[JimboOmega]

It's interesting when you imagine the other person is doing cooking, grocery shopping, child care, etc - doing the things you pay an app an inflated price to do for you.

However, it's housing - in the bay area in particular - that makes it look very impossible. For a relatively modest 1 BR apartment in SF, I'm paying close to half my after tax, after-401(k) take home, as a senior engineer doing relatively well.

If I'd need to pay 50% more to have a 2BR (at a minimum) for a wife and a child or two, that leaves a very small amount (for what's now twice as many people) to live on; roughly 10% of my base salary. It looks nearly impossible.

If you are extremely frugal (no restaurants, no vacations), if you get really lucky in finding housing, and most of all if there are no big surprise expenses (e.g. medical ones), MAYBE.

But none of those caveats applied in the case of my father; his standard of living was higher than mine is now.

Of course, if I were to move to another market, it's quite possible. I might take a 20% pay cut but if real estate is a third the cost than suddenly it doesn't seem like an impossible scaling issue that it currently is. I might even be able to afford a car.