Absolutely. Unfortunately, I live in a state where housing costs tend to be unusually high, with salary not that much higher than average to compensate (Maryland).
I just got out of DC myself - the salary in the region definitely does not match up to the housing costs. You can get a little smaller apartment in Silicon Valley for ~$2k and make significantly more money out west, which was a powerful incentive to move out of DC for me.
Saving is especially a challenge for me since I have an extraordinary amount of debt from a bad family situation financially - it's a miracle I landed in such a high powered career as software engineering. I have more debt than most in the profession I believe (~$200k, no house or car), which is just a bad luck of the draw. However, for me this underscores how much harder I have to work to succeed even more so that I have more of a fighting chance against my financial odds.
