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tl;dr The expert's recommendation is "to make moving out of the region a goal."

> How making $300,000 in San Francisco can still mean you're living paycheck-to-paycheck > > Dec. 7, 2021 > > Editor's note: This story originally ran in 2019, but has been updated with 2021 figures. > > With the median price of a home in the U.S. at $300,000, you can can achieve homeownership and the idealized middle-class lifestyle in most parts of the country making a salary just under or above six figures. > > In San Francisco's land of $2 million fixer-uppers, the income needed to reach this status is obviously more. But how much more? > > S.F.-based finance expert Sam Dogen pinned that number at $300,000, after surveying dozens of readers on his Financial Samurai blog and asking about their incomes and expenses living in the notoriously high-priced coastal cities. > > With their feedback, Dogen broke down the budget of a couple with one to two children in San Francisco, Seattle or New York. He found $300,000 is the income necessary to put something away for retirement, save for your child's education, own a three-bedroom home, take three weeks of vacation a year and retire by a reasonable age. > > "It's not an extravagant lifestyle," Dogen says. "It's a middle-class lifestyle if you consider a middle-class person should be able to afford a modest home, have at least one car, have a kid or two. There are no private jets in this budget." > > Dogen has put together a detailed post where you'll find analysis and explanation on each expense, but here are a few points to note: > > - The $29,400-a-year childcare expense takes into consideration a babysitting rate of about $20 an hour, the standard charge in a city such as San Francisco. Preschool easily costs $18,000 to $20,000 a year in metro areas. > > - The mortgage is based on a $1.5 million, 1,750-square-foot, three-bedroom, two-bathroom home on a 2,500-square-foot lot. > > - The car expenses are based on a single car that accommodates a family. > > - Entertainment expenses include everything from Netflix to tickets to an occasional ball game to date night, which easily costs $200 in San Francisco when you consider expense for dinner and babysitting. > > Dogen adds that at $300,000, a family is still living paycheck-to-paycheck and not saving outside their 401K and 529 plans. > > "We're in this perpetual grind in San Francisco, and it's a city for people who are willing to hustle," he says. "At one point in the past, $300,000 was a lot of money. Now at this amount, you're probably always going to end up working a long time and having a constant struggle to keep up." > > His recommendation is to make moving out of the region a goal. > > "There's a moving truck shortage in places like San Francisco because so many people are moving out of this expensive city and other expensive coastal cities," he writes. "If you live in an expensive metropolitan area, consider relocating to lower your cost of living or at least try and take advantage of the valuation differential by investing in Middle America. > > "Thanks to technology, there's no need to grind so hard in cities where the median home price is over $1 million."

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> This really seems extreme and a harbinger of what is to come: veteran (and tenured) high school teacher and baseball coach dismissed from school after he assigned a Ta-Nehisi Coates essay and poem about white privilege. > > Tweet

A parent complained that the Coates essay painted Trump in a negative light.

