re: $100000 Salary in San Jose, CA

I live in the South Bay. 100k isn't a ton but you should be good if you're single. Depending on what you're doing, if you have room for advancement and equity then definitely consider it. I love it here.

If you're single and live within your means it's welcome to the middle class. Also remember the more $$$ you make the more Uncle Sam and Uncle Jerry take. Not to mention we pay way more for gas out here because we have different gas for the summer and for the winter. Congrats on the job, but unless people live in the Bay Area they have no real grasp on how expensive it is to live out here.

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n a $100k a year? No problem. Don't let people scare you about cost of living. If you were making 40 grand and had a family, then I'd tell you to reconsider. 100 grand and single? That's good livin right there.

As far as areas go, there are a lot of choices. San Jo and it's metro area is massive. Don't live on the East side. Great Mexican food, and a little dangerous (but not as bad as people make it out to be). Live downtown if you're a hipster like me that likes to go bars. Live in Campbell if you like downhome, slightly racist white people. Live in Los Gatos if you want to bang OT 8 MILFS and their daughters. Live in Santa Clara if you want to be bored and left alone. Live in Santa Cruz and commute if you like the beach and are a hippie. Don't live in Milpitas. It smells like arse.

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As someone who lives in the South Bay area, this is pretty much spot on. Decent one bedroom apartment will run you $2500-2800 currently around San Jose/Sunnyvale/Santa Clara/Milpitas. If you decide to live closer to San Jose downtown in one of the fancy new high rises, it will probably be higher. Gas is typically $0.80 to $1 more per gallon than other states.

Having said that you can live comfortably on $100K (does that include bonus by the way?) as a single guy in the South Bay. That is about how much I made when I first moved here. My only regret is that I didn't leave the south to move here sooner. You get used to the high prices and taxes pretty quickly. You don't even notice it after a while, because you are having such a great time (SF city is 45 mins away. The ocean is only an hour to 90 mins away. Yosemite is 3 hours. Lake Tahoe is 4 hours. Los Angeles is 6 hours. Las Vegas is 8 hours. No where else in this country do you get this kind of geographical diversity.) Lafayette, LA will be a distant memory in a short time.

The amount of opportunities for an engineer in the Bay Area is just freaking insane. Work this job for a couple of years, then switch, you will easily be making $120-125K by the time you are 26-27. The Bay Area is the world's hottest employment market right now. Companies can't hire smart people fast enough. If you draw a 10 mile radius circle around the Intel HQ in Santa Clara, as an electrical engineer there are literally a hundred companies you could work at (high tech and semiconductor companies such as: Apple, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Intel, ARM, Cisco, Sandisk, Samsung, Canon, Dell, Motorola Mobility, Mercedes Benz, Tesla etc.) You can easily live here for the next 6-8 years and then if you decide to get married and have kids and don't want to pay $1M-1.5 for a single family home, you can move to Austin, TX. I've seen plenty of people with growing families do that, because of Austin's similarity to the Silicon Valley, I guess.

I wouldn't live in Richmond, I know it's not a great place to live..

100k in cali won't even pay your water bill soon. If you are going to take a new job, always be sure to improve your situation financially by a noticeable amount.

100k in that market is the norm. It's like $50-60k in LA.

Look at it that way.

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I don't see it as a brag. If he made the same thread about moving to Baton Rouge sure but that's like being a McDonald's manager in that area of Cali

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No it's not. That's still a pretty decent living assuming he's single.

I'd take it. You can live anywhere in the Bay Area. The weather is perfect. Yosemite is a short drive; pro sports everywhere. Only real downside is traffic worse than BR, but there is available public transportation.

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Live in Santa Cruz and commute if you like the beach and are a hippie.

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They found this other old hippie named Sleepy John. He claimed to be the one from the Robert Earl song. They gave him their cash. He bought 'em brews. It was a beautiful day out in Santa Cruz...

I wouldn't want my tax dollars going towards an inmate's sex change; so I won't be moving to CA anytime soon.