just looked at some data on where it's actually hardest to make it in the US and honestly the numbers are wild. san jose is sitting at the top with households needing like 319k annual income just to live comfortably there. the rent situation alone is insane—nearly 10k a month for a mortgage. san francisco and san diego aren't far behind, both in the 240-300k range for household income needed.

what's interesting is how the highest cost of living cities in us are basically all concentrated in california and the northeast. new york city's actually lower than you'd think at 220k, while long beach, seattle, and oakland all cluster around 200-210k. dc rounds out the top 10 at 187k, which is still a lot but starting to look more reasonable compared to the west coast.

the grocery and housing costs are what really push these numbers up. every city on this list has monthly mortgage payments between 4-9k, and groceries run 9-10k annually just about everywhere. if you're trying to hit that traditional american dream—house, savings, some breathing room—you basically need to be in the highest cost of living cities in us and earn serious money, or look somewhere else entirely.

making me think a lot of people chasing the dream are either moving to cheaper areas or just accepting they need to grind way harder than previous generations did.