Post tax, that's ~5 k$/mo, which is (by choice) roughly my monthly spending as a single/no kids 28-year-old in NYC. It's not a bad lifestyle at all. I personally would feel uncomfortable spending that much if I wasn't also able to save on top of it, but if you disregard that, it's 100% doable
Yeah, in general I find people to be excessive with their spending. $5k a month sounds like an insane waste to me. I'm pretty thrifty. I feel like tech workers are living in a different world than me.
My direct deposit income is something like $2400 every two weeks. That's after my IRA investments, monthly health insurance cost, metro card cost through my job, etc. I work at Columbia University, by the way.
I live in a rent stabilized 1br apartment in west Harlem: $1500/mo rent. After that I have no major expenses other than food, and I shop at local grocery stores and cook at home a lot. I make my own bread, because I like to, not because I have to. I always feel like I have more than enough money. I put around $800 a month into savings and investments.
I'm even able to travel frequently to Europe, Latin America, and to see my parents in Seattle. I agree with Bradley Kuhn on this one: in general, tech workers are wayyy overpaid.
You are being paid well under market by a very wide margin. Check out https://www.levels.fyi/ for supporting data. It's possible you believe that tech workers are overpaid rather than believing you are underpaid because of psychological factors, such as the cognitive dissonance of having to face the unfortunate reality that you've been leaving money on the table for at least 7 years, and you've probably left over half a million dollars on the table due to your inability to properly understand and measure market compensation. That's unfortunate, but it probably makes sense for you to face that if you don't want to miss out on another few million over the course of your career due to a fear of revising your thinking and admitting you were wrong.
You have made a choice to not work at companies that make money off of proprietary software, then you exclude the vast majority of the market of commercial software engineering, but that also means you have no idea of or don't care market rates are. So, you really shouldn't comment on that unless you figure that out, and it's a little disingenuous to do so this way.
I realize a university is not going to pay in-line with a FAANG company, but I am surprised somewhere like Columbia which is definitely not hurting for money doesn't pay at least a little bit more than this, like 110-130.
