Cost Of Living In California (middle-class, apartment, to rent)

[Music1812]

I've been reading a lot of postings about the cost of living in California, and very curious as to how people are managing to survive, given how expensive everything is. Are the majority of Californians working two jobs? Sharing an apt or house with others? How exactly is everyone getting by? I would really like to know. Thank you.

[ferretkona]

So many of us have bought homes before the housing market went up.
Two of my paychecks cover the mortgage and two truck payments. The other two checks go in savings.

[hsw]

Many CA cities have had costly housing (vs rest of US) since at least the '70s....

Many middle-aged, moderate-income people in CA bought their houses back in ?'80s....at what seemed like high prices back in that era...

Youngsters who aspire to live well in SF/LA post-college prob should do well in school/college and strongly consider income/wealth potential of their career choices....lots of affluent <30yo people in SF/SV made their money at tech cos. in SV or work at hedge funds/investment banks in SF/LA....

Many other young college grads who grew up in SF/LA (and didn't enter lucrative careers) prob still live w/their parents to save rent money....

And SV/LA are now older, quite wealthy urban regions, so, just as in NYC, many kids w/trust funds manage to rent/buy a nice place in these costly towns, even if they have a less lucrative first post-college job....

[pshinspections]

I got out of CA when it became apparent I could never afford to buy a home without a mortgage.

[Music1812]

Thank you to all who have responded so far. I look forward to reading more.

[timelesschild]

Looking around my immediate (upper middle-class) neighborhood, I see several 3-generation families sharing homes together. So that's one way to beat housing costs, while strengthening families at the same time.

[sav858]

Most people my age (25) have roomates. I don't eat out much, don't have a big flat screen TV, drive a used car that's paid for, don't buy that many clothes (luckily I can wear the same type of clothes year round where I'm at), etc... You find ways and make it work, people here probably just don't have too much extra spending money. You just learn to live with less I guess. I can't afford vacations but I have plenty around me to see and do, every weekend during summer when I go to the beach I feel like I am on vacation sort of. I plan on leaving eventually though to see if this place is really worth it to me or not.

[BRinSM]

My wife and I live in a 1br apartment and both have full time jobs. At one point, we had two car payments and my student loands to pay off. We were also saving for our wedding when we first moved in together. We have since married and have no debt from that and have also paid off one of the cars. We don't go out every weekend and eat at home most nights, but we still manage to go out with friends and never really feel strapped for cash. In fact, we're able to put a decent amount of money into savings every month towards a future down payment. We've been able to do this while making a combined $90k-$100k. I think that only thing would really hurt us financially at this point would be a child. Lucky for us, this is still years away as we are only 26/27 years old.

[citycrawler]

The cost of living in CA isn't for everyone. Easier to make a better lifestyle elsewhere in my opinion.

[sheri257]

Well ... we just fulfilled our dream of moving to the Central Coast from the Cali desert which was cheap but, not the quality of life we desired.

We realized that we had to change careers to make more money ... a high school education just doesn't cut it here. My husband put me through nursing school, now I'm putting him through college.

Now our combined income is $170K a year ... by the time he graduates it will be $200K. But, we're also taking advantage of the crashing housing market. We're still waiting for the bottom to hit but ... we'll pick up a decent home for $200-300K.

We are so happy here ... we just had the best weekend ever hiking along Highway 1 ... eating lunch in Carmel and Pebble Beach. It's taken us five years to make this happen and it was SO worth it.