qzw8 hours ago
Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery. — Charles Dickens, David Copperfield
Good old Chucky D. was a financial guru before it was cool.
cbhl9 hours ago
> how much could you conservatively make in a replacement job? If you set your current spending based on that level of income
I didn't love the numbers in the article -- they assume $500k total comp, but the levels.fyi heatmap from a few days ago shows SFBA median total comp is $263k, with 64% being base so $169k. Federal taxes are 64k, state taxes are 21k. That leaves you with maybe ~$80k in liquid salary.
A market-rate studio apartment is $2700-$3000/mo which is about $36k in annual expense. That's about half of your income. Add food and transportation and there's not much left to save for retirement or emergency fund.
If for some reason you are in the lurch and have to start driving ubers or working at starbucks, you're not going to be able to afford the same kind of apartment that you need to do hybrid work and join meetings at a FAANG job.
jerlam5 hours ago
Wouldn't your non-base salary (nearly $100k) be your savings/emergency fund?
matt321010 hours ago
RSUs and other vesting should be (as in, it would be nice if they did) prorated in the event of a layoff (assuming layoff here means no-fault separation).
brailsafe5 hours ago
That would be the only situation in which I'd even consider them part of compensation. If I can't use it to pay my rent now, it might as well not exist, given the likelihood I'd never be able to realize them anyway.
bigfatkitten9 hours ago
Sometimes it is if the company feels generous, though even in countries with strong employment law these benefits have no statutory protection.
One of my previous employers had a rule where they would vest all of my RSU if I were to die while employed there.
clipsy8 hours ago
> One of my previous employers had a rule where they would vest all of my RSU if I were to die while employed there.
Idle curiosity: Was that in lieu of or in addition to life insurance? (Most of my employers have had free life insurance with a payout of a multiple of base salary.)
bigfatkitten8 hours ago
That's in addition. Just a goodwill thing that they did.
ThrowawayTestr7 hours ago
Anyone fake their death?
ilrwbwrkhv3 hours ago
Yes, this is quite true and one of the reasons I left trying to find a job and start my own business. With the business you actually have control over your life. And now I crossed more than I could have ever gotten as a salary by doing my own thing.
agrtar9 hours ago
We need more weapons for Israel and Ukraine, perhaps a good old fashioned war with Iran so that energy costs go up even further and we have nice stagflations like in the oil crisis in the 1970s.
Let the world burn so that Lindsay Graham and his ilk cash in while FAANG has major layoffs.