How much do you need to be ‘comfortable’ in Dallas? More than $100K a year, one study says

Do you earn enough to live comfortably in the Metroplex? Not if you’re not making six figures, according to a report published Tuesday — even if you don’t have children to support.

The insight came as part of an analysis from Upgraded Points, a travel and financial advice company, that calculated comfortable living wages across American metro areas based on data from the Economic Policy Institute and U.S. Census Bureau.

Researchers determined what was “comfortable” based on the old 50/30/20 rule for budgeting, which recommends that 50% of a household’s spending should go toward necessities, like rent, groceries and health care costs; 30% should go toward “wants,” such as vacations or restaurant meals; and 20% should go toward savings.

In the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area, the Upgraded Points team determined that a single adult with no kids needs to earn just over $107,000 annually. Two adults without kids need a combined salary of $138,000, while two adults with one child need $184,000. A family of five needs $265,000.

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Yet most area residents earn nowhere near those thresholds: The region’s median personal income, according to the same report, is around $51,000, and the median family income is just under $114,000.

The data places DFW as 26th most expensive among 53 large metro areas, between Charlotte and Virginia Beach.

The top of the list, predictably, was dominated by the West Coast, with four California metros, Seattle and Portland all falling in the top 10. In greater San Jose, the most expensive, a single person with no children needs to earn $163,000, while two adults with three children would need a whopping combined income of $479,000. In Cleveland, which came in as the cheapest among large metro areas, a childless single adult needs $87,000 — still nearly $40,000 more than the area’s median income.

D-FW, where costs fall right around the national average, also ranked second most expensive among large Texas metros: Austin, where the study found a single adult needs $115,000, came in at 17th; Houston, where the same figure was $94,000, ranked 42nd; and San Antonio, at $93,000, was close behind at 44th.

The results, which show wide chasms between what Americans would need to live comfortably and how much most people are actually earning, reiterate the omnipresent theme of inequality, where those in upper tax brackets have enjoyed vast gains from the stock market and other asset appreciation while many Americans continue to struggle from rising costs and stagnant wages.

Upgraded Points also highlighted a growing sense of unease from the increasing dominance of AI.

“American families are facing a convergence of economic pressures that are redefining what it means to live comfortably,” the company said of the findings.

“After years of elevated inflation, the cost of essentials — from housing and groceries to transportation and health care — remains persistently high. At the same time, the rapid adoption of artificial intelligence in the workplace is introducing new uncertainty in traditionally stable white-collar industries, adding to financial strain for many middle- and upper-middle-income earners.”

The divergence between haves and have-nots is also evident in North Texas, where a long-running narrative of booming economic and population growth is simultaneously colliding with concerns about geographic and racial inequality. In recent weeks, economic analyses have also pointed to a cooling regional economy largely caused by this year’s historically high tariffs.

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