This is How Much Money You Need to 'Live Comfortably' in El Paso

Photo byCity of El Paso, Texas - Municipal Government Facebook/Alexander Mils via Unsplash

Making ends meet can be a real challenge.

Sometimes it requires excavating the dark, crumb-littered bottoms of your couch cushions or raiding the change jar to meet your financial goals.

Yes, the struggle is all too real some months.

But despite the cost of, well, everything skyrocketing and property taxes seemingly going up every time the Central Appraisal District does its evaluations a new study found that living comfortably in El Paso requires one of the lowest salaries in the nation.

El Paso’s Rank

According to the SmartAsset 2024 study, living in the 915 requires the second lowest salary in America for a single adult or a family of four to live a comfortable lifestyle that's mostly free of finance stress.

Data and Methodology

In order to determine the salary needed to reach the minimum level of comfortableness, the analysis “used MIT Living Wage Calculator data to gather the cost of necessities including housing, food, transportation and income taxes.”

MIT’s living wage is assumed to cover needs. From there the total wage was extrapolated for individuals and families to spend 30% of the total on wants and 20% on savings or debt payments.

The 50/30/20 budget rule, per SmartAsset, breaks your after-tax income up into three basic divisions: needs, wants and debt/savings. Fifty percent of your monthly pay should go to needs, 30% to wants and 20% towards paying off debt, saving and/or investing.

How Much Do El Pasoans Need to Live Comfortably?

Photo byAlexander Mils via Unsplash

The analysis calculated that a single adult living in El Paso County needs to pull in a little over $75,200 annually to have an adequate standard of living, or just over $36 an hour.

A family of four needs to make at least $180,461 a year to live comfortably.

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