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SO seems like the moral of the story here is if moving to California, become a government worker? :P Crazy to see salaries that high, almost hard to believe they are real. A cop here in the midwest where I live gets paid about 40k. Other government jobs have equally lower pay.
Ok fine sorry didnt know so RN's do make decent money I hope thats the norm for many RN's
If you say so I would feel rich with that kind of money even in a HCOL area since I dont have no kind of debt at all and just a girlfriend to spoil.
Does your husband/wife work too? Or its just you?
I'm single with no roommates, so it's just me footing all the bills! And I don't have a lavish lifestyle by any means, nor do I have much debt - rent is what kills me here, since it eats up about 55-60% of my take-home pay. How much do you pay in rent/mortgage every month?
SO seems like the moral of the story here is if moving to California, become a government worker? :P Crazy to see salaries that high, almost hard to believe they are real. A cop here in the midwest where I live gets paid about 40k. Other government jobs have equally lower pay.
Again, you need to know their NET pay (after all deductions) before getting too excited - as government workers generally pay a lot more into things like benefits, retirement, and union dues. I gross something like $6500/mo, but only take home around $4000 of that money. Also, the public vs private salaries for each industry can differ based on the industry itself... in my profession, private-sector jobs tend to pay more than public. We probably get better benefits and retirement packages, though.
They either:
1. Have an inheritance
2. Have very wealthy families to foot the bill
3. Have won a massive lawsuit or won the lottery to afford such a place
So how hard is it to become a cop in these places? Jeez Louise I want to do that!! Cops get paid like $15-19 bucks an hour tops where I live, it sounds like Cali is one of the few places where they make MORE than the COL increase from the midwest. Top cops make around 40k here, so if they are making 230k in Cali, that more than makes up for rent being 4 times higher.
Second preferred language a big plus... minority a big plus, female a big plus.
Oakland actually sends out recruiting teams looking for women and minorities... on of my Oakland PD friends has been to Chicago and Atlanta recruiting.
One of my friends has an Oakland pension of 180k plus lifetime benefits and retired at 52... got bored and went to work for another agency...
It's been twelve years since I lived in Rhode Island, so I have no ideas how the numbers have changed since 2005, but my wife and I (she's a teacher; I'm a professor) made considerably more money in CA than RI. For example, I was making about $2500 per class taught in RI; I immediately upped that to $4250 per class taught in CA. Meanwhile, our rent went from $750 a month in RI to $950 a month in CA (we did go from a two bedroom apartment to a one bedroom apartment, but we didn't have kids at the time, so that was no big deal). So just one class paid for almost nine months of extra rent - - and I taught twelve classes in a year (not counting the improvement in my wife's salary). And really, other than gas for our cars, the other expenses were commensurate if not cheaper in CA. For example, we paid a lot less in electricity because we didn't need heat or air conditioning in CA.
Now we have a 3 bedroom/2 bathroom house six blocks from the ocean. We have an in-law quarters on the property that we rent out to a friend that pays for approximately a third of our rent (we pay $2750 per month). Our income is getting close to quadruple what it was in RI - - obviously, we would have improved our pay in RI if we would have stayed there, but there is no way we'd be making as much as we do now. Rent is obviously quite expensive, but, for us, the quality of living has been well worth the cost of living. Considering you only get to live once, for us it's a trade off that we'd do every timek
They either:
1. Have an inheritance
2. Have very wealthy families to foot the bill
3. Have won a massive lawsuit or won the lottery to afford such a place
Or, in the majority of cases, have gotten education and have worked very hard.
Moving to a LCOL is much better and less stressful to raise a family
As someone whos not married yet if i start a family one day theres no way im buying a home ever here
The thing about buying in a high COL area is that you're likely to get far more home equity than someone in cheapsville over the years.
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