The Cost of Living a Decent Life in America is 96,000 Annually
The Cost of Living a Decent Life in America is 96,000 Annually
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The crux of this issue, why everyone has something to say about it: is because the word 'comfortably' seems open to interpretation. But it's defined in a way that makes sense here.
For the purposes of the referenced study https://smartasset.com/data-studies/salary-needed-live-comfortably-2024, they used the MIT Living Wage Calculator https://livingwage.mit.edu/ and extrapolated out total compensation needed to maintain the 50/30/20 rule, where 50% of your total income goes to necessities, 30% to entertainment and wants, and 20% to investments or debt payments.
So it's really not up for debate unless you'd like to argue against the figures presented in the MIT Living Wage calculator or the 50/30/20 'rule'.
Agree they list the rule - but like a mean vs median thing, are crazy cities like NYC or LA skewing the average?
We make about half the bottom-right picture, but I AM at about the 50/30/20 balance. Yes, worthless anecdote, but still makes $240k seem a tad high for a median.
I'll have to take a look at my spending and see where my splits really are. To the spreadsheet!
It does seem to feature estimates regarding the average rather than median, so you're right. Higher CoL areas would drive that way up.
Plus, upon further review, I realized the study only involved the top 100 most populated cities. That would for sure skew the number upward as well.
im like at least 3% sure the subtext is 503020 does not reflect the reality of if you can manage 100, closer to the actual median around 45k, then ==> follows some version of that is enough.,,.
It is worth mentioning that everything discussed so far was in terms of averages, not medians. The average salary is more like 58k.