How much money do you need to live comfortably in Los Angeles? (2024)

FAQs

How much money do you need to live comfortably in Los Angeles? ›

As a rule of thumb, a good salary in Los Angeles is between $100k and $200k gross per year. Based on the cost of living in Los Angeles, this should come down to a minimum of $76,710 yearly after taxes.

Living on 50k in LA is absolutely possible, but it's not for the faint of heart (or those with a shoe collection too big to share with pigeons).

A $200,000 a year salary is downright middle class if you're living in a big city like San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, New York, Boston, Washington D.C., or San Diego.

If you are a single person in Los Angeles making around $70,000 a year, you are still considered low-income, according to a new statewide study. The California Department of Housing and Community Development released the report in June and found that income limits have increased in most counties across California.

The data used in the study analyzed the cost of living in each city as of 2022. For California cities like Los Angeles, Berkeley and San Diego, a single person must make more than $76,000 to “live comfortably,” the data shows.

You also need an annual household salary of at least $50,000 to be considered middle class in 17 other states, including California, New York, Oregon, Washington, Utah and Hawaii. In California, the difference is $122,000, from a salary of $61,028 on the lower end to $183,102 on the upper end.

When analyzing LA, the study said that the annual take-home pay from $100,000 after taxes is $68,050, but the cost of living is 52.5% higher than the national average. "To calculate the city's adjusted annual take-home pay, we divided the city's average after-tax income by 1.525.

$30 an hour is how much a year? If you make $30 an hour, your yearly salary would be $62,400.

Overall, SmartAsset found that to live comfortably in any major city, you need to make about $96,500 annually, up immensely from the nearly $68,500 it estimated last year. A family of four would need to make much more at $235,000 to avoid living paycheck to paycheck. You can view SmartAsset's full list here.

In California, 17.1% of households earn incomes of $100,000 to $149,999, with 15.3% earning $50,000 to $74,999 and 13.3% earning $200,000 or more. Among married-couple family households, more than a fifth (20.8%) report household incomes of $100,000 to $149,999, with another fifth (20.1%) earning $200,000 or more.

How does anyone afford a home in LA? ›

According to the Redfin study, the income needed to buy a median-priced home in L.A. has soared by 40.7% in one year. In 2021, anyone looking to buy a home in the city of Angels needed to make $157,000 a year. However, now, that same person would need to make $64,000 more, or $221,000, to buy a median-priced home.

Two working adults with two children must earn $138,361 per year, or $33.26 per hour each. In Los Angeles County, the living wage for two working adults with two kids is $138,000 per year, or $33.24 per hour for each adult. For a single adult with no children, the Living Wage is $26.63 per hour, or $55,300 per year.

If you make $28 an hour, your yearly salary would be $58,240.

If you make $40 an hour, your yearly salary would be $83,200.

While ZipRecruiter is seeing salaries as high as $73,525 and as low as $66,123, the majority of $75000 salaries currently range between $68,600 (25th percentile) to $71,600 (75th percentile) with top earners (90th percentile) making $72,537 annually in California.

While ZipRecruiter is seeing salaries as high as $344,198 and as low as $31,825, the majority of 250K salaries currently range between $196,825 (25th percentile) to $244,807 (75th percentile) with top earners (90th percentile) making $285,445 annually in California.

Look, surviving on 60k in LA is absolutely doable. It won't be fancy, but it'll be an adventure. You might be eating ramen noodles for dinner most nights, but you'll be slurping them down with a view of the Pacific Ocean. Your bank account might be perpetually on life support, but your social life will be thriving.

The short answer is no! $130,000 would be a fantastic salary anywhere else but LA or California in general.