[johnqpub]

The thing is in the US, generally the more you make the lower your insurance costs are.

I made ~$300k last year at a FAANG (Sr. engineer), and my healthcare costs were:

$29/month in premiums $200/month in an HSA, which I'm saving for retirement (complicated US income tax reasons), so money I don't available for my use but it doesn't go into a black hole either. $1500 deducible $3000 total out of pocket

I had a sudden health condition last year, before covid fortunatly, so I maxed out my insurance. So my total costs ended up being $3348 + HSA contributions.

I'm in Washington State, so there's no state income tax, my effective federal tax rate will probably be about 27%.

I'd love to Europe, but it's hard looking at the numbers to justify it. Even if I were willing to take a 50% cut in take home pay, I doubt I could find a job that paid that much.

[giantg2]

True, the better jobs tend to have better benefits to go along with the better pay. I'm non-FAANG, making less than a third of you and my max out of pocket is $7k with a $3500 deductible and something like $7k in premiums. My kid has a condition now and so I will be hitting the max out of pocket every year or close to it.

So my comment was intended to apply generally. I can certainly see that there could be some outliers that this wouldn't apply to. I feel like SV and FAANG sort of fall into that category. I think many of us never make close to that money (or maybe I'm just a loser). I think I'll top out at $120k (today's value) if I have some career advancement, which seems unlikely. The US average (median?) for a developer is about $95k.

[tluyben2]

It takes a bit more structuring but $300k is not impossible. Especially if you have management skills and good communication skills next to solid tech chops.