Really not that much when you take out the taxes, food and housing premium of th...

chucksmash · on May 22, 2015

You are utterly and completely incorrect.

$30,000 a month is a fantastic salary. No ifs, ands or buts.

_jt2r · on May 22, 2015

Yes, considering that is the equivalent of a minimum wage yearly salary every two weeks.

stefap2 · on May 22, 2015

    Monthly Gross Pay $29,166.67
    Federal Withholding $8,195.61
    Social Security $1,808.33
    Medicare $422.92
    California $2,831.70
    SDI $262.50



    Net Monthly Pay $15,645.61

raverbashing · on May 22, 2015

5k can get you a nice place in SV (maybe even less)

Even if you have kids you can probably save something like 5k/month, which is good.

frankc · on May 22, 2015

it's better than that because social security tax will be capped four months in.

drewg123 · on May 22, 2015

It is still pretty good. If you figure the housing premium between the Bay Area & a "normal" city is $1.5M vs $300K for roughly the same "middle class" house, then the monthly mortgage difference is about $5500, or about $66K/year.

So that $350K is equivalent to $284K in a "normal" place. Even being really conservative, and figuring extra costs (private school tuition, because even that $1.5M might not be enough to get you good schools, extra CA taxes, higher insurance rates, etc), we're still at an equivalent of about $250K. And that's a lot better than most people could get in any "normal" metro area as a Software Engineer.

untog · on May 22, 2015

It is still a lot of money.