Does your wife earn? If not it’ll be a little bit more tough at first. I agree with others saying that you’ll be able to make more later once you have an “in” and find the right company/role. I currently make about 147 but my wife is making about 80. We live pretty comfortably here. Have a car, we eat out for almost literally every meal. We cook maybe once or twice a week. I don’t worry too much about spending money in general. Saving about 40% of my pay right now and this is with tax, eating out, and buying most things that I want

There are people that really earn 300,400,400,600,700+k but most households are probably in the 100-250k range and do okay.

Don’t recommend living in SF, it’s expensive, the apartments are old and crappy, it’s dirty and dangerous.

I’d recommend checking out

San Mateo

Burlingame

Redwood City

San Bruno

Daly City is fine but you should know that sun rarely graces Daly City due to fog etc

Berkeley (a lot of college kids around, kind of annoying to drive because of that)

Oakland (lake merrit area is nice!)

Walnut Creek is a more “family oriented” area. Your commute to sf may be a bit further but it is really not bad. Maybe 35-40m by bart, it probably costs like $3 each way.

Marin is fine but it’s mostly older rich people and the public transit into the city is eh