Can we move to the Bay Area? SHOULD we?

November 25, 2011 2:30 PM

Help me see a way to move to the Bay Area.

I'm 28, happily married, 1-year-old son and two cats. We have a house in the Kansas City area. We want to live in San Francisco - anywhere on the BART is fine, but we love San Francisco and we want to raise our son there.

Combined we currently make about $65k/yr pre-tax. We have a sizable amount of debt, but it's not growing, and we hope to get it largely paid off in the next 2-3 years (some of it, like our cars, should be paid off in the next 12 months, and tax refund/annual company bonus should help with the rest). Husband has an IT-related associates' degree, I have an "Associate of Arts" with lots of general humanities credits (the degree was basically me throwing my hands up and going "ok what can I do with all these credits from 7 years ago?") - I would like to go into Dietetics, but am hesitant mainly because I'm not 100% positive that it's what I want to do, I'd need a lot of course credits, and I could take classes here but I don't want to take stuff that won't transfer cause that's just wasting time and money.

We know we'll have to downsize - we are anticipating apartment but would prefer 2br. (Ha.) We are planning on getting rid of a lot of our stuff to do this, would be a good idea to do anyway even if we didn't move.

How could we make this happen in the next 4-5 years? The sooner the better, actually. We'd ideally like to get out there before our son gets into kindergarten but that may not be feasible. We know the Bay Area is expensive as balls - neither of us is great at interviewing and neither of us has a set career goal. Husband doesn't want to stay in KC, and job has work-from-home abilities, and he likes what he does and who he works with, but it's helpdesk. Not a longterm career path, and he knows that. He likes fixing things, in general, and learning about mechanical stuff and life sciences and astronomy and photography as a hobby. I am not a huge fan of my current job (workforce management - I handle FMLA, terminations, vacation requests, etc) but don't hate it, do not have work-from-home capabilities (SHOULD but don't), and short of data entry have no idea what I would do with my existing skillset when I got out there, outside of going to school, which I think is basically undoable on our budget. I can type really fast, and I like research and analysis, and I like cooking but don't want to do it as a career, and I have a good amount of innate musical talent but also don't want to pursue that as a career. (Had fun doing piano for small-town musical theater but the bigger city I move to, the harder it is for me to find work doing that, so I've mostly given up.)

I've been working on writing this post all day at work and I keep deleting and starting over and feeling more pessimistic about being able to move. But all the tiny markets and the ocean and the weather and all the different cultures and ethnicities and oh my god it was so much better there. Give me suggestions, tell me your success stories. How can we plan to and successfully move to the Bay Area?

posted by agress to education (24 answers total)

You're looking at this from the point of view of obstacles but I think really you need to look at it from the point of view of budget. I think you need a side-by-side comparison of the cost of living in SF (rent, groceries, transportation, clothing, entertainment, debt servicing, etc.) vs. where you currently live and the shortfall between them. Then look at salary for comparable jobs in the area. Then figure out how far you are from where you want to go.
posted by DarlingBri at 2:41 PM on November 25, 2011

What's your appetite for risk? Generally speaking it would make sense to move to SF sooner rather than later, so you can start making SF salaries (right around the highest in the country), rather than trying to save up at KC salaries for the move. Your skillset seems very transferrable (every company needs HR people), as does your husband's (lots of tech companies, non-tech companies, universities need IT help). Also, easier to get a 1br now while your son is so young and doesn't necessarily need his own room.

I guess I'd also evaluate what your support network is like. If things don't work out in SF, is there someone you can move back in with KC while you get back up to speed?

Best of luck. SF is awesome.
posted by iamscott at 2:51 PM on November 25, 2011 [1 favorite]

Besides salary ($65k between two people is really low for SF and you WILL struggle). With associate degrees you're gonna find it hard to find jobs that will make living in SF financially comfortable. I have friends with bachelor degrees who are married and live in the Mission district and pay $2,000/mo for a 1br apartment that, while I wouldn't describe it as completely shitty, it's not nice or recently renovated, either. And the Mission isn't anywhere I'd want to live, personally.

I also wouldn't limit your choices to somewhere that's near BART. It's a commuter line, not a subway like NYC. There's pretty good bus transit and light rail (MUNI) in lots of other places in the city.

