A $306K Salary in SF: What's Actually Useful Here

My neighbor's kid — he's 26, works in tech, doesn't own a single piece of furniture that wasn't deliberate — told me recently that he tracks his net worth to the dollar every month. I asked him what the number was. He told me. I told him about the year I nearly lost the bookstore because a supplier went to net 60 without warning me and I didn't catch it until I was already behind. He looked at me like I'd described something from the Dust Bowl.

We are, financially speaking, from different planets.

I thought about that conversation a lot while watching Raymond Zeng walk Business Insider's cameras through his Bay Area apartment — a spare, purposeful space that his friends have apparently described as "spartan." Zeng is a software engineer at Meta earning $306,500 a year, and he has a plan to retire by 30. He's not shy about the details, which is more than most people earning a fraction of that can say about their own finances. He lays out his rent ($2,600 a month, chosen specifically because comparable apartments near his office run $3,500 to $3,700), his grocery spending ($300 a month), his transportation costs (most months: zero, with occasional ride-share bringing it to around $30), and his health insurance premium, which he reports at roughly $17 a month — an unusually low figure that reflects Meta's heavily subsidized plans but which comes only from his own account, so take it as a data point, not a benchmark.

The apartment itself: no couch, no TV, a filing cabinet doing duty as a nightstand. He wrapped dumplings from scratch one day when he was, in his words, "really bored." He installed a $400 bidet, which he considers one of the better quality-of-life investments he's made. His employer provides both breakfast and lunch, so dinner is the only meal he's fully responsible for — and he meal preps proteins and vegetables through the week.

Here's the detail that got me: his electricity bill went up about $20 to $30 a month when he moved from Dallas to the Bay Area, and he noticed. He mentioned it, unprompted, while walking through his utility costs. The man is bringing home more money in a month than a lot of small business owners I know clear in a quarter, and he's tracking a $25 bump in his electric bill. I don't say that to mock him. I say it because that habit — the actual noticing, the refusal to let any number disappear into the background — is the most transferable thing in this entire video, regardless of what you earn.

Zeng is also car-free by choice, which he's maintained through two cities now, including Dallas, which is not exactly known for its walkability. He picked his current apartment specifically for its proximity to a BART station, grocery stores, and cafes. He says he signed the lease sight unseen — his own account — after doing his own research rather than relying on the relocation expert Meta offered him. Whether that was wise or lucky, it seems to have worked out.

His hobbies run to travel, credit card churning, and the furry community — the last of which he addresses directly and without apology, noting that it's a "historically marginalized community" and that he's "one of the stupid people that decided to go public with this." He spends about $400 to $500 a month across hobbies, is saving toward a custom fursuit that will likely cost between $4,000 and $7,000, and pays roughly $1,000 a year in annual credit card fees that he offsets with points — primarily through signup bonuses rather than everyday spend. He recently brought his father and sister to Singapore and Malaysia, largely on points.

On the investing side: Zeng says he contributes to his 401(k) up to what he describes as the maximum, citing figures of $24,500 in employee contributions and a total up to $72,000 including after-tax contributions. A note here — the 2025 IRS employee elective deferral limit is $23,500, not $24,500, and the total annual additions limit under IRS Section 415 for 2025 is $70,000, not $72,000. The figures Zeng cites in the video don't match current IRS limits, so treat his specific numbers as approximate. The strategy he's describing — maxing out the standard 401(k), then making after-tax contributions to access the higher total limit through what's known as a mega backdoor Roth — is a real and legal approach available primarily to people whose employers support it. Not everyone's plan does. He also maxes out a Roth IRA and HSA annually, with any remaining money going into a brokerage account. In any given month, he says he saves between $5,000 and $20,000, depending on vesting and bonuses.

He wants $1.6 million saved by age 30 and projects somewhere north of $2 million by that point. By 40, his spreadsheet shows north of $7 million. He tracks it all in a custom-built spreadsheet he designed himself, copying a base template each month and adjusting categories as needed. "I prefer it this way," he says. "It's more of a DIY approach."

Now. Here's where I have to be straight with you, because my readers deserve that.

I've spent thirty years watching people run small businesses in this country. I know what it looks like to track expenses carefully when margins are thin. I know what it looks like to work fifty hours a week and still not be sure you'll make payroll. The people I write for didn't have employer-subsidized lunches or company shuttles. Many of them ARE the employer — the person responsible for everyone else's paycheck before their own. When Zeng says "build the life you want and then save for it," that's genuinely good advice and also advice that lands very differently when your income is $306,500 than when it's $47,000 and you're also carrying a small business loan.

I don't think Zeng is oblivious to this. He says, directly: "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." He doesn't pretend his situation is average. He also credits his mother for his financial fluency — she got him interested in credit cards and churning in the first place. That's worth naming, because a lot of financial independence stories quietly rest on foundations of early education, family stability, or access that aren't universally available.

His comparison of personal finance to 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" — is the best thing he says in the whole video, and I'd bet it's the least quoted. It's true at every income level. The concepts aren't the hard part. The hard part is doing them when you're exhausted and underpaid and the landlord just raised rent and your supplier just changed terms on you.

What Zeng is actually demonstrating — stripped of the $306,500 salary and the Meta shuttle and the subsidized lunch — is that intentionality about spending is a skill, not an income level. He chose his apartment based on a list of priorities he built himself. He chose to go without a car in cities where most people don't. He tracks the $25 increase in his electric bill. He built his own spreadsheet because the templates didn't fit how he thinks. These are habits of attention, and they cost nothing to develop.

The FIRE movement he's part of has, as he notes, evolved considerably from its original frugality-at-all-costs days. He calls himself someone who can "have their cake and eat it too" — live well and save aggressively. Whether retiring at 30 is actually what he'll want at 30 is a question he seems genuinely open about. He expects he'll still do some work, some contracting, "if I decide that it's interesting to me." After twelve years of running a bookstore, I can tell you that the work you choose for yourself feels nothing like the work you do because you have to — and that distinction is worth more than most people give it credit for.

But you have to be able to afford the choice. And that part, Zeng can't package and redistribute.

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Dorothy "Dot" Williams covers small business and Main Street economics for Buzzrag.