No, I contribute much more than 50% of our household income. But it is a dual income, and much less than the person I was responding to thinks he'd have to have to live here with a _mostly_ equivalent lifestyle. The biggest hit would be housing. There's no getting around it: either you're rich, or you rent. A home one could buy almost anywhere else for $250k-$300k would cost $1M and up in this area, depending on where it is. My salary didn't increase by a factor of 5, but the cost to purchase housing did. Even so we live comfortably enough, and certainly not in a little 900 sq ft shoebox of an apartment.