Relatively healthy people in our example and the cost should be about $350 a month. You can do a little research on places like eHealthInsurance and find similar health plans.įood: You can get by on $500 a month with food for two people. California is home to many dollar stores and you can find a good amount of cheap vegetables there. You will also have room for meat at your local grocery store. Buy toothbrushes and soap at dollar stores for example. Seriously, a $7 toothbrush does the same as one for $1. You do not have golden teeth. I recommend non-big name stores for discounts. Go to Costco to buy bulk items and plan meals out. But if you go to Costco, go with a plan and don’t go lurking since you will blow your entire budget there. I know how tempting these places can be.Ĭar payments: Unfortunately living in California you will likely need to drive a lot. We’re assuming two cars with car payments of $300 a month. This will get you a Civic or Focus. Excellent cars. Cars that would have made our parents go bananas and feel as if they were in a real life version of Star Trek. We’re talking middle class here, not a Lexus on $60,000 a year.Ĭar Insurance: $120 a month should cover two of you. Places like Mercury Insurance offer very low rates. You will get discounts for anti-theft devices or having a good driving record.Īuto service: Oil changes and regular wear and tear.Ĭell: Seriously, no need for the $100 a month contracts. What are you, JayZ? Get a Virgin Mobile plan for $35 a month and save hundreds of dollars a year. They even offer 4G services. Be smart and add on Skype or Google Voice and use the network to save on minutes if you need to. $100 a month for cell phones is nuts. You can also get prepaid plans for much cheaper like $20 a month.Įlectric: Self explanatory. If you are living in a $1,500 rental you will not spend much here. Healthcare: We’re assuming two working adults here. Housing: You can certainly find a rental for $1,500 a month. Depending on where you live, this might have to be a one bedroom but you can certainly find something like this in any metro area if you spend some time scouring Craigslist. Net pay: After taxes and other mandatory expenses, your net pay will likely be $3,935 or close to $4,000. Half of the households in California are barely pulling in $50,000 a year similar to what we see across the US. Yet if you live in the Bay Area, $60,000 a year will put you in the bottom 39 percent of all households. Rarely do we see financial articles actually try and breakdown a budget of how it would be to live on this kind of income.īudgeting is such an important item for any households. But most households live on a motto of earn it and spend it. They suddenly get a raise or come into more money and they find other means of spending this funding.īelow I’ve broken down a sample budget of a family making $60,000 a year and living in California: Can you live comfortably in California making $60,000 a year? It really depends on what you define as comfortably. We should note that the median household income in the US is $50,000 and in California it isn’t much higher. California gets a notorious rap of being an expensive state but this is if the entire focus is on coastal regions. There are many areas where homes are actually affordable given current interest rates. Yet many people struggle to get by. You have many households pulling in $100,000 or more a year and they speak as if it were an act of poverty. Yet they choose to live in areas like San Francisco and spend up to their income levels. It is very feasible to live in California on $60,000 a year but not how many would expect. People are feeling the withdrawals of our debt based addiction and California is a prime example of this.
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