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>Sullivan County school board approves teacher termination charges, supporters outraged > >Posted: Jun 8, 2021 / Updated: Jun 9, 2021 > >UPDATE – The Sullivan County Board of Education Tuesday voted 6-1 that the charges of dismissal against teacher Matthew Hawn are true and warranted. > >Supporters and former students gathered at the meeting wearing light blue and holding placards voicing their support for the contemporary issues teachers. > >> Supporters of Hawn told me they were frustrated with the board's decision to continue the dismissal process against the Sullivan Central HS contemporary issues teacher @WJHL11 @ABCTriCities pic.twitter.com/HF8L68IOyo >> >> — Bianca Marais WJHL (@BiancaWJHL) June 9, 2021 > >During the meeting, only Board Vice-Chairman Matthew Spivey voted against the dismissal continuation. > >Director of Schools Dr. David Cox said during the meeting that he's been accused of racism due to these charges of dismissal against Hawn. > >"There has been a lot of talk online that accuses me of moving to dismiss Mr. Hawn because he taught anti-racism lessons. Let me be perfectly clear. Sullivan County Schools, and I in no way condone racism of any county. We have encouraged all of our teachers, including Mr. Hawn, to promote an environment welcoming to all students of all races of all backgrounds," Cox said. > >He added that he has been told that white privilege was the reason for his dismissal charges against Hawn. > >"This is also simply not true. In the charges I just read aloud in fact, I read that appropriate discussions around concepts like white privilege remain perfectly appropriate for a high school class, like contemporary issues. These charges of dismissal about Mr. Hawn refusing to provide his students with access to varying points of view, which is required under Tennessee law. And these charges are about Mr. Hawn, again, assigning inappropriate materials to his students," he said. > >Former students told News Channel 11 that latent racism was ever-present when they walked the Sullivan Central High School halls. > >> One student who graduated in 2018 from Sullivan Central High School, and attended Hawn's contemporary issues class for two years, said that he felt Hawn was a fair and balanced teacher. @WJHL11 @ABCTriCities pic.twitter.com/KPlJocQse4 >> >> — Bianca Marais WJHL (@BiancaWJHL) June 9, 2021 > >One student who graduated in 2018 and attended Hawn's contemporary issues class for two years, said that he felt Hawn was a fair and balanced teacher. > >"We talked about a lot of hot button issues in our class, we talked about white privilege, and he was very open and fair and balanced on both sides of the argument, and presented a like I said an open discussion we never saw any, anything that I believe would warrant a dismissal," Kyle Simcox said. > >--- > >BLOUNTVILLE, Tenn. (WJHL) – A Sullivan County school teacher and baseball coach is facing possible termination by the school district. > >The charges of dismissal come after two incidents pointed out by the school district. > >The first was after a parent who complained in early February about an opinion article Matthew Hawn assigned to his Contemporary Issues students by Ta-Nehisi Coats entitled "The First White President," which the complaining parent claimed painted the former president in a negative light. >Matthew Hawn. Courtesy of Laura Hawn. > >Hawn was issued an official letter of reprimand which passed unanimously at the March Board of Education meeting. > >Later in March, Hawn faced a second round of reprimands from the school district when, according to officials, he showed a video called "White Privilege," a spoken word poem by Kyla Jenee Lacey. > >The school district wrote to Hawn that though the concept of discussing white privilege and the like during a contemporary issues class is perfectly acceptable, the district administration did not believe some of the terms used in the video were appropriate for high school students. > >Hawn faces charges of dismissal at the Tuesday Sullivan County Board of Education meeting at 6:30 p.m. > >According to a Facebook group showing support for Hawn, roughly 50 people are expected to gather to show their support for the teacher at the meeting. > >It is unclear whether the public will be permitted to speak on this subject during the public comment section of the board meeting. > >He has been tenured at the Sullivan County School District since 2008 and has been teaching Contemporary Issues and coaching baseball at Central High School. > >Sullivan County Schools administrators sent News Channel 11 the following documents regarding Hawn: > >[a gallery of six images] >

>Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins) > >Kafka's Metamorphosis is called a major work of literature. Why? If it's SF it's bad SF. If, like Animal Farm, it's an allegory, an allegory of what? Scholarly answers range from pretentious Freudian to far-fetched feminist. I don't get it. Where are the Emperor's clothes? > >Tweet

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Follow-up tweet...

> She’s now trending higher than stories about the mass shooting.

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>Twitter will not free Palestine, but it will certainly make the world a more antisemitic place > >by Eve Barlow • May 25, 2021 > >I don't know who crafted the first tweet that simply said "Eve Fartlow," but whoever it was—bot or human—started a fire. Over the past two weeks, Twitter has been littered with the words "Eve Fartlow." Every time I tweet, this title is the response I attract, and it is pelted at me irrespective of what I write. Hundreds of trolls, some with blue ticks and some without, just start responding to me "Eve Fartlow" (some people have recently switched it to "Eve Shartlow" but "Eve Fartlow" seems to be the one that sticks). If we donated a JNF tree to Israel for every time someone tweeted "Eve Fartlow," there'd be no Negev left.

