Just for some perspective, the low-income limit for a single person in SF, Marin, and San Mateo counties is $104,400 for 2023, and not much lower ($96k) for Santa Clara county where much of âSVâ exists. https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/low-income-media...
There really should be a very fine tuned 'wage vs cost of living' number, which takes effort to look at grocery cost, along with housing cost, including buying a house, electricity, basically all basics.
Maybe some blended rate, where you look at "buying housing for a family of 4 + rented apartment for a bachelor" and blend, to get living costs.
When I did research compared to where I live, I discovered a person makes more living near Ottawa, ON, making $70k USD/year, than someone making $250k/yr US in .. say, Palo Alto. This was of course primarily due to housing costs, although this was in 2020. Things have changed dramatically in most of Canada (re: housing) in the last 3+ years.
Of course yes, most certainly, if you buy + pay off a $3M USD house/land vs a $300k USD house, you have more money to retire on. You could theoretically move to a lower cost area, and retire with style. Yet who wants to (potentially) leave their kids who might settle in the region too, and additionally, all their friends, associates, etc, etc.
Any yet buying doesn't take into account "What if a person just rents for their entire life", which can happen. Nor does it take into account things such as property tax, and other associated housing costs (water tax, etc).
To give an idea of the massive cost differences, just the property tax on a typical $3M Palo Alto home is 4x my mortgage on my $250k house. My mortgage is $800 USD per month. Palo Alto monthly property tax on $3M home? A little over $3000/month. Paying 4x as much just in property tax, compared to my mortgage? Well, that money is gone, gone, gone in terms of 'life savings', and is pure additional cost.
For the record, my property tax is about $120USD/month. Let's call it 25x more for Palo Alto property tax.
Again, there have been dramatic changes in Canadian housing pricing in the last 3 years. There are also differences in how peoples are taxed. For example, I probably pay more federal and provincial income tax, and a little less property tax, with money tricking down from those levels to the municipal level. Yet, I also get free health care (quality debates and issues not relevant, just a point), $10/day state funded day care, and pharmacare coming soon.
So it's really hard to equate across national borders in terms of living costs, but I guess my point is living costs can be so dramatically different. I suspect that making $100k in Palo Alto makes a person much poorer than someone making $25k in rural Arizona.
