You don't. However, having a house, a family, and a retirement fund was a realistic goal in generations past, and it's not really a 'middle class' option anymore.
It's semi-achievable in San Francisco. It takes two incomes, and you have to make sacrifices.
In SF, applications developers, dental hygienists, and registered nurses all earn, on average, around 100k a year. Two of them together would together earn about $220k a year in SF. That's workable.
That's depressing. Sure, it might be workable too. But depressing. That's a little over a million dollars in FIVE YEARS. Ok ok, one or two more for final take-home pay.
And that's still merely "workable" rather than "Oh boy we've got it made!"
If the goal is "Buy and own a house", pulling in $220/year pre-tax probably isn't enough to get the job done. Unless you're living extremely scarcely in the meantime.