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#2 now

In 2007 a computer science professor named Randy Pausch learned he was dying of cancer. He gave what became a much loved speech. It was a best-seller. And...

> Then Disney-owned publisher Hyperion paid $6.7 million for the rights to publish a book about Pausch called The Last Lecture.

I watched 10 minutes of it: Randy Pausch Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams. Why would I bother listening to surely crappy speech? One reason was I scanned his Wikipedia page and I noticed this odd sentence:

> On February 4, 2009, The Walt Disney Company dedicated a tribute plaque at Disney World near the "Mad Tea Party" attraction with a quote by Randy that reads "Be good at something; It makes you valuable ... Have something to bring to the table, because that will make you more welcome."

Of course - everybody reading this comment can parse that for what it really is - Some people are more valuable. Some people are more welcome. I wanted to know what was in the speech but I soon realized I didn't want to hear him talk for another second so I found it as text - not a god-awful PDF - "Achieving Your Childhood Dreams" - jamesclear.com.

As text - the speech is nothing special. It included some decidedly uninspiring details about his work life. I think the speech became famous because it had the usual American exceptionalism claptrap - dream big, work hard, crave success, hard work pays off, never quit - Jackie Robinson got spit on but he didn't quit (the quote is at the very end of this post), etc. There were also Disney-worthy flourishes...

> Never lose the childlike wonder.

It can be weird to read a super-popular speech because most people don't really grok the content so they don't really know what they just listened to. For most people - feeling is all. Even rabid Trump supporters wouldn't want to read a transcript of a Trump speech. Even they can't digest Trump's word salad in text form.

Pausch has a bit that's aged like milk in his covid reality if you pay attention hard enough.

> No one knows this till today I'm telling the story. I was declined admission to Carnegie Mellon [for graduate school].

Here's where hard work connections pay off. A person at that school with influence offers to help him but...

> I said, "No, no, no, I don't want to do it that way. That's not the way I was raised. You know, maybe some other graduate schools will see fit to admit me."

It's funny how when the "bootstrap" ethos breaks down for some people - if they have "something to bring to the table" but far more importantly they now the right people - they are more welcome. Regardless of how Pausch was raised - strings were pulled for them. He got in and they "gifted" him with a fellowship to the Office of Naval Research. Bootstraps, baby!

> So, how do you get people to help you? You can't get there alone. People have to help you, and I do believe in karma, I believe in paybacks. You get people to help you by telling the truth, being earnest. I'll take an earnest person over a hip person every day, because hip is short-term. Earnest is long-term.

Oh, you just ask for help. Inspirational! He mentioned a brick wall metaphor three times. I wonder if he lived in a gated community. Disney snipped out the bit about Jackie Robinson - I guess they ran out of space on the plaque.

>Have something to bring to the table. [...] Because that will make you more welcomed. > >[...] > >Brick walls are there for a reason. [...] The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. Because they brick walls are there to stop the people who don't want it badly enough. They're there to stop the other people. > >[...] > >Some brick walls are made of flesh. > >[...] > >> Andy said [to me], "No, don't go [and just get a job[. Go get a Ph.D. Become a professor." I said, "Why?" He said, "Because you're such a good salesman that any company who gets you is going to use you as a salesman, and you might as well be selling something worthwhile like education." > >[...] > >That is the best gift an educator can give is to get somebody to become self-reflective. > >[...] > >Remember, brick walls let us show our dedication. They are there to separate us from the people who don't really want to achieve their childhood dreams. > >[...] > >Don't complain; just work harder. That's a picture of Jackie Robinson. It was in his contract not to complain, even when the fans spit on him. Be good at something; it makes you valuable. Work hard. I got tenure a year early as Steve mentioned. Junior faculty members used to say to me, "Wow, you got tenure early. What's your secret?" I said, "It's pretty simple. Call me any Friday night in my office at 10:00 o'clock and I'll tell you."