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I'm Raymond Zeng. I work as a software engineer making $306,500 and I live in the San Francisco Bay Area. I'm going to be sharing all of my finances between my bills and my investments. This is Cost of Living. I'm a software engineer working at Meta. In terms of my role, I earn $306,500 on average. After taxes and retirement contributions, I am currently taking home about $4,000 a month. I currently do not have any other sources of income. I work anywhere between 40 to 50 hours a week on average. In terms of my day-to-day, it can be really anything.
My role is fairly dynamic, so I could be doing anything from software engineering and actual coding to some of the more sort of project management or product management stuff, as well as some data science sort of analysis. Prior to joining my current company, I'd spent 2 years living in Dallas and I moved here about 7 or 8 months ago back in July of 2025. In terms of base rent, I am paying $2,600 a month. Amenity fees are included in the base rent. Utilities will cost anywhere between $150 to $170 a month. My electricity bill here is about 50% higher than it was in Dallas from about $20 to $30 per month to about $50 a month.
I feel like I am getting good value. A lot of the comparable areas that are closer to my work could run anywhere between $3,500 to $3,700 per month and I'm getting everything that I wanted out of this apartment. I live a little bit further away from either the major cities of San Francisco or San Jose or Oakland, but still within commutable distance of all three. Even though I had access to a relocation expert, I decided to do a lot of the research on my own taking a look at all the things that I wanted to focus on from a living perspective and after making the decisions, I decided to sign
the lease sight unseen without actually having seen the place in person. Hey, welcome to my apartment. So, this is the main kitchen area. It's quite spacious compared to my last apartment. The only complaint that I really have are these uh the countertops aren't exactly ideal for the amount that I'm paying, but it's all right. In terms of fridge and freezer, I got some meal prep stuff from the night before as well as a whole host of uh drinks and mixers. Um in the freezer, very similar thing where I've got a couple of frozen things as well as some dumplings that I actually wrapped myself when I was really bored one day.
Over here, we have my main sort of living \{slash\} workshop area. This is where I get all my work done as well as my personal projects. The decision to do without a couch and a TV is really just based on my own needs. I don't really watch a whole lot of TV. I just use my computer. I don't host people in my apartment, obviously. If I do decide to hang out with friends, I'll usually go to their place or maybe a third place. And in the case of hanging out with my friends in virtual reality, well, everyone sort of split off in their own physical space. We've also got a couple of other things over here, just uh the DJ controller because I really don't have a lot of other space to put it, as
well as my robot cleaner which gets the job done. It's not perfect, but it definitely helps out uh in terms of having to clean. Over here, we've got just the bedroom. Haha. I mean, there's really not much to my bedroom. It gets the job done for me. I have my blanket, my pillow, um a filing cabinet doubling as a nightstand as well as my charger there. It's all that I really need at this point. And this is my bathroom. The highlight of this is really the bidet that I installed. It was about $400 or so, but it was a really, really nice quality of life improvement for myself. And outside over here, we've got a
little bit of a balcony. I don't spend a lot of time out here as you may be able to tell, but it is a nice way to get some fresh air in. I've been told by many of my friends that my living situation is very spartan, but really it's an intentional choice to pick and choose parts of my life that I decide to spend more or less money on. So, even though my living situation right now is fairly sparse, that doesn't mean that it's going to stay that way say if I decide to have a partner or have kids.
