You can buy a cheap electric heater if you want, but sometimes people think gas is a nice thing to have... especially for a water heater. You\'ll also need to pay for garbage, but nowadays that\'s usually included with your water bill. It all depends. Here in california, just dont live in the bay area. Live outside of it and commute here instead. To put things in perspective, a one story 2 bedroom 1 bathroom decent sized living room and a fair size kitchen, house in San Francisco goes for about 400,000, but you can get that same thing, but 5 bedrooms, 2.5 baths, living room, big ass kitchen spread out over 2 floors with a 2 car garage and back yard, etc etc, for like 300,000 in Sacramento (2 hours away from SF)... it really all depends. Choose wisely is all I\'m going to say.
I\'d recommend that you go with a small super cheap apartment first (make sure you have great credit) and work at a job for about 6 months and work your ass off and show them that you really are a great worker (job security = best thing for you nowadays) and then go ahead and go for that house.