Is your community located in a city where residents can be financially comfortable?
New research by GOBankingRates.com defined comfortable living as the ability for someone to spend 50% of his or her income on necessities and 30% on discretionary expenses, and then to save 20% for the future.
Five cities where people “easily” can afford to live comfortably, according to the website:
- Virginia Beach, VA: $16,072 surplus income
- Bakersfield, CA: $13,416 surplus income
- Colorado Springs, CO: $9,716 surplus income
- Arlington, TX: $6,151 surplus income
- Mesa, AZ: $5,605 surplus income
Five cities where people struggle to live comfortably, according to the website:
- Miami: $46,199 deficit income
- San Francisco: $41,192 deficit income
- New York: $34,709 deficit income
- Boston: $29,937 deficit income
- Los Angeles: $24,689 deficit income
Tucson, AZ, has the smallest income needed by residents to live comfortably ― less than $40,000 — whereas residents of San Francisco need annual income of about $120,000 to live comfortably.
Other recent research by GOBankingRates.com ranked the 100 largest U.S. cities by population from best to worst on what it deemed to be seven essential factors affecting people’s ability to save money for the future: sales tax, median household income, average reported gas prices, grocery costs, median home list price, median rent price and unemployment rate.
Most of the best cities for saving money were located in the South and West, including cities in Arizona, Texas and Oklahoma, whereas 13 out of the 15 worst cities for saving money were located in California.
The five best cities for saving money, according to GOBankingRates.com, are Gilbert, AZ; Plano, TX; Lubbock, TX; Kansas City, MO; and Chandler, AZ. The five worst cities? San Francisco; Los Angeles; Oakland, CA; Irvine, CA; and Anaheim, CA.
The site used data from the U.S. Census Bureau, the Tax Foundation, Zillow, the U.S. Census Bureau, QuickFacts, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, GasBuddy and Numbeo to compile the list.
