[jstandard]

The article, and by extension Asprey, come across as a bit tone deaf to me.

He was making $250,000 salary + stock/benefits + double income with his physician wife. He owned a home, admitted he lived in "nice neighborhoods", sent both his children to private school, spent weekends at Tahoe, and who knows what else.

With all of this he says he felt "less than middle class".

[gaurav_v]

You have excluded the sentence which immediately follows his stated income: "The median-priced home in San Francisco costs $1.5 million, and a person needs an annual household income of $303,000 in order to afford the 20% down payment on a home that expensive."

I agree that it is a bit tone deaf.

[akcreek]

I do not understand that logic at all. Having a household income $303K says nothing about how much down payment you are able to afford.

[jeffrey_t_b]

Perhaps it meant to say that one needs a $303k/yr salary to support a $1.2M mortgage (i.e. the loan on a $1.5M house after a 20% downpayment). At an interest rate of 3.5%, that's about $5400/month. A $303k salary is maybe about right for that, considering taxes (income and property), insurance, private schools/daycare and things like "food". Wow, this can't go on.

[andechs]

Vancouver and Toronto are super overheated by the influx of foreign capital.

Here's a stellar 2 bedroom house relatively near me: https://www.blogto.com/city/2018/01/everyones-shocked-toront...

[true_religion]

He had his wife's income so likely the family made more that 300k. As a successful physician, they may have pulled in more than 500k total.

[tomjakubowski]

Surely, being married to a working physician, their household income well cleared that mark.

[nunez]

When you live in an area where basic homes start in the $1M+ range and it seems that everyone else is richer (not necessarily wealthier!) than you, it's easy to feel like you're "barely" getting by. It fucks with you...badly. That's the disadvantage of living in "luxury" neighborhoods: you need to have massive self-control to prevent keeping up with the Joneses.

I felt this way often when I worked in Finance. My and my wife's combined total income was great at >$200k, but it felt like tons of people were way ahead of me despite us being well ahead of the national average, especially for our ages. This felt even worse with the burden of student loans over our heads.

I bet that leaving the Valley was a great decision for them. A lot of these feelings went away when I left NYC as well.

That said, deciding to send their children to private school was 100% on them. My wife has several friends and acquaintances who teach at private schools and charters. They aren't necessarily better, curriculum wise.

[sjg007]

Plus he was paying for private school tuition at $44k a year. So sure maybe the budget was tight but he had an investment (the house) in that budget and yes your standard of living will be lower than somewhere cheaper (even though it is above most bay area folks)... so yes tone deaf.

[clairity]

yes, it's very hard to feel sorry for a guy who is in the top 1% of household income. rather than looking at how good he has it, he focuses on what he doesn't have. what a lack of perspective.

by the way, bulletproof coffee tastes awful--synthetic and mealy-mouthed.

[badrequest]

I got the feeling that this guy really had/has no idea what being middle class entails.

[rmason]

Is Sunnyvale a 'ritzy' city? I've visited the Valley more times than I can count and that's not my impression of Sunnyvale. Am I mistaken?