Have you looked at moving elsewhere in the "Bay Area" like Santa Rosa? I live up here and love it. If you're looking for super big city living, (like NY, SF, Chicago, etc) then this isn't it. But it IS a nice place to live, with lots to do, and easy access to the coast, mountains, redwoods, etc. I hardly ever feel the need to go to SF, but when I do it's only an hour away.

And if you're into local and organic food, Sonoma county can't be beat. Lots of organic companies are headquartered up here (Amy's, Barbara's, Strauss milk, etc) and you can get fresh organic produce, artisan cheese, wine, organic grass-fed meats, anything. I could survive on a 50-mile diet up here and pretty much eat anything I wanted (except the obvious like avocados, pineapple, coffee, bananas, etc from the tropics).

Plus the weather in the north bay is much better. I can't tell you how many times I've woken up here and it's fairly sunny or partly cloudy, and drive down to SF and it's overcast and foggy as shit. Something to consider if you don't like living in damp, foggy, cloudy environments.

If I were you I'd make a list of reasons you want to move there AND things about it that might bother you (start with cost and weather) and figure out if you can have most of the good stuff, and less of the bad, by moving somewhere else that's cheaper.
posted by buckaroo_benzai at 2:59 PM on November 25, 2011 [1 favorite]

Think about what you mean by living "in SF". The further you are willing to go from the heart of the city, the less expensive it will be.

If you want to live in a decent place (something other than a crappy studio) for three people and cats in a nice part of the city, you're going to have to make more than $65k/year. But if you can venture out into the East Bay, for example, you can get by on that kind of salary.
posted by mikeand1 at 2:59 PM on November 25, 2011

Adding to the "maybe not exactly in SF" idea: have you looked into the schools there? I don't live in SF, so maybe I'm entirely wrong, but my friends who live there are not happy with the schools at all and talk about moving further away from the city proper.
posted by The corpse in the library at 3:03 PM on November 25, 2011

As someone who moved from the KC area to SF proper recently:

- Be prepared to pay about 25-30% more in groceries than in KC. Vegetables in particular seem ridiculous to me comparably. The same comparison can be made for eating out across all levels.
- Rent is...insane in the city, straight up. I paid about $550 for a two-bedroom place in KC; while that is low for the area, I'd be priced out here. Looking at $1200-1300 for a studio or one-bedroom apartment.
- BART really isn't all that practical for primary transportation, but MUNI Metro and the bus system are. Metro is a little cleaner as a whole if you have public transportation issues. The Fast Pass ($72 a month for unlimited rides for all systems, including BART, within San Francisco proper) is a huge deal in my eyes, but your tolerance for walking may vary.
- Entertainment as a whole is more expensive, but there is also a greater amount of free/low-cost things, so it kind of evens out.
- I wouldn't even bother bringing your large items, like furniture, out unless you have extreme sentimental value: you're easily looking at $2,000 to tow them, and that's before gas. I just had about a dozen 50-lbs. boxes shipped, and that was about $1/lb.

If you have any specific questions, feel free to MeMail.
posted by Hot Like Your 12V Wire at 3:39 PM on November 25, 2011 [1 favorite]

I don't think this is going to be possible without a significant increase in income. My wife and I make about 165% of your current income and we live in Oakland--we could absolutely NOT afford to live in San Francisco with a child. A 2br apartment will likely run you about $2k, and everything is much more expensive than in the midwest (we moved from Chicago, and I'm still amazed at how much pricier everything is here). You absolutely have to have a car here, but your housing is unlikely to come with a parking spot--this is one of the delightful incongruities that makes life in the Bay Area a constant pain in the ass.

Also, make sure you have done your homework about schools before moving out here for the express reason of raising your kid in San Francisco. I've known several people who've had their hearts broken by the reality that SF is actually a really rotten town for kids. For example, there's not really any guarantee your kid will get into kindergarten here, and certainly no lock they'll get into your neighborhood school. Many people move out of SF when their kids start school, in fact.
posted by Ignatius J. Reilly at 4:08 PM on November 25, 2011

It really comes down to how much risk you're willing to tolerate. On one extreme you could quit your jobs, sell everything and take the bus to SF working out what to do when you get there. On the other extreme you could pay all your debts, save hard for 5 years, get jobs/apartment lined up ahead of time and then move. The risk in this case is that 5 years turns into 10.

