You live in the most expensive region of the country but you only pay $20k in rent? Is your idea of “most expensive” Akron or something?
I live in the California bay area (not going to get more specific than that), and split rent of a townhouse 50/50 with my partner. I live in a stupid bougie area too, so I’m not doing myself any favors there pricewise.
You cannot get a SFH here for under $2 mil, and our townhouse we rent is worth well over $1 mil. I could easily afford the whole place by myself, but that would be financially irresponsible. I was very fortunate to be taught at a young age that being able to afford something does not make it a good or okay use of money.
If I weren’t living with my partner, I’d get a one bed or studio apartment for ~$2200 a month, or an extra $6400 a year. Unless someone took on a mortgage way larger than they could actually afford (again, a financial literacy issue), or has an extremely expensive medical condition, I have 0 idea how anyone could be paycheck to paycheck on $150k a year and unable to massively cut back. The world is expensive, but it ain’t THAT expensive.
To get a townhome in the bay at ~2k a month is a complete outlier with respect to rent. I live in a similar COL area and the cheapest you could rent that kind of space is for ~3.5k monthly in the present market.