Between ride sharing and public transit, I will sometimes spend around $30 per month, but most of the time it's zero. I live in the Bay Area without a car, and so I think one of the big things to me is the accessibility to public transit. I live about 5 minutes away from the nearest Bay Area rapid transit station. I'm actually quite used to living car-free. I had lived previously in Dallas for 2 years without a car and got around in very similar ways. I picked out this apartment also specifically for its proximity to all of the things that I would really want to go to on a regular basis. So, that would be cafe, boba shops, as well as the grocery store. For those, I just walk and for anything
else, I would either take the public transit or in certain cases take ride sharing. Our company, like many other companies around the Bay Area, have shuttles that go around the area and I utilize those to get to and from work. I spend about $300 per month on groceries. I usually budget $75 per month for eating out, but I usually don't hit that maximum. I used to get online delivery for my groceries, but not anymore given that it's so close to my apartment. I should stock up on some more instant noodles. In terms of what I cook on a daily basis, I don't really have a set plan
because of the fact that my company subsidizes both my breakfast and my lunch. But yes, beef short rib, 1434 or $10.99 per pound. This is a cut that usually isn't super widely available in western grocery stores. So, always nice to pick some up from the Asian grocery store. In terms of dinner, I'll usually meal prep some sort of protein as well as vegetables. So, it that could be chicken, it could be some fish. Um it really just depends on my mood. This herbal tea. This stuff is gas. Uh Also a ton of sugar in there, but really good. Uh so, a pack of six for $3.99. I'm lucky enough to be in a situation where food prices have not really affected how I socialize or make these decisions around food choices.
All righty. Let's go ahead and make our way to the other grocery store. Round two. Let's go. In terms of cooking versus eating out, I am almost always cooking at home. I very rarely dine out. Man, people are feening for the Coke Zeros. They ran out of the large ones. Here's what I got at the western supermarket. A loaf of white bread, a bottle of Coke, and a gallon of whole milk. In total, this came out to [snorts] be $22.34. Now, this isn't necessarily what I would get on a regular basis, but it's just to give an idea of how things how much things cost in my area.
What do you do for fun in your free time? Uh that's an excellent question. In terms of what I do in my free time, there are really three major areas that I spend my money on. The first is finances, so really a lot about the credit cards and churning and that sort of thing as well as my personal finances. There's also a big aspect of travel, whether that's domestic or international. And I am also an active participant in the furry community. I currently spend about $1,000 a year just for the privilege of owning the credit cards that I currently hold on to. In terms of my hobbies, I generally spend between 4 and $500 a month across all of them. Though in certain cases, I will
spend a little bit more money and I'm currently saving up for a fursuit. On average, depending on where your maker is as well as how reputable they are, a fursuit will generally cost between 4 to $7,000. The furry community means a lot of different things to various people. To some people, it's a way of expressing themselves, sometimes in adult ways, and other times it's just a way of designing a fictional character and sort of living in a bit of a mascot costume for a while. To me, being part of this community really means designing my own characters, as well as embodying them in the form of either commissioning art or in some extreme cases, commissioning fursuits.
And all of this faux fur, or at least part of it, will eventually end up on the head. Um this is a bigger part of the project, especially since I'm not super familiar with sewing, but it'll eventually end up on there. So, my character currently is a bit of a cyborg hybrid between a canine as well as a robot, known in the community colloquially as a protogen. I think for really anything mentioning furry in the furry community as well, because of it being a sort of historically marginalized community in the social space, there are a lot of concerns around um doxxing as well as in general people not necessarily being
super comfortable with being public with this. I just happen to be one of the stupid people that decided to go public with this. I don't really spend a lot of money on improving my finances. It's more so of a lifestyle choice to take a look at credit cards and the perks that they offer and whether or not it's really worth it to me. In terms of maximizing your value for the points, this is really a process of trying to earn those points in the most efficient way and spending those points in the most efficient way. Generally, in terms of earning, you're going to be getting those from sign-up bonuses rather than
everyday spend. And in terms of actually cashing in those points, you're going to be trying to look for value where, say, maybe a business class ticket might be $5,000 but only $2,500 worth of points. I was fortunate enough to grow up in a household where my mother was very financially illiterate. And she was actually the one that got me interested in credit cards and churning in the first place. The most recent trip that I did was to Southeast Asia, so Singapore as well as Malaysia. I was fortunate enough to bring my dad along as well as my sister.
I have health insurance provided by my employer. I am currently paying for a high deductible plan and I spend about $17 per month. I currently do not have any recurring health care costs. In terms of staying fit, my apartment has a gym, but in case I'm lazy to do that, I also do body weight fitness. And for cardio and aerobics, I do dancing. One of the big parts about the furry conventions are as well are the raves that happen in person. And there are some people there are that know how to dance. In any given month, I will save anywhere between $5,000 to $20,000. In terms of that large range, it really depends on whether or not my 401k is maxed out, whether or not I have any stock vesting, and whether or not I have any bonuses.
