Moving out of the bay made a big difference for me. I'm now somewhere in the middle of the country. I have twice the house to live in and 200x more land to roam for about half the price. With the extra land, I can also grow a lot of my own food.
The openness to remote work has been huge. I have colleagues in the bay and NYC. We get paid the same but my money goes twice as far.
At the same time, I've always been a frugal person. When at FB, I budgeted like I was making about 1/5 of my actual income since I always saw it as a transitory windfall.
I don't think I've done anything outside the standard box of lowering my expenses and investing anything I've saved.
The openness to remote work has been huge. I have colleagues in the bay and NYC. We get paid the same but my money goes twice as far.
At the same time, I've always been a frugal person. When at FB, I budgeted like I was making about 1/5 of my actual income since I always saw it as a transitory windfall.
I don't think I've done anything outside the standard box of lowering my expenses and investing anything I've saved.