Living comfortably in Boston requires a $125,000 salary, study finds
BOSTON - How much money do you need to make in order to live comfortably in Boston? A new study says it's more than all but a few other major cities in the United States.
The report from SmartAsset looked at 99 of America's largest cities. In Boston, a single adult needs to make $60.08 an hour, or $124,966 a year to "live in sustainable comfort." For two working adults with two children, the total required salary is $319,738.
Boston is one of only six cities where families need to make over $300,000 to comfortably raise kids. The others are San Francisco; San Jose; Arlington, Virginia; New York and Oakland.
On the flip side, Houston was the city with the lowest salary needed to live comfortably at just over $75,000 for a single adult.
What does living comfortably mean?
SmartAsset said it came up with the salary numbers by following a "50/30/20" budget. That method allocates 50% of pre-tax take-home pay for needs like housing, health insurance, transportation and groceries, 30% for wants like vacation and dining out, and 20% set aside for savings and paying debt.
"While cost of living premiums and inflation metrics capture the price increases in goods and services, they do not necessarily account for all the additional costs needed to live comfortably - such as a buffer from the stress of living paycheck to paycheck," SmartAsset writes.
The report uses data from the MIT Living Wage Calculator to come up with its salary requirements.
The cost of living in Boston
Last year, a SmartAsset report looking at a wider area than just the city said a single person needed make $78,752 after taxes to live in the Boston-Cambridge-Newton metro region. Another study from the website in 2023 said a $100,000 salary in Boston only feels like bringing home $46,000 a year.
Earlier this month, a survey from the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce Foundation said Boston is so expensive that an "alarming" number of young adults plan to leave. It found that 25% of people between the ages of 25 and 30 in the area intend to move somewhere else in the next five years, citing the high costs of renting and home ownership.
