The housing prices you see SF are unheard of in Europe, outside maybe only London. And even then, we're talking about the most gentrified areas of London.
FWIW, I make a "meager" half of those starting salaries, but I'm able to save around $80k / year. Why? Because I pay next to nothing in housing.
Purchased my home for $15k. Dropped another $15k in renovations, and that's gonna last a good time. I'm on the track to early retirement, and it's completely possible other places too.
I took a huge pay cut moving away from a big and expensive city, but I can save a lot more, and with a ton less work-related stress.
Can you say more about your home? Perhaps rough size and country? 15k is really cheap even if you bought it a while ago.
I assume you’re in Europe somewhere from your comment, but even Bulgaria which is fairly cheap isn’t that cheap. For example, housing outside the center of town in Sofia is about 1000 euros per square meter [1] (for sq ft folks, multiply sq meters by 10 roughly). Varna is a bit cheaper at 700 which is a bit below the countrywide average of 750.
Bulgaria is often listed as the cheapest country in the EU, so I’m curious to understand if there’s a drastic housing price drop somewhere. But even $30k to buy would mean about a 30 sq m (300 sq ft) flat, which is more like microhousing.
Northern Norway, but there's a ton of variance in prices here. You can easily move tens to hundreds of thousands in one city, so to find the cheapest you really need to look hard. I found a relatively old and run-down place, but which was easy to fix.
With that said, I have a very nice salary - relatively speaking - but as mentioned, it's around half of what jr. Engineers make in SW.
I'm lucky because my background from both Business and Engineering has been a good mix for landing my current gov. job - and the pay is good because the area / location is not very attractive, and it makes harder to get talent here. (I grew up here, so that's no problem).
Work involves a lot of travel, and I travel otherwise during my vacations, so things rarely get boring.
I've worked all over the world, but after I turned 30, I really haven't had the big-city needs, so living somewhere rural doesn't bother me anymore.
Software in Norway and saving $80k per year? In government, no less? That means post tax you're making in the ballpark of $150k, or maybe a bit less if your expenses are very low? Very good number for the location regardless.
I'm able to save $20k per year in Norway (south) and consider that great, relatively speaking. Remote work? I didn't think the public sector jobs paid this well.
Not quite software (scripting at most), but in a senior engineering position with leadership role, and with a ton of travel - had almost 100 days last year. OT pays well, too. (So the salary varies a bit from year to year)
But the largest portion of savings boils down extremely low COL - I have a grand total of $800 / 7000 NOK in expenses pr. month, that includes everything. Pre-tax anywhere between $120k-$130k, depends on OT and travel.
State / gov. (directly or owned) jobs can pay pretty well, if you find the right positions - but they tend to lean towards engineering or medicine.
Really nice and thanks for the info. GJ on getting to a ridiculously low COL. My costs are on the ballpark of $1000 per month excluding housing costs, but housing costs easily approach that number as well. Which obviously reduces the potential savings rate dramatically.
FWIW, I make a "meager" half of those starting salaries, but I'm able to save around $80k / year. Why? Because I pay next to nothing in housing.
Purchased my home for $15k. Dropped another $15k in renovations, and that's gonna last a good time. I'm on the track to early retirement, and it's completely possible other places too.
I took a huge pay cut moving away from a big and expensive city, but I can save a lot more, and with a ton less work-related stress.