42$/hr * 40hr/wk * 52wk/yr ~ $87,360 a year.
i would think with a spouse that works it could be doable. but 2 kids , a stay at home mom, and 750$ a month to another kid would be straining 87K a year. the 750 a month is 9000 a year.
now lets say hypothetically you could find a rent that is reasonably close to what you are paying now, and you were hypothetically making more money at 42$/HR then i would say do it.
i think you could easily answer this question yourself if the only variable in the equation is profit, or your [income-costs =profit] .
first lets consider the variable costs:
it would be as simple as just using excel (or any package you like to use, but excel is super easy) and determine your monthly post tax income , and then on either a week by week or monhthby monht basis input your costs . then figure out your income and costs over a 6 month period. now you have your baseline.
now copy and paste and make a second sheet and change the variables you expect to change(like rent, cost of food increasing, parking maybe, any other costs that will increase) and determine your income and costs over the same time period. compare these 2 numbers.
now take into acount the initial costs moving to SJ. thats a fixed cost to consider as well.
now take on the non -monetary costs of moving:
moving kids away from friends
moving away from your freinds
getting used to a new city
etc
you could put these in a new column as categorical variables and give them a yes or no(use a binary variable with 1=yes or 0=no) and of course the scenario where you stay home alot of these will get zeros. where you move many of these will get 1s in the column.
you could weight the more important ones with maybe a 1.1 or 1.2 or 1.5 or even a 2.
for example maybe the kids losing their firends is 2. maybe not being close to the con gets a 3. i dunno. they are all subjective to you.
then sum the column. that sum is the number of "hard changes "you will have to make that are not related to just income.
this is just of the top of my head, its what i would do and what i do for most big decisisions. its a way to quantify changes in a really simple yet effective way i think.
you could even make some simple graphs if you like to see it visually.
you could live a little outside of SJ. Id say it depends on how bad you need a job and how flexible you are on moving. when i lived in san jose years ago i knew 2 guys that commuted from oakdale to san jose everyday. that was when 680 was worse than now though.
from my experience you can make less in the sacramento area and live well since it seems the overall cost of living is significantly less than in the bay.
