Relocate to Bay Area (Palo Alto) - possible or not? (San Jose: apartment, rental)

[KCR1982]

Hi,

We are a young family with a 2 year old, and considering moving to the Bay Area.

I will be making about 6K a month after tax.

Would it be possible to live with that sort of income? We will be looking at a 3 bedroom house or appartment and need a car as well.

I will (possibly) be working in Palo Alto and we will be flexible in terms of finding a great place/area to live in. If a 20-30 min. commute is what it takes, then thats fine...

Obviously a safe area with great schools/day care would be preferable.

Any comments or suggestions for a place to live would be appreciated.

Thank you in advance!

[ccm123]

You could find a 2-3 bedroom apartment for well under that in Sunnyvale or Mountain View, but a home would be pretty expensive to rent (at least 3K and much higher in Palo Alto). You could move to the East Bay and commute into Palo Alto or other mid-Penninsula office location and your rental dollars would get you more.

[KCR1982]

Thank you so much for your kind reply...

I guess the main question is if 6K a month is enough to cover rent, daycare, car-payment, utility, food, etc... ?

If I should commute 25 mins or more, thats ok! Obviously as close as possible to work (PA) would be preferable :-)

[jade408]

Your budget will be very very tight. Day cares are about $2500 a month. Maybe more in that part of town. My ex-coworker's wife ran a cheap at-home day care, and it was 600/week. This was several years ago, and it was under-priced for the market, in a non-trendy location. (The day care was well reviewed and pretty good).

Is your wife working?

[KCR1982]

$2500 a month for daycare sounds very expensive indeed! I have tried to do some research on the fees, and most of the daycare fees are about $1000-1500 a month.

To me it seems like the daycare are cheaper the closer you get to San José. Am I right? If so, could you advice an area near San José that is family friendly and safe? Where would you live with a budget of 6K amonth?

[uptown_urbanist]

I think it would be very tight. We lived (Bay Area, not Palo Alto) on that amount per month (after health insurance and some transit money was already paid), but I am a SAHM (so therefore no daycare costs) and no car, and we're not renting a big place. It sounds like the 6k take-home is your pay, so if your wife is able to find a job then presumably that would cover daycare costs. When our family ran the numbers we realized that because my field is not particularly well-paying, a large percentage of my take-home pay would have gone to childcare. Since I preferred to be home while our child was young, anyway, the high costs of working relative to the salaries in my field made that decision easier to justify. Not sure if that's an option, but that 6k will go a lot farther if it doesn't include childcare. (or again, if it doesn't include your wife's potential salary, and the FT daycare will only become necessary after she finds a job)

I'm sure you can do it, but you'll most likely need to go with a 2-BR. I'd make up a detailed budget with everything in it (including savings, health care costs, etc.) and play with the numbers. If the 6k budget includes housing AND full-time daycare and one or two cars and everything else, then I think it will start to get incredibly tight, or at least would likely require some significant sacrifices compared to where you are now.

[gone down south]

daycare can be had for $1000-$1500 around us. There ARE $2500 options, but that's the upper end of the market.

[KCR1982]

@uptown...

Thanks for your comments. Your approach regarding daycare is ecxactly what we have planned. We will likely settle with a part-time daycare until my wife finds a job. How much should we consider spending per month for utilities, insurances and food? Would you have any suggestions for an area to live which is family friendly?

@ gone down south

I agree - I think $1000-1500 is the normal price range from what I can see. Which area are you living in?

Have a great weekend!

[uptown_urbanist]

We were in San Francisco and now the East Bay, so I'm not sure of the cheapest options (but still safe and with decent schools) near Palo Alto. That area is pretty high-rent. Others will probably have better suggestions. You may also want to consider the other side of the Bay; you'd have to cross a bridge, but the commute might not be too bad and you might have more options. Fremont is on the other side of the Bay near the bridge and has, I believe, a reputation for good schools, but I don't know much about it. (we're in Alameda, which is great, but would be a LONG commute.)

Utilities are going to depend on size of your place and location. Microclimates also come into play; we're right by the Bay and don't have (and don't need!) A/C, but go inland a bit and the temperature goes WAY up. Not sure how it varies on the Palo Alto side, but I remember the temperature shock going from San Francisco to San Jose. Listening to the weather reports around here gets complicated, as there can be an incredible spread over a relatively small area.

Food varies greatly, too; so much depends on where you shop. I've found produce to be pretty cheap around here, especially if you buy at produce markets. I know Palo Alto (or East Palo Alto) have a bunch of Mexican produce markets; not sure what their prices are like, but I bet it's much cheaper than the local Safeway. Target has good deals when it comes to cereal and stuff that comes in boxes, Smart and Final (not sure if you have them where you are, but they sell stuff in bulk but don't require a membership), and local ethnic grocery stores can have lots of good deals on fresh food and specialty items. Oh, and Trader Joe's. Were vegetarian and I tend to cook from scratch, which makes things pretty affordable, especially since the climate means that there's local fresh produce available year-round. If you just go to the local supermarket chain and buy what you want without paying attention to sales, food can be expensive, or at least quite a bit more expensive than where we last lived (Minnesota). That's the bad news, but the good news is that with all the alternative food venues (or at least just watching sales) it's also possible to keep food costs down if you don't mind shopping at several places or stocking up when you get a good price on something that will last.

Not sure about current daycare prices. When my son was younger we were in SF, where I think it's more expensive. A lot of people seemed to do nanny-shares; I think the going price was about $10/hr. Wherever you do end up, try looking for local parent groups, either through google searches or through meetup.com (or just post here and maybe someone will have a lead). Every place around here seems to have one, usually with an email list or members-only forum, and the ones I've been involved with are all useful resources when it comes to finding preschools, nanny shares, daycare opening listings, etc. Also, when looking for PT daycare, you might want to look for preschools, specifically; this was different than where we'd lived previously, but there seem to be a lot of preschools that are really more like daycare centers, at least in the sense that they offered extended schedules that accommodated working hours,. My son goes to one that has flexible hours and takes young children, and that (preschools with additional hours offered for those who want daycare, too) seems to be fairly normal around here. Costs for those vary tremendously.

[KCR1982]

Thank you so much for your comments!

Anny suggestion as to which area has nice schools and are safe?

How much will we be spending on rent for a 3-BR?