About to graduate, do you think these offers are reasonable? (Los Angeles: apartment, for rent)

[greatfire]

Alright,

I'm trying to make sense of everything. I looked into payscale.com and salary.com, but they aren't seeming to help much.

I have offers from $55,000-$60,000 in the Los Angeles Area.
I have offers from $48,000-$53,000 in the Hartford, Connecticut area.
And I have an offer for $55,000 in the Boston area.

My question is are these ranges enough to survive in the areas I've mentioned? I mean, considering car payments, rent for a good one bedroom or studio, etc..

I have $100,000 in student loan debt that I'll need to repay, so that should give some more perspective on my situation. I'm tempted to just take the offer for $60,000 starting, but I realize that cost of living can make a lesser salary more "lucrative" for me.

Also, I'm a Computer Engineering major, and will be doing anything from web development to actual software engineering. I'll have a bachelors degree from a fairly good school (not ivy). Are these offer ranges reasonable, or am I being stiffed?

[Charles]

Originally Posted by greatfire

Alright,

I'm trying to make sense of everything. I looked into payscale.com and salary.com, but they aren't seeming to help much.

I have offers from $55,000-$60,000 in the Los Angeles Area.
I have offers from $48,000-$53,000 in the Hartford, Connecticut area.
And I have an offer for $55,000 in the Boston area.

My question is are these ranges enough to survive in the areas I've mentioned? I mean, considering car payments, rent for a good one bedroom or studio, etc..

I have $100,000 in student loan debt that I'll need to repay, so that should give some more perspective on my situation. I'm tempted to just take the offer for $60,000 starting, but I realize that cost of living can make a lesser salary more "lucrative" for me.

Also, I'm a Computer Engineering major, and will be doing anything from web development to actual software engineering. I'll have a bachelors degree from a fairly good school (not ivy). Are these offer ranges reasonable, or am I being stiffed?

Those are good offers. (I started out at $29K in 1986.)
Yes, a lesser salary will be more lucrative in a cheaper place to live. That is, engineering jobs don't pay that much more in LA than they would in Tucson, Houston, Huntsville, Colorado, Florida, etc. You (I assume) as a young single person might enjoy life more in LA even though the traffic sucks and it is expensive. There is more to do in LA than those places I mentioned above. It comes down to whether or not you want to pay more for rent and deal with traffic as a trade off to enjoy beaches, mountains, clubs, outdoor things 365, etc. If and when you get married and have kids, those more "boring" places above may be more in line with what you desire. I'm an engineer too and worked in SoCal area for 20 years, mostly as a single guy. I had fun but now that I am married with kids, it is better for me not to live there anymore.

[tahoesash]

To look at it from the other side, perhaps try living as cheap as humanely possible and jump in to those loans? Have you gotten any apartment quotes from the different areas? That's probably your best indicator of overall cost of living, followed by monthly transportation costs (insurance, payment, gas, parking). My hunch is that Boston is the most expensive (would you need a car there?), followed by LA (rent might be cheaper but transportation might definitely tip to scale) followed by Hartford...hopefully? I think those are excellent starting offers if benefits follow w/in 90 days.