Either case has risk, just a lot more in one than the other. So what's your tolerance? If things don't work out what's the downside? Do you end up homeless and destitute or back living with your inlaws?

I would suggest that you should have a high tolerance for risk at this point in your lives. You don't have much to lose and it sounds like you're still pretty young so you have lots of time to recover if things don't go great. So in that case the only thing preventing the move is the decision to go. After that it's just trying to make a plan to minimize the risks as much as you can. Here are some suggestions:

1) Can you rely on any friends/family in the SF Bay area to help you get established?
2) Can one of you make the move first perhaps couch surfing for a couple of months (see point 1) while finding a job and apartment.
3) You don't need 2 cars in SF proper so you could sell one and us the proceeds towards getting setup.
4) In the age of craigslist there is no excuse for not knowing exactly what the cost of living will be in SF.
5) Remember that salaries in SF are higher than KC, so its reasonable to expect that $65K to be more. Again Google is your friend trying to determine market rates for the types of job you think you can get.
6) Don't be too hung up on trying to fix everything in one go. Perhaps you have to work at a boring dumb job for a couple of years while you get established after that you can start working towards what you really want to do.

Sure it sounds like $65K and two AS degrees are a stretch to live in SF. But believe me its not like there's a sign on the Bay Bridge saying "No residents with less than a Bachelors" or "No poor people". So yea, it will probably be difficult and yea, your material standard of living will initially take a hit. But damn! you get to live in San Francisco. Good Luck.
posted by Long Way To Go at 4:21 PM on November 25, 2011 [2 favorites]

Spend some time in the Bay Area before you commit to this move. It's a very nichey choice.
Of dozens of couples I know raising kids in the Bay Area, I know precisely one couple even trying to raise kids in San Francisco -- and they've yet to confront the school issue.

Raising kids in San Francisco is the preserve of people in some very specific circumstances. Extremely wealthy socialites. The terribly impoverished (generational poverty in the housing projects, transient poverty of the recent immigrants who can't afford to commute to service jobs). Gay couples with San Francisco-focused social lives and support systems. Those with long family traditions of specific fog-belt neighborhoods (whose lifestyles are not going to shout "San Francisco" to you.) More prosperous immigrants who want to be close to their communal commercial, cultural and culinary centers -- although that's fading fast as a rationale.
posted by MattD at 4:25 PM on November 25, 2011 [2 favorites]

to the nay-sayers based on current salary - DO do a salary comparison between kc and sf. costs of living in sf are definitely higher, but salaries and wages also tend to be higher - especially in IT, but even my friend working at kinko's made a couple dollars more an hour than he did back home iirc. as long as you're willing to live in an apartment rather than a house, the number "65,000" shouldn't necessarily hold you back. in fact, i take it back - don't do a salary comparison! thinking in terms like that is how people talk themselves into never leaving their hometown/first place they got a job. you move to the city, money is tight, you suck it up for a while, then eventually find yourself in jobs that pay you enough to live decently-to-well, or better.

if i were planning to move back to sf (and it's crossed my mind, it's an awesome place to live), to maximize my IT background i'd take a quick night class and get certified in some hot new computery-flavor of the year (programming language, networking protocol, operating system, application, etc) before the move. thats how i did it last time i moved there, to great effect. that combined with moving to the IT hotbed that is the bay area could very well kill both the size-of-our-salary-will-it-be-enough? bird and the stuck-in-a-deadend-IT-career bird with one stone. at least in the long run.

ps. santa rosa IS a nice little town, my ex lived there. but, it's not sf. though in all honesty it might be a better place to raise a kid, you could still hit the exploritorium and some asian markets on the weekend. however, the job market wont be as hot/interesting as in the city/valley. berkeley is almost as expensive as sf, but not quite, and is probably a better place to raise a kid, but still close to the employment opportunities in sf.

pps. sf, sr, or berkley, big co-sign on LWTG's post. do it now, or you may never!
posted by messiahwannabe at 4:56 PM on November 25, 2011

Thanks everyone for your realistic replies. I had been restricting self to "MUST STAY ON BART" mainly cause it seemed like the easiest, most cost-effective, least-car-requiring way to be able to get to San Francisco regularly. But I'm certainly open to other options; Santa Rosa sounds like a definite possibility.

