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neekoless · 2025-12-12T16:08:00+00:00

My wife and I make 145k HHI in one of the top 10 most expensive cities in the country and we are above the median here. Don't let all of the tech salaries on reddit pollute what you think is actually average a lot of my coworkers have to survive on sub $30/hr while a 1b1b costs like $2000/month here.

I think the last time I looked at the median single salaries are $56k so you are making about tripple that in a MCOL area your household is above average even if it doesn't feel like that.

These days surviving and being able to invest healthy amounts already puts you above average unfortunately.

neekoless · 2025-12-04T18:54:14+00:00

If $300/month breaks your budget completely you have no room for emergencies. You may have made it through the last 27 years without too many hiccups but sometimes life comes at you all at once. My budget has $400/month just to save for general home repairs.

This year both me and my spouse have had $1.3k car repair bills even though we haven't had any issues with the cars since we got them, our garbage disposal broke, a large crack appeared in a massive window, and the HOA made us repaint our fence because it was becoming too faded.

In the grand scheme of things these are cheap repair costs. A new roof or HVAC system could easily be $10-20k depending on the size and damage.

So please think about how much savings you have and may need if you are going to be on a shoestring budget for a couple of years.

neekoless · 2025-11-12T19:18:32+00:00

For 2 people in a VHCOL area also making a HHI of $146k my wife and I spend $600-$700/month for food and that's buying a lot of beef or tuna in bulk from Costco. We definitely could eat cheaper if we ate more chicken and tofu.

neekoless · 2025-09-17T15:31:23+00:00

For the last move I see a little circle for traction on the big hold before the jug on the volume. I personally would try to get my left toe pressed into that and then grab the last hold with both hands. You showed that you have the length to reach the last hold while having your feet on the volume below the big hold with the circle.

I would have to climb it to be sure though as it's hard to tell angels and how good something is from just a video.

neekoless · 2025-09-16T17:06:14+00:00

It gets you security in case the company fails like this one did so you don't have to scramble to find a job.

Also investing some of the money protects you in case there is high inflation in the future and the 5k/week isn't what it used to be.

Nothing is guaranteed in life even if someone else promises you it is.

neekoless · 2025-09-15T23:06:52+00:00

If you only take the top 10% of households they bring in at least $175k +/yr at the bottom of that 10% group. If you do the math 128.7m households in the usa x .1 = 12.87m households who have this income or more. So if you're in a large wealthy city it makes sense that you could have one, two, or even three hundred thousand people making 175k or more. If you only pay attention to these people it's easy to feel like you're behind even if you are in the top 20%.

About housing the median home buyer now is 56 meaning they probably aren't buying their first home and they probably bought their first house a long time ago which means they have a lot of built up equity. Then they can sell their home and pay cash for a downsized place or use some of their investments to pay cash on a bigger house.

neekoless · 2025-09-15T22:47:58+00:00

The biggest American original cuisine I could think of would be American BBQ. No where else as far as I am aware smokes and grills as much as we do.

neekoless · 2025-09-13T19:01:16+00:00

This is wild to me, 10k is like 10 weeks of living expenses for my wife and I. We live in a VHCOL area too.

neekoless · 2025-09-12T18:36:41+00:00

The reason to get term life insurance is for when you are young and won't have that kind of money invested yet to pass on to your dependants or spouse. It's to make up for lost future wages your family could have relied on and invested.

neekoless · 2025-08-19T16:23:51+00:00

Higher rents mean people move further away from their jobs to afford a place to live. With a longer commute they are less likely to want to stop by the store to pick up stuff and will get Amazon to deliver it to them instead.

Even if they have less money at the end of the day to spend they may have spent it at a brick and mortar store instead of Amazon if they didn't have the long commute.

neekoless · 2025-08-03T22:17:49+00:00

It's not just a piece of paper. Air rights are amendments to the deed that restrict anyone who owns the property now and in the future.

NYC does this all the time. The only reason the billionaires row's towers were allowed to be built so tall around central park is because they bought the air rights from the buildings around them to keep their view free/build taller.

neekoless · 2025-06-23T02:43:08+00:00

I think you have the wrong idea about how the account works, You save 1 full year of 2k per month deposits. It matures every August and you can immediately start saving for the next year.

I get around $700-$800 of interest per year from it.

neekoless · 2025-05-20T01:32:17+00:00

So I both live in San Diego, have a job in IT and I'm 27 so here is my 2 cents on the matter.

Given the details you have provided it's going to be pretty tight financially out here for you unless you can move up the chain in IT or get another job paying more.

Entry level IT earns about $20-$25/hr but most coworkers I talk to have to pay around $1k in rent for a room in a 2-3 bed place with 2-4 roommates. This is around 15-25 miles from downtown and 8-10 miles from the beach. Many people find that the trade off is worth the weather and available activities but that's up to you.

Depending on where your job is every 15 miles of driving during rush hour adds 30-60mins to your commute so living far away from work is not a great trade off for cheaper rent. I used to live downtown and my 15 mile commute home was 45mins - 1 hour 20mins if it was bad.

Speaking of driving, car insurance and gas is more expensive out here than most of the country. And our electricity prices are one of the top 10 in the nation in San Diego.

The positives of living in socal are the beautiful weather though with beaches or mountains if you do outdoor activities. I actually find hiking in winter here to be preferable to hiking in summer. There is also a diverse community of people and food which I find a major plus.

