Here’s How Much Income You Need to Live “Comfortably” In Each of the 50 Most Populous U.S. Cities

It’s no secret that city living tends to be more expensive than rural life, but there’s also quite a bit of fluctuation between the cities themselves. With that in mind, GoBankingRates.com sought to find out how much annual income it took to live “comfortably” in each of the 50 most populous cities in America. It’s hard to develop an exact methodology in cases like these, but they came up with an interesting system using the 50-30-20 rule: 50 percent of money goes to necessities like food and rent, 30 percent goes to discretionary items, and 20 percent is savings. From the study:
“GOBankingRates conducted a cost-of-living comparison of the 75 most populous U.S. cities, surveying dollar amounts of living expenses including rent, groceries, utilities, transportation and healthcare. This total, which accounts for necessities, was then doubled to find how much money a single person needs to earn in that city to follow a 50-30-20 budget. This study also compares the total amount of income needed to the actual median household income in each city to see if differences in cost of living are matched by differences in pay.”
Based on this research, some of their results are predictable—San Francisco, for instance, is the most expensive, while New York City is third—while others are surprising (Tucson is cheapest?). Here are the “income needed to live comfortably” results for a few noteworthy cities:
San Francisco: $119,570
San Jose: $89,734
New York: $87,446
Boston: $84,422
Washington, D.C.: $83,104
Los Angeles: $74,371
New Orleans: $60,782
Atlanta: $60,285
Milwaukee: $43,281
Detroit: $42,772
Tucson: $39,966