HOUSTON — With the cost of just about everything going up these last couple of years, a lot of people are feeling the pinch.
According to ziprecruiter.com, the average annual salary was $60,000 in 2022 and those paychecks just don't stretch as far as they used to. While many families struggle to pay the bills, dreams of getting rich seem out of reach.
In fact, you'd need more than four times that $60,000 salary to be considered rich in Houston, according to a study by Madison Trust Company.
They came up with the annual pay needed to get rich in the 50 largest US cities based on what the top 20% of residents earn. Housing markets, food costs, taxes and transportation expenses can all play a part in how much you need to make in each city.
Houston is around the middle of the pack and ranked No. 22 with the magic number of $260,958.
That's a little cheaper than Dallas at No. 19 with a salary of $265,858. Austin is the only Texas city ranked in the top 10 with a get-rich salary of $288,453. The only other Texas city on the list is San Antonio at No. 46 with a salary of $220,114.
The city at the top of the list is San Jose, California where you'd need to make more than $500,000 a year to be rich.
Here's how the top 25 cities stacked up.
- San Jose: $500,341
- San Francisco: $442,934
- Washington, D.C.: 353,350
- Boston: $353,292
- Seattle: $346,862
- New York: $340,209
- San Diego: $303,546
- Los Angeles: $302,890
- Denver: $292,305
- Austin: $288,453
- Baltimore: $286,736
- Chicago: $279,943
- Philadelphia: $279,362
- Minneapolis: $275,185
- Raleigh, NC: $273,011
- Sacramento: $271,415
- Atlanta: $267,747
- Hartford, CT: $267,012
- Dallas: $265,858
- Portland: $265,594
- Nashville: $261,974
- Houston: $260,958
- Miami: $258,049
- Charlotte, NC: $253,175
- Phoenix: $252,783
Here's the full list.
"The cost of living varies greatly across the country, and what is considered rich in one city may leave someone else barely scraping by in another," the study said.
