Toyota Employees- How is Texas? (Austin, Plano: spring break, top school, universities)

[kyam11]

Originally Posted by serger

Hawaii? As you well know it is much shorter, cheaper, and more frequent flight from CA.

Yes Hawaii.

I have a close friend (similar income, similar house, similar type taste in city he finds acceptable.) who lives in the Bay Area

He writes a check every month for about $24,000/month for his mortgage, insurance, taxes.

I guarantee it is much cheaper for me to go to Hawaii than it is for him since he has to write the check to fly to Hawaii and write the check to be that much closer to it.

Don't look at everything in a vacuum.

I can fly private and it costs me less.

[Taub201]

He pays $288K per year for mortgage, insurance and taxes? Are those all income taxes, including federal? He must have a heck of a home because I have a friend in Sacramento and says that his property taxes are like 0.5% and his home is less than mine.






A key difference is higher education. Isn't UC-Irvine ranked higher than all Texas universities except Rice? Then you have USC, UCLA, UCSD, Cal Tech and Pepperdine all in the national Top 50 just in SoCal.

[EDS_]

Originally Posted by kyam11

Yes Hawaii.

I have a close friend (similar income, similar house, similar type taste in city he finds acceptable.) who lives in the Bay Area

He writes a check every month for about $24,000/month for his mortgage, insurance, taxes.

I guarantee it is much cheaper for me to go to Hawaii than it is for him since he has to write the check to fly to Hawaii and write the check to be that much closer to it.

Don't look at everything in a vacuum.

I can fly private and it costs me less.

Couple of things.

The guy several posts back ranting about how everything except housing costs are higher here than in SF needs to have his head examined.

I read in one of the rags in SF a a few weeks ago 46%! of people in the Bay area, not just SF proper, plan to leave within a few years.

[kyam11]

Originally Posted by Taub201

He pays $288K per year for mortgage, insurance and taxes? Are those all income taxes, including federal? He must have a heck of a home because I have a friend in Sacramento and says that his property taxes are like 0.5% and his home is less than mine.






A key difference is higher education. Isn't UC-Irvine ranked higher than all Texas universities except Rice? Then you have USC, UCLA, UCSD, Cal Tech and Pepperdine all in the national Top 50 just in SoCal.

A 3M mortgage will do that. 3500 sq ft. You likely would not be impressed with the house. You would say nice house but nothing spectacular

[EDS_]

Originally Posted by Taub201

He pays $288K per year for mortgage, insurance and taxes? Are those all income taxes, including federal? He must have a heck of a home because I have a friend in Sacramento and says that his property taxes are like 0.5% and his home is less than mine.






A key difference is higher education. Isn't UC-Irvine ranked higher than all Texas universities except Rice? Then you have USC, UCLA, UCSD, Cal Tech and Pepperdine all in the national Top 50 just in SoCal.

As of several weeks ago the median for sale price in SF was $1.6MM, with many over $10MM.


I'd advise you to take a deeper look at the school ranking thing.

[Taub201]

$3M mortgage? That's in a suburb? I'm thinking more like Pleasanton to Plano. The NorCal folks tend to stay in Cal at much higher rates than the SoCal ones. At least that's what I heard from McKesson. Those McKesson folks tended to live outside the city unless they were super high up -- SVP+ -- or millennials.

https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges...l-universities

As far as colleges go, California has spent way more per student than Texas and has smaller classes on average.

7. Stanford
12. Cal Tech
16. Rice
19. UCLA
22. Cal-Berkeley
22. USC
30. UCSB
33. UC-Irvine
38. UC-Davis
41. UCSD
46. Pepperdine
49. UT-Austin


There must be pretty good students in California feeding into these colleges. The top schools have strong Asian and OOS draws as well. UT only gets 10% from OOS. Rice and SMU (#59) are about half OOS. We send a lot of students out of state to OU, Arkansas, Colorado, etc. plus top 50 schools like Georgia, UVa, USC...

[serger]

Originally Posted by kyam11

Yes Hawaii.

I have a close friend (similar income, similar house, similar type taste in city he finds acceptable.) who lives in the Bay Area

He writes a check every month for about $24,000/month for his mortgage, insurance, taxes.

I guarantee it is much cheaper for me to go to Hawaii than it is for him since he has to write the check to fly to Hawaii and write the check to be that much closer to it.

Don't look at everything in a vacuum.

I can fly private and it costs me less.

Well, the math does not seem to work but regardless, flights to Hawaii from CA are cheaper, shorter, and more frequent than from Dallas. That's just a fact, independent of somebody's mortgage.



BTW, it appears that your friend is paying 7-8k per month in insurance...

[Soonhun]

Originally Posted by houstonview

I agree with LA, beaches can get boring and flash

However No city or area is like the BAY AREA,

you can go on a vacation every weekend there, you can be skiing in Tahoe, drinking wine in NAPA, in the city in SF, at the beach in Santa Cruz, go hiking/camping at over 5 beautiful red wood parks, chill in Sacramento, get away to LA, relax in Monterey, vibe in Oakland, take it easy in San Jose... and so on

I think my point was more so that, for most residents, that beauty isn't something a person experiences most weeks or months. Yeah, pretty parts of the Bay Area exists, but I don't see it being very visible to most people going from work to home to out, whatever they may do very regularly, or to school.

[turf3]

Originally Posted by Parhe

I think my point was more so that, for most residents, that beauty isn't something a person experiences most weeks or months. Yeah, pretty parts of the Bay Area exists, but I don't see it being very visible to most people going from work to home to out, whatever they may do very regularly, or to school.

I think most people would agree that the scenery in Calif. can be more "poster-beautiful" than in North Texas (though true plainsmen and plainswomen like me and my wife see the beauty in the big sky). But most people's lives are only trivially affected by this.


Here's what most people are doing:


Up at 6
Shower, breakfast, get the kids off to school
Commute
Work, indoors, for most of us what we look at while working is the computer, the lab, the conference room, the factory, or the jobsite.
Lunch
Afternoon's work
Commute
Pick up kids
Make dinner
Eat
Unwind a bit
Pay bills or help kids, or evening appointment
TV till sleepy
Go to bed


Weekends are mostly housework, fixing things, child activities, visiting other people, maybe going to a party, out to eat, movie.


Sorry, but whether you are doing this business of your daily life under the shadow of Half Dome or in the suburban sprawl of Plano, the surrounding scenery just isn't going to play all that big a role. For most people who have to make a living, the scenery is a minor perk but it doesn't drive major decisions.

[kyam11]

Originally Posted by serger

Well, the math does not seem to work but regardless, flights to Hawaii from CA are cheaper, shorter, and more frequent than from Dallas. That's just a fact, independent of somebody's mortgage.



BTW, it appears that your friend is paying 7-8k per month in insurance...

You are correct. He said it was closer to about $20,000 after I texted him.

The facts are "It costs my friend substantially more for the ability to have cheaper and closer flights than it does for me."

I spend more time in Hawaii per year than he does and definitely more time in Hawaii now than I ever did when I lived in the Bay Area.

And if you read what I originally wrote it was "I still go to beaches (actually more now than I ever did in the Bay Area), but those beaches are in the Caribbean, Rosemary Beach, or Hawaii."

Still true.

What isn't measured is the significantly lesser amount of pressure of not having to spend substantial amounts for mediocre quality of life.

To me DFW provides what CA did 40 years ago - A great place to raise a family which is very affordable and the ability to live an incredible quality of life with just decent earnings needed from a 2 income household.