Nope He is 100% correct. I know guys who own $10 million homes but are "broke". Things are not as they appear.
Tax is charged both federal and state in California. And 160k hits a 28% tax rate at the state level. Combined it's about 35% in taxes (about 56k, let's call it 60k). Rent + Utilities + Transport can easily put you at 4000/mo (48k, let's call it 50k). 160k - 60k - 50k = 50k Now if he is also contributing to his 401k (18k), that leaves him with 32k (or roughly 2600/mo) IF he has to feed a wife & 2 kids, pay for school, clothing, etc. It can get a bit tight. 160k/year is not an outrageous sum in California. Even less if living in New York (where there is also municipal tax).
So clearly you haven't. Once you do, you'll realize that everything is far more expensive when living in a big city. You want a car, you'll need to pay as much for a parking space in SF as you probably pay for your rent. Oh, no need for a car because you're in the city, then you pay at least 2x for your groceries and probably about a third of what you pay in rent on taxi's and Bart fares. And that's just transportation. I could go on and on but if you've lived a sheltered life in the burbs or a rural area you're really going to have no idea until you experienced it yourself. San Francisco is great, lots of reasons to put up with the cost to live there but $160K there is probably close to $60K where you live.
There is nothing ludicrous about his lifestyle - my base is about the same and I spend all of it. If you want a reasonable quality of life, the exchange rate between Manhattan and say Columbus, OH is probably 4:1. A highly recomended read by Andrew Tobias - do "look inside the book" and read a chapter on "how to get by on 100,000 a year": https://www.amazon.com/Getting-100-000-Year-Other-ebook
Hear me and hear me clearly: I don't give a fuck. Surely not everyone in California earns a 6-figure income, yet those people find a way to live comfortably. My fiancé and her family is from the area that this guy is from, so I've been told about the cost of living there. And I live in the biggest city in my region...Atlanta and am originally from New Orleans. So I know about big cities.
I agree, I have no sympathy for these type of stories. I live rather extremely frugally. Doing so is not that hard or difficult to embrace It's kind of amazing how frugally you can live or exist, if you really make it happen. and living frugally doesn't necessarily have to mean living a crap existence.
Actually, 160k is fairly frugal living for his location, there is nothing extravagant about his lifestyle. I suspect that both you and Money Trust have more discretionary spending ability then this dude (or myself, if you only count my base salary)
Not sure why some posters are mentioning a single guy living in a studio. The Guardian article is about a 40+ y o engineer with wife and 2 kids living in a small 2 BR house. How much does he actually pay in tax ?