Family moving from Asheville,NC to Bay Area! Advice appreciated. (Fremont: apartments, rental)

[Sunlear]

We are a young (well, in our 20's and 39's) family hoping to move from Asheville,NC to the Bay Area. We have some extended family in Mendocino County. We are liberal and progressive thinkers, and enjoy a green, sustainable lifestyle. We both work as servers, with degrees in sustainable technologies, and have a 2-year-old daughter.

We know it's expensive, so we've been saving for a while. A few questions we have are:

What parts of the Bay Area should we look further into? Obviously the most expensive are going to be out of our league.

Is it a safe assumption that you can make enough to live somewhat comfortably waiting tables (we do where we live currently, and can transfer with our company)?

Any additional into would be great! TIA!

[jade408]

Originally Posted by Sunlear

Is it a safe assumption that you can make enough to live somewhat comfortably waiting tables (we do where we live currently, and can transfer with our company)?

Not even close. Stay in Ashville. You will be living paycheck to paycheck, commuting very far or sacrificing neighborhood quality.

Living in a one bedroom apartment in a good school district is $1000 in the further out suburbs. A two bedroom is $1200+. Gas at the moment is $4.50 or so. Food costs are probably 20% more than you are paying now. Daycare is around $200 a week at the low-end (read crappier daycares). The nicer daycares are probably $400 a week.

Waiting tables will probably be around $30K annually if you are lucky.

To live comfortably with 1 kid in the Bay Area, you really need a combines income of $150k. And you will be making some sacrifices (being a renter, less extravagant vacations, smaller home....)

[Sunlear]

Thanks for the info. We make around 50K here and live pretty well.

[mayorhaggar]

Waitstaff can make decent money in SF but it really depends on the gig, try and figure out how much you'd be making and come up with a rental budget. Generally speaking only the suburbs here have good school districts, and a lot of suburbs have bad school districts. The ones with good school districts are way more expensive than the ones with bad school districts. Also figure out where you'd be commuting to, BART doesn't go everywhere and you don't want to drive to work if it's really far away or somewhere where you have to pay a bunch of tolls and pay exorbitant amounts for parking. If you were working near downtown SF then Walnut Creek would work, just hop on BART. Good schools and apartments are pretty reasonable.

[jade408]

Originally Posted by Sunlear

Thanks for the info. We make around 50K here and live pretty well.

$50k in Ashville is like $130K-150K in the Bay Area (not the $80k the calculators would tell you it is.)

The biggest thing is the housing cost/quality ratio. In NC you can work at a retail store, in a restaurant .... and live in a pretty good neighborhood. Here, not so much.

[humboldtrat]

Originally Posted by Sunlear

We have some extended family in Mendocino County. We are liberal and progressive thinkers, and enjoy a green, sustainable lifestyle. We both work as servers, with degrees in sustainable technologies, and have a 2-year-old daughter.

Why not live in Mendocino County near your relatives? It's rural and much cheaper than the Bay Area. The Bay Area is very expensive and as servers you would have a hard time making a go of it.

[pookietooth]

Originally Posted by jade408

To live comfortably with 1 kid in the Bay Area, you really need a combines income of $150k. And you will be making some sacrifices (being a renter, less extravagant vacations, smaller home....)

Where did you get that figure? We live on less than that -- half that -- with 2 kids in the Bay Area and don't consider ourselves poor.

[jade408]

Originally Posted by pookietooth

Where did you get that figure? We live on less than that -- half that -- with 2 kids in the Bay Area and don't consider ourselves poor.

I am basing it on what I think constitutes living in a neighborhood with equivalent schools to the ones I grew up in. Sadly, since CA schools are so crappy, you really have to move into an uber expensive are to get to what passes for good schools elsewhere.

And then having enough for the basic middle class niceties: vacations, eating out etc, home size (or really number of bedrooms).

There are some huge differences in life quality at $50K in NC vs $75k here in the Bay Area. $50K in NC would put you in somewhere a lot more like Dublin or middle class Fremont in a pretty nice house and a good to very good school district -- and either an easy commute or lots of land.