I will admit, when we were there, baby was not with us (his grandparents in KC were babysitting), and we were on MUNI one day and someone got on with a kid who looked like he was maybe 10 and he was just sitting there doodling in a notepad and I was like "oh man that's so cool, that should be our kid someday." But I rarely saw kids on the bus who were not very young babies or 15+. Flights of fancy - maybe not the best way to provide for kid. I had also seen while idly poking around that San Francisco schools were not the best in general but I was sort of going "oh whatever it'll be fine!"

We actually do not know anyone at all in CA, but we don't have much of a support system here either aside from the in-laws, which admittedly part of this move is to get away from. (We're already 500 miles away from my family, who are in Kentucky/Indiana.)

I am feeling more optimistic though. :)
posted by agress at 5:09 PM on November 25, 2011

San Francisco parent here with two kids in public school. Yes, it is very expensive to live here in some ways compared to where I grew up (suburban metropolis on the east coast), but there are some benefits to living here too. We are not wealthy by any terms, but make an ok living. We bike and take public transit, buy food carefully, and do not live frivolously like our friends in other places with more disposable income.

I love the public schools, beware of myth mongering and the famous battle cries of people who use bashing public schools as a reason to go private. We know many families who start complaining before their kids are walking. I was a public school teacher here before parenting and can say that 10-15 years ago schools were difficult, but now there are more good public schools than one family can choose from.

I'd come and visit. Look at neighborhoods in the city and close by with good transportation alternatives. San Francisco is so much more than the neighborhoods that are in tourist guides. While you're here, visit some playgrounds and talk to parents and families who are there. Do some grocery shopping. Take public transit (another famous thing people like to complain about).

While it is expensive and people love to complain about living here, we wouldn't trade it for the weather, access to local produce, our public school (gasp, it's true!), the playgrounds, parks, and outdoor activities year-round, and, for the most part, for the people.
posted by mamabear at 5:11 PM on November 25, 2011 [1 favorite]

Here's a possible resource for you: Berkeley Parents Network. Note, particularly, the K-12 Schools section - but note that there's also stuff on housing and commercial services.

This might give you some additional information from locals about good schools, good neighborhoods, and good local resources. Also, don't forget to try very specific searches on AskMe - for example, I was curious about how the bus system in Oakland compares to SF's Muni, and a Google search for "muni" "ac transit" limited to ask.metafilter.com got me lots of useful info.

Good luck! It's a great, great place to live, and we'd love to welcome you here.
posted by kristi at 6:08 PM on November 25, 2011

I'll be first to admit that I skimmed the question - but I don't see any compelling reason why you really should move to San Francisco.

How about some affordable substitutes - Portland? Oregon?

Since you wrap up your question by saying "Bay Area", with your income levels, you could probably afford to live in Gilroy - but aside from being surrounded by fields of garlic, what's the point?

http://www.bestplaces.net/col/?salary=65000&city1=52938000&city2=50667000

This indicates that you'll need a combined salary of $128k to have the same lifestyle as in KC.

It's only $82k in Portland.

(Interestingly, it's only $110k in NY - have you thought about moving somewhere cheaper than SF? Like NY?)
posted by StrictlyVague at 6:13 PM on November 25, 2011

I used to live in San Francisco and moved away. I now live in Santa Cruz county, about an hour and half south of SF. SF is fun for a little while, but it's cold, there's no parking, housing is expensive, the wait for buses is ridiculous late at night. Yeah, when I first moved there it was awesome to feel like I lived in "the big city", taking the train home from bars at night. But eventually that gets old, and you realize that carrying your groceries home from the market mostly sucks and you'd rather just put them in the trunk of the car, and walking up stairs to your apartment carrying your bike is a pain.

And then I got married, and had a kid, and you realize most of the draw of the big city life is stuff you don't do when you have kids -- nightlife and fancy restaurants and watching your friend DJ while you eat tapas, which, don't get me wrong, is a lot of fun for a while, but not when you're going to bed at 8:00 every night. I'd much rather have the extra 1,000 sq ft of real estate than a nifty tapas bar down the street.

