[cmchien]

The Economic Policy Institute's Family Budget calculator, which is a better estimate of area-adjusted living costs than the federal poverty line "measures the income a family needs in order to attain a modest yet adequate standard of living"[1].

For the San Francisco, CA metro area (which in their model includes Menlo Park, where the family lives), they estimate that this "modest yet adequate" standard of living would cost ~$116K per year, inclusive of housing, food, child care, transportation, health care, other necessities and taxes. Even removing housing from the equation ($32K), that leaves about $85K to meet a basic family budget. So I think that their experience that their income is a real stretch to meet basic needs is not so far from reality as you might conjecture.

[1] http://www.epi.org/resources/budget/