In terms of maxing out my 401k with my employer, I contribute $24,500 up to the maximum limit that I can contribute alongside my employer contributions. In addition to that, I make after-tax contributions all the way up to the IRS limit of $72,000. So, in total, about 1/6 of my compensation is going towards my 401k. In terms of my other investments, I also max out my Roth IRA and HSA every single year, and then any additional money goes into my brokerage account. I'm currently about 80% invested in the US stock market and 20% internationally. I think like with many other parts of my generation, there is very much a big split in terms of financial literacy among other things. There's a swath of people who are fairly well educated in
terms of personal finances, and there are a lot of those who are just getting by. I view personal finance in a very similar way as I do personal fitness. A lot of the core concepts are fairly simple, but it doesn't mean that it's easy to follow and there are a lot of traps along the way. I'm aiming to retire by the age of 30, in which case I'll need about 1.6 million dollars to do so. In terms of why I decided to start pursuing the path of financial independence and retiring early, I wanted to build a life for myself where I wouldn't have to work for money all the way up until 65. There's a lot of moving parts when it comes to retirement planning and even establishing a goal number is a bit of a moving goal post in general. The rule of
thumb in the community is to multiply your expenses by 25, or otherwise known as the 4% rule, and if you're retiring earlier than say around 40 or so, you might want to add some leeway to that. And so my budget is a little bit greater than the actual 4% rule. There's a lot of different projections in terms of how much I'm going to be contributing in the future, as well as how well the stock market is going to do over that course of time. I have way too many sheets in this uh in this. So, every month I'll create a copy of this sort of base spreadsheet. I designed it myself. I don't really have a template that I follow, and I prefer it this way. It's more of a DIY approach
of if I decide that there are certain categories that I don't want, or categories that I do need, then I'll just add it onto the spreadsheet and it'll be copied over for the remainder of however long I decide to do this budgeting. I actually do have a larger tax sheet that does track down in terms of like taxes that I'm paying in terms of the income that I'm getting, the expected amount of paychecks, and then over here I just have some pretty straightforward projections in terms of actually where I'm going to be at financially for a given year and age assuming certain figures for growth as well as investment outcome. And yeah, so by age 30 assuming that all goes well, I'm expecting that I might have somewhere north of around $2
million invested. And this is also tracking the active price of some of my investments, and so this will fluctuate over time. And by age 40, I'm expected to be retired at that point, so I do have empty columns in terms of my actual investments. But at that point, I might have somewhere in the north of $7 million invested. I think a very interesting part of the FIRE community is that it has splintered off into various groups and evolved from its original form around the 2010s that was largely focused on frugality at all costs. Now there are folks such as myself that sort of can have their cake and eat it, too, where we are able to live a very fulfilling lifestyle and save a lot for retirement. In terms of
my lifestyle after retirement, I don't expect that I'm going to stop working entirely. I might pick up some odd jobs or contracting work every now and then just if I decide that it's interesting to me. Other than that, it's really going to be populated with travel as well as attending conventions and just being myself. I think one of the biggest privileges for myself is that I am able to earn enough of an income where I could reasonably support my family if they were ever in trouble, and in the case of a future family, that would be something that I would have to readjust over time.
Moving here has definitely been worth it. Even though the cost of living is higher, the job compensation and the opportunities available here are really unmatched. In terms of staying here long-term, I'm That's that's a that's an existential question. Uh I think in terms of long-term living, I plan to move back to the Los Angeles area. I could definitely see myself in the position of starting a company in the next couple of years or decades, but no plans for that currently. My biggest piece of advice is something that's fairly widely shared among the folks in the FIRE community, and it's build a life you want and then save for it.
There may be a situation where you can't have everything all at once now, and you just kind of have to pick and choose whether or not you want to live in a favorable location, or you decide to spend more on say travel and other experiences, or maybe on some of the other material goods that you're looking at. Oh man. I'm going to get roasted by so many people. It's going to be the people who are going to comment on my forum, the people who are going to comment on the furry thing, the people that are going to comment on my apartment.