This isn't to say you shouldn't do it, but you should figure out *why* you want to do it. The only reason you've given so far is "It'd be cool if my kid could write in a notebook on the bus", which for one, I don't understand the appeal of at all (why would that be interesting at all?) and two, you can do that anywhere that there's buses. You don't need to move to SF to get that.

So why is it you want to move to SF? What are you gaining? How much is it going to cost? Is it worth it?
posted by tylerkaraszewski at 6:53 PM on November 25, 2011 [1 favorite]

Lots of people I know have kids in SF. It's a great place to live, but it's challenging and expensive. As everyone else said, it's a question of knowing what tradeoffs you're willing to make in terms of space/time/not loving your job, etc.

Your salaries will likely go up just because salaries here are higher, assuming you can find jobs. But if you don't know anyone here, it will be a tough adjustment, and I wonder if you can find the quality of life issues you seek in a less challenging city.
posted by judith at 7:25 PM on November 25, 2011

Tylerkaraszewski, I specifically thought the kid on the bus was cool because growing up in small towns in the Midwest, I've never lived anywhere with a proper public transit system, just endless suburbia, and this was a kid who was totally nonchalant about it, and I thought it would be cool for me to have a kid who would be familiar enough with public transit to be nonchalant about it. And places in the US with proper public transit are kind of few and far between.
posted by agress at 7:28 PM on November 25, 2011

I lived around SF, Berkeley, Oakland, and mostly in Marin County for about 25 years. I live in Eugene, Oregon now. At times I miss the Bay Area a whole lot, but when I really think it through, it's mostly the money I was able to make that I miss. The traffic, the noise, the overwhelming size of the place, that I don't miss all that much. The natural beauty of California, that's something to experience for sure.
There's a rush you get from big cities and the excitement of all that goes on there. Then when you try to get to the cool things going on, you've got to drive 45 minutes on freeways at breakneck speed. I ride my bike now almost everywhere. I have most of the amenities I need in this medium sized city with country near by.
The only way I was able to afford to have a decent lifestyle in the Bay Area and save money was to manage apartment buildings and work on the side. Rent-free + salary + side work really adds up to some change after a while.
I don't think I could afford to move back to the Bay Area now. Too expensive to just get a toehold, much less rent and find work.
posted by diode at 10:03 PM on November 25, 2011

Let me be the voice of encouragement here, not because it'll be easy or my story is typical, but because I've managed to do it.

I found a decent 2 bedroom house for rent in San Francisco proper, two blocks from BART, that was cheaper than the apartments I was looking at in the suburbs. Craigslist, persistence and luck. Also, I'm in a neighborhood no one seems to have heard of (Ingleside) and that is very ethnically and economically mixed (I don't mean that as a euphemism for poor or black -- we've got a huge range of income levels and no two neighbors of the same ethnicity). I agree with folks that you shouldn't limit yourself to just things on BART, but at the same time, the bus lines are just as crappy as buses anywhere. In my mind, for speed, convenience and reliability, it's something like: BART > MUNI light rail > MUNI bus > AC Transit / other county bus > Caltrain (just because it's only really for SF and SJ commuters). I still think BART is the best, but it's by no means the cheapest public transportation around.

My daughter has lived in the city since she was 5. She is now 12. I love her middle school, she loves her middle school -- we played the SF public school lottery and won.

She takes the MUNI light rail to school (there are limited school buses) and takes a MUNI bus to the other side of town for her afterschool circus classes. I have confidence that she could figure out how to get anywhere she needed to be using just 511.org. I really love raising her here mostly because of the tolerance and cultural exposure.

However, this is all possible because -- when I first moved here, I lived tight on money and I've been pretty aggressive about salary/promotion/career so I could afford to live here. You're not going to be able to do it for $65k combined, but it can't hurt to start looking at job listings in SF and surrounding to get a sense of what's here, what people want and heck, just in case applying to something.

Everything but beautiful produce is more expensive than the Midwest (How can milk be so expensive in such a large dairy state? Why?) and there may be things you expect as part of a normal childhood (basements for storage, bike riding that doesn't involve either road hazards or driving first, ice cream trucks) that won't be here.

