Where can you afford to live?
Rent, food, utilities, a phone and a car in 387 metro areas, checked against your real take-home pay. Enter your household below, or hover any metro to see what a 3-bedroom costs and what people earn there.
Check your household
Enter what your household earns in a year before taxes. The map lights up the metros where your take-home pay covers the core costs, and each one shows what you'd have left to spend or save.
Enter an income to see which metros your household can afford.
Rent as a share of income
Gray areas are outside any metro; hover them for the state minimum wage. Puerto Rico's 6 metros are in the table below.
Every metro, side by side
Rent comes first. Plan the rest around it.
IDKmy budget
Start from your real take-home pay, put rent in first, and assign every dollar after it with a zero-based spending plan.
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Groceries are the biggest bill you can steer week to week. Keep a running total as you shop so the trip stays inside your plan.
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How the household budget works. Your income is treated as the household's total pay before taxes. Taxes are 2026 federal income tax (standard deduction, child tax credit, earned income credit), Social Security and Medicare, 2026 state income tax for the metro's main state, and local income tax: New York City's income tax, Philadelphia's and Detroit's wage taxes, and elsewhere the state's average local rate where its cities or counties tax income. One adult files single, or head of household with kids; two or more adults file jointly. Kids are assumed to be under 17. California SDI, Massachusetts paid leave and Washington's long-term care payroll taxes are included. State tax is simplified: head-of-household filers use the single schedule, and state credits for kids and low incomes are left out.
Core costs. Rent is for one bedroom for the adults plus one for every two kids (2+ extra adults get their own rooms, up to 4 bedrooms), using the same Census and HUD blend described below for each bedroom count. Groceries are the USDA Moderate-Cost Food Plan for August 2026 ($367 per adult, $284 per child, the average of the kids' age groups), adjusted for household size per USDA and for local prices with BEA's 2024 Regional Price Parity for goods. Electricity is EIA's July 2026 state residential rate for 450 kWh a month in a 1-bedroom, rising 200 kWh per extra bedroom; natural gas is EIA's 2025 state residential price for 2.5 Mcf a month, rising 1.1 Mcf per bedroom. Water is assumed to be included in rent. Internet is $75 a month and phone service ranges from $74 (1 person) to $216 (5+), from BLS's 2024 Consumer Expenditure Survey for households that pay those bills. Each adult has a car, up to two: a $654 payment (the midpoint of Experian's Q2 2026 averages, $765 new and $542 used), Insurify's October 2026 state average for full coverage (lenders require it), and 38 gallons of gas a month (FHWA's 460-gallon yearly average) at EIA's average regular price for the last four weeks in that state or region.
What's left is take-home pay minus those core costs. It doesn't include health insurance, childcare, debt, savings, clothing or anything else, because those vary too much from one household to the next. The 15% savings line shows what's left after setting aside 15% of gross pay. Costs use the principal state of metros that cross state lines. Puerto Rico's metros are left out of the calculator because its tax system and price data differ.
3BR rent is the average of two figures for each metro. The first is the median gross rent for 3-bedroom units from the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey, 2020–2024 5-year estimates (table B25031), which is what current renters pay, including utilities. The second is HUD's FY2027 Fair Market Rent for a 3-bedroom, effective October 1, 2026, which is closer to what someone moving in today would pay. Where a metro spans more than one HUD rent area, HUD values are weighted by each county's renter households. ACS tops out at $3,500, so San Jose's Census figure is $3,500+.
Median household income is from the same ACS 2020–2024 estimates (table B19013), in 2024 dollars. It counts every earner in the household. Income needed (30% rule) is the yearly pre-tax income at which this rent equals 30% of pay: monthly rent × 12 ÷ 0.30.
Minimum wage is the rate in effect October 2026 in each metro's principal (first-named) city: the city or county ordinance where one exists, otherwise the state rate, otherwise the federal $7.25. Sources: U.S. Department of Labor state table and EPI's Minimum Wage Tracker, both updated July 1, 2026; Florida's scheduled increase to $15.00 on September 30, 2026 is included. Other cities and suburbs in a metro can have different rates. Ohio's rate applies to businesses with $405K+ in sales, Montana's to $110K+, and West Virginia's to employers with 6+ workers. Min-wage hours is monthly rent divided by that hourly rate; a full-time month is about 173 hours.
Metro areas are the 393 Metropolitan Statistical Areas in OMB's July 2023 delineations, drawn from their counties. Every figure is a metro-wide or statewide average, and real costs vary a lot by neighborhood and household. Tax sources: IRS 2026 inflation adjustments and Tax Foundation's 2026 federal and state bracket tables.