This is how much you’ll need to make if you want to live ‘comfortably’ in San Francisco

It’s no secret that living in the Bay Area can be a costly affair, and new analysis from a personal finance website shows the high price of living worry-free in two of the Bay Area’s main cities.

Utilizing recent Census data, home value analysis from Zillow and Bureau of Labor Statistics, GoBankingRates.com found some alarming figures for responsible adults who want to stick to a reasonable budget.

The study, released late last month, shows that San Franciscans should hope to have a salary in the range of $250,000 to live comfortably.

California cities top the list with San Jose ($264K) at No. 1, San Francisco ($251K) at No. 2 and San Diego ($206K) at No. 3. Los Angeles came in at No. 4 with $194,920 required to live comfortably, and Long Beach came in at No. 6, with a salary for comfortable living around $179,000.

The finance website used the 50/30/20 rule when creating its rankings. The popular budget template breaks down regular spending to 50% for necessities, 30% for wants and desires, and 20% for savings and debts.

While there isn’t a perfect criteria for living “comfortably,” the analysts at GoBankingRates doubled the cost of necessities in order to find a figure that would comfortably cover costs of living.

But rising prices and demanding salary requirements is no longer a uniquely California thing.

The study analyzed the 50 most populous cities in the U.S. and found that more than half of those cities would require six-figure income to meet the comfortability threshold.

Below is a list of the 20 most expensive cities:

Rank	City	Salary Needed for Necessities	Salary Needed for Comfortable Living
1	San Jose, California	$132,473	$264,946
2	San Francisco	$125,699	$251,398
3	San Diego	$103,176	$206,353
4	Los Angeles	$97,460	$194,920
5	New York	$92,210	$184,420
6	Long Beach, California	$89,679	$179,359
7	Seattle	$89,260	$178,520
8	Boston	$84,578	$169,155
9	Oakland, California	$81,779	$163,559
10	Washington, D.C.	$78,980	$157,960
11	Miami	$72,109	$144,219
12	Denver	$64,764	$129,528
13	Portland, Oregon	$63,354	$126,707
14	Austin, Texas	$61,437	$122,875
15	Sacramento, California	$59,791	$119,582
16	Las Vegas	$57,225	$114,449
17	Atlanta	$56,351	$112,702
18	Nashville, Tennessee	$55,391	$110,783
19	Mesa, Arizona	$55,033	$110,065
20	Colorado Springs, Colorado	$54,231	$108,462

The lowest salary needed for comfortable living in the nation’s 50 biggest cities is Detroit at around $65,000.

David Lazarus, consumer reporter at KRON4’s sister station KTLA, says that while the study’s results aren’t particularly shocking, and while “living comfortably” can be interpreted in many ways, the study “illustrates the growing difficulty of simply getting by.”

To read more about the study and its methodology, click here.