Salary Needed to Live Comfortably in the 25 Largest Metro Areas – 2023 Edition

It’s hard to feel financially stable when the cost of living continues to take a bigger bite out of your budget.

While salaries increased 5.1% between December 2021 and December 2022, wage growth couldn’t keep up with inflation, which averaged 8% in 2022.

Ultimately, inflation has affected everything from the cost of housing to the price of eggs, making it increasingly difficult to live comfortably in America’s largest cities. With this in mind, SmartAsset set out to uncover the after-tax income now needed to live comfortably in the nation’s 25 largest metropolitan areas.

To determine how much money is needed to live comfortably in the largest metro areas, we used the 50/30/20 rule to define a comfortable lifestyle. This rule is a budgeting strategy that allocates 50% of after-tax income to basic living expenses (needs), 30% to discretionary spending (wants) and 20% for savings or debt payments.
“A budget is the bedrock of many people’s financial plans. And it’s especially essential to understand and track your spending when the cost of everyday items is rising,” says Susannah Snider, a certified financial planner and SmartAsset’s managing editor of financial education.

“Being able to stick to a 50/30/20 budget means you have enough to fund short- and long-term goals while paying for essential living expenses.”
Data and MethodologySmartAsset used the most recent MIT Living Wage Calculator data to gather the basic cost of living for an individual with no children in each metro area. The data covers the cost of living in each city as of 2022. The online tool calculates the cost of living by adding the average cost of housing, food, transportation, medical care and other expenses within each metro area.

We assumed the MIT cost of living figure for each metro area would cover needs (i.e. 50% of one’s budget) and then calculated the total take-home pay that enables individuals to spend an additional 30% on wants and 20% on savings or debt payments.

This is SmartAsset’s second study on how much money is needed to live comfortably in the 25 largest metro areas. You can read the 2022 edition here.
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Key Findings

• St. Louis is the most affordable, again. The St. Louis metro area is the most affordable place for the second consecutive year, requiring $57,446 after taxes to live comfortably. The San Francisco Bay Area, on the other hand, once again requires the highest take-home pay – over $84,000 – to maintain a comfortable lifestyle.
• Income demands in this Southern California metro area rose nearly 30%. None of the 25 places in our study had a more acute one-year increase in the after-tax income needed to live comfortably than Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario. A year ago, $52,686 was required for a comfortable lifestyle. That number has since shot up 27.28% to $67,060 in 2023.
• On average, you need $68,499 after taxes to live comfortably. The average after-tax income needed for a comfortable lifestyle across the 25 metro areas in our study increased roughly 20% from a year ago when it was just $57,013.

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