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San Antonio ranked as the nation's No. 3 cheapest big metro area in a new study.
Indeed, the analysis ranks the Alamo City area as No. 3 in the nation for affordable living. After all, a person with no kids needs to make just $59,270 a year, after taxes, to live comfortably in the San Antonio-New Braunfels area, the report notes.
There's just one problem. While San Antonio offers a comparably low cost of living when compared to other big metros, U.S. Census figures show that locals aren't making enough money to have a comfortable lifestyle.
Via the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Living Wage Calculator, SmartAsset used the "50-30-20" rule to compile its data and analyze the cost of living in the largest 25 metro areas in the country. That rule says that 50% of a person's income should be spent on needs including housing, 30% should be set aside for fun and 20% should be put into savings.
Although the San Antonio metro boasts the third-lowest cost of living comfortably, the median individual income here was only around $26,000 in 2020, according to the Census Bureau.
In 2022, the average median household income was only $55,084 — and that's before taxes. That's still lower than the $59,270 individual income Smart Asset recommends for comfortable living in the 2-1-0.
What's more, the average rent for an Alamo City apartment is $1,289, according to online renal property marketplace RentCafe. Meanwhile, the average price of a single-family home in our metro jumped to $366,834 in March, the San Antonio Board of Realtors reports.
Try renting an apartment or buying a house while living on a $ 26,000-a-year salary.
In other words, San Antonio might be cheaper than Houston or Dallas, and it could be seen as a bargain for remote tech workers earning six-figure salaries. But that doesn't mean it's affordable for large portions of the people that reside here.
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