Then don’t live in the Bay Area? I make less than a 3rd of that and live in a nice condo with multiple bars in walking distance - including one downstairs, restaurant downstairs, multiple pools, two gyms. Max out my 401K and HSA and we have over a dozen trips planned this year including a few to see family. But most just to check things off of our bucket list. We are flying out to Las Vegas next week just for concert.

I didn’t make over 200K until 2021 at 47 and I have had two nice houses built over the years, we just bought our condo three years ago.

There is an entire United States outside of the Bay Area and there is a such thing as remote work.

The median home price in the US is $410K.

I had my second home built in north metro Atlanta in the “good school system” in 2016 - 5 bed/3.5 bath/3100 square feet for $335K and sold it last year for $670K.

Funny enough, in 2020, an Amazon Recruiter reached out to me about as an SDE job that would have required me to relocate after COVID. Even with the $100k more than I was making I could have negotiated, I couldn’t have reproduced my lifestyle in Seattle.

I did keep talking to the recruiter and they suggested I apply for a “permanently remote”[1]/“field by design” role at AWS Professional Services based on my background. It only paid $55K more. But allowed me to work remotely and a year later, we moved to state tax free Florida saving more money.

[1] As of this year, even the “field by design” roles have an RTO mandate when they aren’t on a customer’s site. Luckily I left in late 2023.

> I also means that if I lose my work, we're completely fucked and I better find another job very fast. That $20k/month you gotta pay for the home ain't gonna disappear on its own.

You’re really thinking that statistically the chance of you finding a spouse who has an income that can support your budget if you are out of a job is likely?

Guess how little I stressed when I got Amazoned in 2023? I didn’t need to chase BigTech compensation to be comfortable.

My Plan B was a regular old Enterprise CRUD job. I’m now making around what I did at AWS working (remotely) at a third party consulting company. There are some remote jobs out there. At some point, I’ll probably try my lot as a “fractional CTO”.

BTW, when I was living in Atlanta in 2020 with the big house in the burbs in the good school system, our total budget including our mortgage was around $8000. I only put 3.5% down to have it built.

> I too could live in a world of not needing a wife with any income if I chose to live in BFE or moved to Thailand

You don’t need to move to Thailand - just out of the Bay Area.