The cheapest big city to reach the famous 'American Dream' still requires a family to bring in an annual salary with six digits.
A household must earn at least a little more than $ 102,000 to live a comfortable life in Wichita, the largest city in Kansas, according to a new study by Gobankingrates.
“Since a few years, many Americans have said that they have to earn six-digit salaries to feel financially stable and successful,” Gobankrates-writer Heather Taylor wrote in the study.
“This amount quickly becomes a non-negotiable factor to enjoy a good life.”
The website for personal finances investigated statistics of a series of federal agencies that keep track of the average costs of housing, cars, groceries, childcare and other non-discretionary expenditure categories in the 50 largest cities in the United States.
The minimum salaries needed to meet these basic costs were applied to married couples with children and a house in these cities, according to the methodology of the research.
Wichita is known as the old home of aircraft manufacturers such as Beechcraft, the 48th largest city in the US with a population of more than 389,000 people.
The average family income in the city was $ 63,072 from 2023, which means that the majority of employees in Wichita drop at least $ 40,000 to meet that minimal threshold to work out the American Dream.
The cheapest city for a family to reach the American dream is Wichita, Kansas, according to a study by Gobankingrates
A household should earn $ 189,306 in a year to live comfortably in Washington DC, the capital of the country, making it the most expensive city in the United States
The median household in the US raised $ 80,610 a year, according to 2023 data from the US Census Bureau.
The American Dream is an idea that was conceived by historian James Truslow Adams in 1931. He described it as 'a dream of a social order in which every man and every woman will be able to reach the full form of which they are naturally capable of … regardless of the accidental circumstances of birth or position'.
A more contemporary view of the American dream is generally considered to reach the milestones of owning a house, founding a family, having a stable job or possessing a company.
Other cities that are the cheapest to live in relation to the others on the list are Louisville, Kentucky ($ 103,754); El Paso, Texas ($ 108,424); and Raleigh, North Carolina ($ 109,747).
The salary requirements to live comfortably in the largest, most influential cities in America are dramatically higher.
Washington DC, the capital of the country, is by far the most discouraging, with residents, according to the study $ 189,306 in a year.
Completion of the top five are Boston, New York City, San Francisco and San Jose, all places where a salary of at least $ 167,000 is the new standard.
California had nine cities, the most on the list, where more than $ 102,000 is needed for a single family to live comfortably and within their resources.
New York City is the third most expensive city in the country to live, slightly behind Boston
San Francisco is the fourth most expensive city in the country and also the most expensive in California
In Wichita, together with the rest of the cities studied by Gobankingrates, a monthly mortgage is the most expensive costs for families on an annual basis.
Housing traditionally takes the biggest bite from people's income. However, this has been worse for Americans who have bought houses in the last three years, exactly when the Federal Reserve began to increase interest rates to combat inflation.
Since September 2022, the average 30-year-old fixed mortgage interest rates have varied from a low six percent to a high seven percent. In July 2021, the average rate was as low as 2.1 percent.
Average monthly mortgage payments have almost doubled over the past four years, largely thanks to the increasing amount of interest that homeowners hand over to banks.
Those who are looking for a return to the early pandemic era of almost zero interest rates may have to wait a long time, since FED chairman Jerome Powell said that only two cuts are possible in 2025.
Childcare is routinely the second largest costs that families should make, according to the study.
From September 2023, sending young children to childcare cost more than the tuition fees of the public university in 28 states.
Another report showed that the costs of childcare have risen by 220 percent since 1990 – the general inflation percentage has been switched far.