I've had plenty of moments where I realized how different her life is from other kids (she's annoyed when there's no composting, she is almost radically against lawns as being a wealthy waste of resources -- even when we're somewhere where water isn't in short supply, she takes wifi and edamame for granted, she doesn't understand that most people associate July 4th with shorts not winter coats) so I've had to be very flexible with my midwestern expectations of what childhood is like -- and how big of a home you need to raise a kid in.

It's not easy. It's spendy. But with luck on the job and housing front, it's doable and actually kind of awesome in many ways. Good luck in whatever you decide to do.
posted by Gucky at 10:32 PM on November 25, 2011 [4 favorites]

As a public school teacher in the Bay Area, I'd also say that quality varies a lot, but there are great schools in every part of the Bay.

I'd also suggest places like Oakland - cheaper and close to SF.
posted by guster4lovers at 11:28 PM on November 25, 2011

Do not quit your KC jobs and move to SF (or any other place for that matter) without any firm employment first, especially given that you have a child. You need to find a job in SF first, then move. This process will make the financial implications that many have discussed more certain. You will have real numbers to work with and can best determine where in the Bay area you can afford to live. If you were single or married with no kids, then you could take a bigger risk. But with a child involved, you should be more cautious in my opinion.
posted by Seymour Zamboni at 5:04 AM on November 26, 2011 [1 favorite]

I'm pretty late to this thread, and I came here to suggest Oakland, which I always suggest (really cute parts, especially in Temescal area near Macarthur bart and Adams Point area for example), very quick commute to SF, much more affordable.

But then I reread more carefully and see that you have a kid. The public schools here really just suck and pretty much always have. So listen to everyone else. But note that some of these other suggestions might not work for your personalities / lifestyles. For example, I like Berkeley as a place to visit and hang out and go shopping, but wouldn't necessarily want to live there, it's very caught up in rules and politics in a way that I find unappealing (even though I tend to agree with the politics). And while Santa Rosa is beautiful, I would never want to live there - too small a city too far from a bigger city (or anything else). Just, different places have different vibes, and they're not all the same as SF, and if that's what you want, I think you can try and make SF work on your budget. But maybe you guys would love Santa Rosa or Berkeley or South San Francisco or Alameda or Daily City something, I have no idea.

(I'm also really surprised to hear that produce seems expensive here compared to Kansas City! I think of produce as being really cheap here, having lived in Texas, NY, and Chicago. This is where all of it grows! And a lot of it grows year round!)
posted by fireflies at 9:49 AM on November 26, 2011

@fireflies - there are fantastic schools in Oakland. Not many, but some. Most of the good ones are charters (boy do I have mixed feelings about writing that...).

And the best thing about the bay area is that EVERY district is in program improvement, so they HAVE TO let you go out of district if you want. I teach in San Lorenzo and have students from SF, Emeryville, Oakland, Hayward, San Leandro, Fremont...etc. Why? Because my school (and district) is awesome and will basically accept any student from anywhere as long as they have the right paperwork.

Hell, I'd move to San Lorenzo just for the schools (if I had kids). And it's on BART...30 mins to the city. And it's pretty affordable (I saw houses/condos going for 115k recently). Just for anecdata, we have a 1 BD apartment in a nice complex (pool, free parking, gym, sauna) in Hayward and pay 1050. 2 BD in the same unit goes for 1200-1300, depending on the floor plan.
posted by guster4lovers at 12:31 PM on November 27, 2011

My experience has been like that of mamabear and Gucky. My partner and I moved here at 27 to live on a combined salary of $40K. We did indeed find ourselves in a falling-down apartment in darkest Mission. I had never been so happy in my life.

Fast forward to a few years later and we have much better jobs, two daughters aged 9 and 6 attending a jewel of a Spanish immersion public school, and we've bought a bigger, not-falling-down apartment. It's in a better neighborhood, but it's still half a block from Mission Street. My kids' favorite foods are pupusas, sushi and dim sum. Their favorite spring break is the circus camp; they spend their summers in the Marin Headlands; their idea of a grand day out is SF MOMA or the Cal Academy.

There's only one San Francisco. You should do it.
posted by rdc at 1:40 PM on November 28, 2011