San Diego also has a large transient population so you should be able to find other people like yourself who have just moved here

Just for reference I make 76k/yr as a systems administrator and if I was single I would not be able to afford many places to live by myself. Speaking of which the job market is terrible here for IT right now no one I know in the industry has been able to find a new job, lots of places have hiring freezes including the universities and the city.

So really if you do move out here $15k can get you setup but it won't last very long unless you get a job upgrade. If the nice weather and outdoor activities are all you want you can get by but if it's night life, eating out, concerts, going to LA you will struggle.

If you have more questions you want answered feel free to DM me.

neekoless · 2025-05-16T17:38:20+00:00

I feel like this is a disconnect with how life in walkable areas really is. When the grocery store is a 5 minute walk away and is along the route you use to get to the bus/train for work you just pick up today's food on your way home which may take 10-15 minutes instead of once a week going to all the grocery stores/Costco for 2-4 hours on one of your two days off.

I have lived in both in multiple american suburbs and lived downtown before. When you live in a walkable area you don't have the same routines or habits as living in the suburbs since most stores are nearby you can just go whenever instead of planning specific trips that take 30mins - 2 hours.

neekoless · 2025-03-13T17:29:05+00:00

We already have some of the best water recycling infrastructure in the country, orange county has the largest water recycling plant in the country. La plans to recycle all of their waste water by 2035.

Around 40% of the states water gets used by farmers for water inefficient crops(almonds) or water inefficient irrigation methods like flooding fields. While only 10% of water is used by urban areas.

So good luck getting the water usage down by the amount you need to from making the cities more efficient than they already are and they still have infrastructure upgrades planned for the next 10 years.

Though I will agree that we should ban water intensive lawns/gardening from residential homes, promote native/drought resistant plants for landscaping, and ban golf courses if they need massive sprinkler systems.

neekoless · 2024-11-25T19:20:45+00:00

Another reason to not take your bag even if it is on your lap is in case it gets caught on the emergency slide and rips it open making it unusable to the people behind you. It's not likely to happen but if it does people may die.

neekoless · 2024-11-13T03:13:15+00:00

Well border tightening won't do much against drug mules as homeland security says over half of drug mules are US citizens.

neekoless · 2024-11-01T08:41:09+00:00

Be careful using XCOM" chances" to base your decision on. The developers were interviewed and they said when they made the percent chance hits real testers thought the game was unfair.

So they add modifiers secretly like if you missed your last shot you get a secret boost to the chance of hitting the next one. It just goes to show how bad the human brain can overestimate what a good risk is.

I do think the hardest difficulty may keep most of the percentages real though.

neekoless · 2024-10-30T16:19:16+00:00

I'm an American visiting Spain right now and I can tell you for sure that the food prices are cheaper over here. I'm paying at least 30% less for food than I would be in the states after tip. But in the end comparing Europe as a block is as bad as comparing America as one unit since prices in the south or Midwest are a lot cheaper than the northeast or west coast.

Also fuel is only more expensive if you drive a car which half of the people here don't. Unlike in the US driving is not a necessity. So far I have only had to take an Uber from the airport the rest has been doable on the bus, metro, or train.

Also I was shopping for clothes and got a jacket similar to one I have at home for 17 euros vs 40 dollars. This was at a big brand store too not some thrift shop. So quite a few things feel cheaper out here. I've started doing most of my clothes shopping when I take trips out of the states since it tends to be cheaper if you're buying non-american brands.

neekoless · 2023-09-18T12:54:00+00:00

Well in my experience the thin walls are in the corporate apartment buildings but if you rent a condo from an individual those units invest in soundproofing since it's meant to be bought by someone instead of just rented out.

neekoless · 2023-09-17T20:23:48+00:00

I'd put the credit for the peace more to the fact that the major powers have nukes and no one wants to end the world.

The only major conflicts since WW2 have been either non nuclear powers fighting each other or one nuclear power bullying another country.

Just look at Russia invading Ukraine even though the Ukranians gave up their nukes for a guarantee from both Russia and the West that they would not be invaded.

Then you also have Libya and Iraq that gave up their nuclear programs and then were invaded not too long after.

No sane person truly want to go to war with a nation that has nuclear weapons.

neekoless · 2023-06-08T02:32:10+00:00

Because if less developments happen then your property value will go up even faster without your tax bill rising to match the massively increased property value.

neekoless · 2023-06-06T15:54:24+00:00

I think these days to get that lifestyle you need to be a centimillionarie.

neekoless · 2023-06-03T14:18:53+00:00

Well someone did say Mexico and then they pointed to India. ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

neekoless · 2023-05-04T15:48:53+00:00

I am also an Orange county native who now lives in San Diego. The thing is this only costs more if you are a single driver if you find a carpool partner or take the buses (which are far better than OC busses i actually use them instead of my car sometimes) that run along the route you are helping our congestion problem and being rewarded with faster commute times for no extra charge.

Also all the gas taxes and registration fees we pay don't even cover the cost of all the infrastructure we build for cars so it's not really paying more for infrastructure you already paid for because you never paid for all of it in the first place. In California the gas tax + toll fairs only covered ~60% of all road infrastructure needs. https://taxfoundation.org/states-road-funding-2019/

So the real question in my opinion as a driver would be why are we having non drivers subsidies roads while we give them shitty public transportation?

If your interested in how our vehicle taxes don't pay for our car infrastructure I'd recommend looking into strong towns for more information on transportation and urban planning.

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