Not really in VHCOL areas.
You can get by on less, if you are planning your life around your job, for sure.
But for example if your office is Midtown Manhattan, the equivalent lifestyle to own a home for your family in walkable Manhattan vs long subway commute Brooklyn vs longer commuter rail suburbs vs extreme commute exurbs is staggering.
You can buy an entire exurban home for the incremental cost to upgrade from Manhattan 2bed/1.5bath to 3bed/2.5 bath.
My parents & in-laws each have 3bed/2.5 bath homes outside of Manhattan commute range, but within tolerably unpleasant driving commute to Stamford/Greenwich. That is - they are in commuter range of where commuters live / satellite office are located.
The combined values of those 2 homes might buy a single family sized apartment in Stamford, an ok 1 bedroom apartment in yuppie Brooklyn, or a kind of dumpy studio in Manhattan.
A lot of these answers seem to boil down to "I would simply have more money".
But for example if your office is Midtown Manhattan, the equivalent lifestyle to own a home for your family in walkable Manhattan vs long subway commute Brooklyn vs longer commuter rail suburbs vs extreme commute exurbs is staggering.
You can buy an entire exurban home for the incremental cost to upgrade from Manhattan 2bed/1.5bath to 3bed/2.5 bath.
My parents & in-laws each have 3bed/2.5 bath homes outside of Manhattan commute range, but within tolerably unpleasant driving commute to Stamford/Greenwich. That is - they are in commuter range of where commuters live / satellite office are located.
The combined values of those 2 homes might buy a single family sized apartment in Stamford, an ok 1 bedroom apartment in yuppie Brooklyn, or a kind of dumpy studio in Manhattan.
A lot of these answers seem to boil down to "I would simply have more money".