Calling all San Diegans who are part of the financial independence (FI)/retire early (RE) community!
What is your lifestyle like, including housing?
I make a single income of 90K/year and live in a studio apartment for $1900/month. I’m single with no kids. Zero debt. No car payment (paid off a few years ago). Luckily, I maxed out my retirement accounts last year.
I don’t see myself RE but like the idea of “choosing” to work.
Anyone in HCOL San Diego trying to FI/RE?
byu/rewbacca_sd infinancialindependence
Posted by rewbacca_sd
5 Comments
Your income of $90,000.00 is in the 75th percentile – above the median. With San Diego’s lower cost of living, your purchasing power is equivalent to ~$64,285.00 in a high-cost city. Source: [income percentile calculator](https://wealthvieu.com/income-percentile-calculator/) ^(I’m a bot. Reply with !optout to stop receiving responses.)
I left San Diego in 2014, because I couldn’t FI/RE. Moved to Michigan, and even with the drop in Salary ($55K drop), I was able to get back on track to retirement. My old friends out there, asked me why I did this. My response was “There is an endgame to all of this, and it’s not working in Tech when I’m in my late 50’s to 60’s”. Most of them are still working, and I’m retired. Yes, there’s snow here, but great weather is only good if you have time to enjoy it. Michigan spring, summer, and fall are better than San Diego. At least things turn green.
I was on the FIRE path before moving to San Diego in 2019. But I ultimately left because of the high cost. My partner and I shared a 1 bedroom for 2500 that was too small for us. Any place that we looked at was either two expensive or in a bad neighborhood. We were making $160k combined and couldn’t get ahead.
We moved to a lower cost of living city and now have our own house for the same price as we were paying in rent.
Living it and loving it. It’s americas finest city for a reason.
Something along the lines of “I’d rather be broke in San Diego than rich in Arizona”
It’s tough since as of a few years ago we were considered the [most unaffordable](https://voiceofsandiego.org/2022/03/14/what-it-takes-to-survive-in-our-region/) with the ratio between income and housing being the worst in the nation. But I do know a few of us. We’ve mainly focused on making more income but we also haven’t made any of the big “obvious” mistakes either. Never bought new cars, live in a smaller house than we can afford, send kid to charter school etc.