[nostrademons]

"But if housing costs more then so does everything else"

That's not really true. Restaurants are more expensive in the Bay Area. Fresh produce is not, if you know where to shop - actually, when I go basically anywhere else in the world, one of the things I miss is the ability to fill a whole shopping bag with 10-15 lbs. of vegetables for < $10. Gas is more expensive, largely because of taxes. Cars are not. Durable goods cost the same as everywhere else. Amazon charges the same (modulo taxes) regardless of where you live. Airline tickets don't have appreciable differences. Baby things (modulo housing and childcare) are cheaper, because the Bay Area is dense enough and tech savvy enough that you can get a lot of toys/cribs/strollers/mats/gates/playthings for free or cheap on NextDoor/Craigslist. A dollar of savings is the same in SF as in Alabama.

The point about tax rates is true for rentals. You can do the math yourself on whatever offer you happen to get - figure on housing in SF being ~$40K/year, meals out costing about $20/person, grocery food being about the same, public transportation being a few dollars a trip, and gas being negligible because you'd have to be pretty crazy to want to drive (and park) in SF.

[closeparen]

A dollar of savings is not the same, because your savings needs are proportional to housing costs. Whether it is to make a down payment, pay rent while laid off, or maintain your lifestyle in retirement, you need a much larger savings balance to buy the same capability. Even if it’s a kid’s college fund, as an upper middle income worker in a flyover state you will probably qualify for financial aid; even with the same take home budget, in a high wage high cost scenario you will not.

[nostrademons]

There's nothing stopping you from moving to a lower cost-of-living area when you need to dip into savings. If you save up a million dollars in the Bay Area, you always have the option of moving to Chicago and buying 4 houses, if you're willing to put up with the cold. The reverse does not necessarily hold: if you save up $100K in Chicago and then need to come up with a down payment for a home in the Bay Area, you're screwed.

For that matter, the higher home prices also come back to you if you choose to move elsewhere (as long as Bay Area real estate doesn't crash). A number of the homes I've been looking at are on the market because the kids are grown, the owners are retired, and now they want to take their $1.3-$2.4M and move to Nevada/Florida/Arizona or some other low-COL area.

[closeparen]

Besides the life you and your family have built.

If saving $30k in Chicago lets you sustain your lifestyle for 12 months of unemployment, and saving $30k in San Francisco gives you the option to leave everyone you know and move 2200 miles to Chicago for 12 months of unemployment, those dollars of savings are not at all the same in terms of the protection they offer.

Living in the Bay Area can be a good deal, but to figure out whether that's the case, you need to set savings targets in terms of equivalent capabilities. Different people can place higher and lower value on location stability, but in any case the value is not $0; moving trucks and realtors are not free.