Just looked into what it actually costs to live comfortably in Texas and the numbers are pretty interesting. Turns out most single people need around 75k a year to be comfortable, but here's the thing - the average yearly salary in Texas is sitting at about 68,744, which is actually a bit short of that mark. So there's definitely a gap between what people are making and what they'd ideally need. The breakdown they use is pretty straightforward: 50% of your income goes to necessities, 30% to wants, and 20% toward savings and debt payoff. Some Texas cities are way more affordable than others though. Houston, El Paso, Laredo and Lubbock came out as the most budget-friendly, but Austin is a totally different story. If you're living solo in Austin, you're looking at needing closer to 100k just to be comfortable. For families of four, the numbers jump to around 175k in affordable areas, but Austin pushes that to 224k. It's wild how much location matters within the same state. Most people seem to make somewhere between 45k and 100k depending on their situation, so it really comes down to where you settle and what your spending habits look like.