Adults making under $80K can't afford to live comfortably in any state: report

Brendan Rascius, The Charlotte Observer on Jun 5, 2025

By clicking submit, I authorize Arcamax and its affiliates to: (1) use, sell, and share my information for marketing purposes, including cross-context behavioral advertising, as described in our Privacy Policy , (2) add to information that I provide with other information like interests inferred from web page views, or data lawfully obtained from data brokers, such as past purchase or location data, or publicly available data, (3) contact me or enable others to contact me by email or other means with offers for different types of goods and services, and (4) retain my information while I am engaging with marketing messages that I receive and for a reasonable amount of time thereafter. I understand I can opt out at any time through an email that I receive, or by clicking here

A single adult earning less than $80,000 per year cannot afford to live comfortably in a single U.S. state, a new report found.

The report, released by SmartAsset on June 4, also revealed that families of four must earn more than $200,000 to live comfortably in nearly every state.

To reach these conclusions, SmartAsset — a personal finance site — used data from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Living Wage Calculator to quantify the baseline costs of living for single adults and families with two adults and two children.

Factoring into these costs are housing, transportation, taxes and other items.

Using these baseline costs, the site then applied the 50/30/20 budgeting rule — under which 50% of income goes toward necessities, 30% goes toward discretionary spending and 20% goes toward savings, debt or investments.

Single adults

The report found that West Virginia is the most affordable state for single adults, with a salary of $80,829 being enough to live comfortably.

In 18 other states, adults earning between $80,000 and $90,000 would be able to afford a reasonable and sustainable lifestyle. Among them were Arkansas, Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan and New Mexico.

The remaining 31 states require salaries above $90,000, and 15 of these — most of which are located on the coasts — require salaries exceeding $100,000.

The most expensive state was Hawaii, where a single adult would require an income of $124,467 to live comfortably. This was followed by Massachusetts ($120,141), California ($119,475) and New York ($114,691).

Overall, the report also found that an individual in any state needs to earn roughly $5,844 more this year than last year in order to have a comfortable budget.

Families of four

For a family of four with two working adults, the most affordable state to live in is Mississippi, the report found. Here, an income of $186,618 is required to live comfortably.

This figure fell below $200,000 in just six other states: Kentucky ($192,941), Arkansas ($193,773), Alabama ($194,522), West Virginia ($195,354), South Dakota ($197,933) and Louisiana ($199,597).

Meanwhile, the most expensive state for a family of four was Massachusetts, where an income of $313,747 was required to live comfortably. This was followed by Hawaii ($294,362), Connecticut ($290,368) and California ($287,456).

Overall, a family of four in any of the 50 states needs to bring in about $9,360 more than the previous year in order to have a comfortable budget.

_____