Yes, this is what I’m thinking.
He’s currently living in Indianapolis on $50k/year. Yes, he won’t starve in the street in Berkeley on $50-$68k, but his standard of living is going to go way down. If it was just him, perhaps the positives of the job and the area would outweigh that, but with a wife and kids you can’t just handwave that stuff away.
Also, average statistics can often obscure the real picture: many people in Berkeley and the surrounding area are longtime residents in rent-controlled apartments. They can afford to live on $60k per year quite easily. They’re also never going to move. The market for people moving to the area is quite a bit different. For example, I have a relative who works in San Francisco. He and his wife both have good jobs, I’d guess they each make more than the top of the salary range given by the OP’s potential job. About a year ago they tried to buy a house within commuting distance of the city. They put in over 50 offers on over 50 different houses, mostly in East Bay. They didn’t get a single one. (They’ve since given up on buying for the time being and are just staying put in their apartment.) As the market has recovered, cash investors have been snapping up everything in the starter home price range. So even if you were willing to pay what a house costs out here, you may not be able to actually buy one. Financing can’t really compete with cash: it’s so much faster and easier for the seller.
This is true. If you were able to work out the money side of things, you’d love living out here. It’s way better than Indy.
Then there are taxes. California loves them. Here’s the state income tax schedule. It looks a bit higher than what you’d be paying in, Indiana, right? No idea if any of the cities you would be looking at would charge any income tax too, or any of their respective counties. Sales tax varies in CA; in Berkeley, it’s 9%. Property tax is going to be folded into your rent. How much is it to register your car in IN? Do you have to get it smog checked? CA is probably going to be a bit of a shocker to you on both fronts.
But parts of it are indeed some of the most beautiful scenery in the country.
Which may or may not be good, depending on how old the rental property is. In California there is a low limit on how much property taxes can go up if you keep your house, and it does not get affected by the value of the property. In 17 years our house has doubled in value and our taxes are only a little higher. One neighbor who has been here forever pays almost nothing, while the guy next door who just moved in pays a ton. It is very irrational. And it is something to consider if you are thinking of buying, since you get hit with the tax amount on the new value.
I have a Prius so I don’t have to do smogging. 
On the plus side, CA only has smog checks - many other states have yearly inspections. In NJ they were free if you went to a state office and waited in line for an hour. And if you failed, then it cost.
As for the “the” jokes, in SoCal they call it the 101, but here in civilization we just call the road 101.
There’s a also a 1% SDI tax with a cap.
It’s been 7+ years since I did a CA Smog, but isn’t it required every two years instead of one? Convenient but still overpriced.
In NorCal, I-5 is that freeway you can usually avoid. In SoCal, it’s “THE Southern California State Parking Lot.”
Another group who does that: THE Ohio State University. Don’t you date call it Ohio State, or their nut mascot will kick you in the nuts.
It is a rare community college position that is filled by someone hundreds or thousands of miles away. They don’t pay for travel expenses because it is in Berkeley (or Madison or Ithaca or Chapel Hill or Eugene) and there are hundreds of qualified people already living there. Sounds like you are qualified so they’ll be happy to interview you but you don’t have a lot leverage. Likely the position will be filled at the lower end of the pay grade.
If it was just you, it would be doable and great but it is a really expensive place for a one-income family
Coming back to this late, but ah, now that I see what the position is it all makes sense, including the “semi-finalist” wording and why they don’t pay for travel. Please disregard my other post!
But yeah, I think at the very least that if you interviewed there you would want to know what your odds were. And like others have said, most of the teachers I know of at our California city college are local, or near-enough local that they wouldn’t really have had interview expenses. (I have a skewed sample, because I’m local, of course. But I’ve never met anyone who moved here to teach at the CC, while I know several who moved here to teach at the local university.)
Like Dewey Finn says, maybe it’s possible to get two teaching jobs and live off of that. One of my friends from high school has a deal like this (social science) and she really loves her life. (She lives in a lower-cost neighborhood than Berkeley, though, and doesn’t have a spouse or kids.)
I would say if you already have 4 kids, give up on moving to Berkeley. School quality is highly variable in the Bay Area. Any neighborhood in a decent school district is going to be insanely priced and sending 4 kids to private school is going to be horrendously expensive. If you’re already happy with the schools your kids are going to, stick with Indianapolis.
Yep, I think I’m going to have to turn down the interview.
That is just nuts.
I really hope some of the more local institutions come a-callin’ as well. If this turns out to be the only place that wanted an interview, I will always wonder if I made a horrible mistake.
Or figure out a way to get my wife employed over there as well. Two incomes would work much better.
Well, you could always just absorb the cost of the trip for that peace of mind.
Only worth it I think if Frylock can somehow work out a reasonable childcare scenario and convince his wife to get a local job as well ( and have a very good idea that she can get one ). Otherwise it might be even be more agonizing to come out all that way, get offered the job and then have to turn it down anyway.
I’m a big cheerleader for the East Bay, but as noted even with a long commute supporting a family of six on one normal income in a fashion anyway comparable to most of the Midwest is going to be tough. And school districts do become an issue - my brother and his wife mortgaged themselves to the hilt to get out of El Cerrito and into the poorest house on the block in Piedmont for just that reason. And they have a very good combined income.
A recent and pretty relevant article: http://www.sfgate.com/realestate/article/Rents-soaring-across-region-4924282.php
Read this article, Frylock. I suspect it will make you feel better about taking a pass on the interview, should you decide to.
While childcare is likely to consume most of any additional income, it’s worth noting that staying home also has another cost-- the cost of future wages from the work experience she is not building. Being a few steps behind can add up exponentially over a lifetime of earnings. Different families have different needs and only you know what is right for your family, so that’s just something to think about in the decision making process.
You don’t say. 
Yeesh, that post came off pretty bad, huh? i’m dense enough that I actually had to have that pointed out to me (thanks, Lean In!) when I was looking at some similar decisions.
If you are teaching, would you be able to time your classes so that you only go in a few times a week? Maybe that could support a longer commute.
As a full time faculty member, that’s highly discouraged.
That is what we’ve discovered. That while we could find reasonable (for relative values of reasonable) real estate in the Bay, we wouldn’t want to send our kids to those schools. To put our kids into decent schools, we’d have to get a HUGE signing bonus and stock grants. Add in our families still being in the Midwest, which means airfare to go visit, and it was a huge paycut to take a job in the Bay.
Not nuts, just good cost benefit analysis. And you did make the right decision. Don’t get me wrong, I’d move back to Berkeley in a heartbeat if the situation was right which mainly means sorting out affordable housing in a reasonable school district that is commutable. Given your situation you can pick 1 out 3.
Yes, two incomes go farther than one, but lots of that income gets eaten up by associated costs (extra commuting costs, childcare, food, etc) and comes with added stress. Still could make sense depending on all who is involved.
But, this is sounding less like a pull to Berkeley and more of a push out of Indy since you are applying wide far. So, think about why the push? (also remember you are probably “findable” between your SDMB profile and other stuff). Why this year? Would the place in Berkeley really be better than where ever you are at now? The grass is always greener…50K in Indy at a community college sounds like a fairly solid/tenured gig.
If the push is income, think about how you might earn more. If it is bad colleagues/admins think about how a fix might be.