No, I don't know why people always say that. I live on less then half that. I eat out, drink, do stuff on weekends and pay my school loans and bills. Thats like 7000 a month? If you can't get by with that comfortably high cost of living is not your issue...
I have an exceptional deal on my 2 bedroom in Mountain View which costs me around 2400/month. I believe the current market rate for my apartment is something like 3300.
If you're willing to live a bit further out (like Milpitas/Santa Clara), you can live somewhere for under/around 2000, which (when split with a spouse/partner/roommate) can be reasonable given the salaries in the area.
700 for a a tiny room in a house. Were talking about minimum wage style living... I could spend up to ~1900 on a apartment. Just haven't been able to find one. It's real competitive to get a place. Day to day expenses don't seem any different to me then when I lived in NY. Except wine, bottles can be as low as $4.
Sure, a single guy can rent a single room and walk everywhere. Add in wife and kids and you need three rooms, a car, somewhere to park it. Schooling, activities, shoes and clothes, stuff...suddenly 140k isn't looking too flash anymore.
Assume you're making 140k, after 10% retirement contribution and CA taxes leaves about $6400 per month net. With the average 1 bd apartment at $3200 now that's half your take home wage. Leaving $3200 per month is $800 / week. Or $20.00 an hour at 40 hours. Given typical start-up hours and not even counting the typical food/internet/car expenses. So, if you want to look at it as an all-in after expenses, yeah, even that kind of salary can feel like minimum wage. The economics of minimum wage here in SF are a LOT worse...
Wowza! So at $140k/year the effective tax rate in CA is around 40%? (Or maybe my math is bad.)
EDIT: And some that may not all be income tax? E.g. in Ontario one pays fed income tax, provincial income tax, Canada Pension Plan, Employment Insurance, and a few other I may have forgotten. In London, UK one pays income tax, national insurance, and council tax (property tax paid by property occupiers).
At that income level, the federal tax is %28 and CA is %9.3, so about %37 yeah. Max is 33+12 = %45. There's also ~9% sales tax in most parts of california but every time you go out you better tip %20.
And for all that, we get to pay for our own health care and retirements too!
I said effective tax rate not marginal tax rate. It looks like US and CA income tax has brackets, so even if your marginal rate is 37% you won't be paying that rate on 100% of your income.
That said, I'd believe that if you include expenses like health care your net pay would be ~40% less than your gross pay. :P
Is this really true? Seems far-fetched. Isn't that $20-30k higher than the Google base starting salary?