One of the biggest downsides from my perspective of moving out of the U.S. and the Bay Area in particular is drastically lower salaries in many industries, in particular software engineering. My guess is most software engineers we know would literally be looking at 70% pay reductions (as in make 30% of what they previously made). I think this is a strong enough reason that I would be very hesitant to move to Berlin long-term, and I think would reduce surplus income of individuals by something like 50%, which I think is a really big deal.
I mean, most of the people I know live pretty frugally, which means that those differences don’t matter that much. Housing for people in group houses in Berkeley only costs about $12k a year, so you can’t save that much on that. In addition there are also much higher tax rates. Having done the calculations, I actually expect discretionary income to go down by more something like 75%, because you also pay a lot more in taxes.
One of the biggest downsides from my perspective of moving out of the U.S. and the Bay Area in particular is drastically lower salaries in many industries, in particular software engineering. My guess is most software engineers we know would literally be looking at 70% pay reductions (as in make 30% of what they previously made). I think this is a strong enough reason that I would be very hesitant to move to Berlin long-term, and I think would reduce surplus income of individuals by something like 50%, which I think is a really big deal.
Yeah. Adjusting for cost of living and purchasing power, it would be (much?) less, but still a good reason against moving.
I mean, most of the people I know live pretty frugally, which means that those differences don’t matter that much. Housing for people in group houses in Berkeley only costs about $12k a year, so you can’t save that much on that. In addition there are also much higher tax rates. Having done the calculations, I actually expect discretionary income to go down by more something like 75%, because you also pay a lot more in taxes.
Yeah, that seems very plausible for frugal people who don’t pay much rent, don’t eat out that often, etc. and updates me against Berlin