[apohn]

Since TripleByte also has companies in NYC, I'll provide a datapoint if you are considering NYC instead of the bay area. Our (my spouse and mine) goals around financial independence are similar to yours. We left the NYC area.

Before I say anything else, one of the major benefits of both NYC and the Bay Area is that you have a lot of opportunites to climb the career ladder. If that's what you want, you'll have a lot of opportunity to increase your salary beyond the range you've stated.

For that salary range I wouldn't recommend the greater NYC area unless there is a significant bonus and you know you'll get it. Housing becomes cheaper once you get away from NYC. But home prices are still high and property taxes are shocking in New Jersey, varying widely from town to town. At one point I was evaluating NYC/NJ vs the Bay Area, and concluded the property taxes and various fees (e.g. HOA) made NJ almost as unappealing as the Bay Area. The housing stock isn't great either.

Everybody says NJ has decent public transit to NYC. That's only if you can afford a home near a NJ Transit or PATH stop and your office is near a train station on the same line. Otherwise you might be driving to an NJ Transit station (and pay $100/month+ for parking), NJ Transit to Path Train/NYC MTA, then walk. Plus, all those are very crowded at peak times. Somebody I worked with had car->bus->train->train to get to work.

In NYC it's easy to get trapped in cycle of climbing the job ladder (maybe taking jobs you hate) just so you can feel like you can accumulate savings and an emergency fund. I was amazed by how many tech people I met who worked in banking who hated their jobs and worked way more than they wanted to because of the pay and a desire to stay in the NYC area.

[tannhauser23]

So did you end up leaving the NYC area? Where did you go, roughly speaking.

[apohn]

I moved South, somewhere in the Carolinas/Georgia area.

Where I am now there are far fewer tech jobs than NYC, and a lot of the jobs are in companies that aren't as fancy sounding as what you'd see in NYC. I moved to a job with a bit of travel, so I didn't take too much of a pay cut. Some days I wonder if I made the right choice, but I don't worry about my savings getting destroyed by rent/mortgage+taxes during a job loss.