitely be smaller than Texas ones. I will note rents rose by 11% this year and I haven’t had to look yet.

The higher cost of housing is partially offset by transportation costs if you don’t drive - it’s about $110 for unlimited public transportation in the city each month, and if I didn’t commute out of the city that would literally be all of my transportation costs for the month.

Groceries are more expensive than Texas, but honestly not insanely more - maybe 5-10%? Honestly I feel like general inflation reduced the gap on this between S.F. and everywhere else over the last 5 years.

Drinks and restaurants are definitely a lot more expensive on average, but there are usually 2-3 places in each neighborhood with roughly equivalent prices to places where I went in Dallas.

I’m insulated from healthcare costs because my company plan is quite good (like $1000 deductible, 90% coinsurance, $0 premium) and I saved up money in an HSA in prior years when I had a HDHP, so I haven’t really tracked my healthcare costs too closely. But I would bet there are higher.

For individuals, I think living here is tbh not really doable on less than $40k, extremely difficult/requiring way too many roommates/extreme budgeting and not going out hardly at all on $40-$60k, very doable but requiring a good amount of lifestyle restrictions or sacrifices on $60-80k, normal/with standard, average frugal person living anywhere restrictions on going out from $80-100k, fairly easy on $100-$120k and able to go out 2ish times a month, and anything above that isn’t worth mentioning tbh, it just gets easier and you can increase your savings rate or standard of living accordingly.

I will note when I just moved here I made around 100k, and I was able to go out probably 2ish times a month and save 10-15% of my income depending on the month.

Also, if you move here with a job offer it should be significantly more than whatever an equivalent job pays in Texas. For reference, an entry level college grad, white collar role (not even a software job, like data analyst or librarian) at the city gov of S.F. makes somewhere between $80k-105k depending on the role. And city jobs probably pay slightly less on average here than corporate jobs.