Bay Area folks need 2 paychecks to be able to afford a house

not everyone has stock options, and not every stock options make big money. I have friends their stock options worth 0 now, but they owed IRS big money due to the AMT tax (Alternative Minimum Tax) when the options were granted.

A friend donated her stock grant to a charity that built schools in remote mountain areas of China (and this friend is a Taiwanese, no less!) - due to lots of legal procedures, her donation did not make it for the deadline of cut off for that year. Later, the stock fell to like $1ish (SINA - your big internet provider in China), but she owed IRS $90K in AMT Tax!