[ryandrake]

I live in the Bay Area, and $300-400k/yr is an unfathomable amount of money. Get a grip! You're talking about the top 1% of incomes in the country.

[newshorts]

I live here too. We looked at a condo, near Mountain View two weeks ago and the mortgage would have been 10k/month.

You need a minimum of 120k, just for your house. Pre tax you’re looking at a minimum viable salary of 300k.

How is this unfathomable?

The entire row of condos sold in less than a week.

[sokoloff]

It's not just $300K/yr of W-2 income being discussed; it's that combined with a net worth of $10MM. You could pay cash for that ~$2 million condo and still have $15K/mo to spend after tax. No need to save for retirement (that's what the $8MM is already covering) or college (break off a bit when that time comes).

If that situation feels "minimum viable" to someone, I don't think their primary problem is money-related.