Just looked at some housing data from early 2025 and wow, the most expensive city in the us for actually living the American Dream is San Jose. You'd need to pull in $319K household income just to make it work there. That's insane.

San Francisco is right behind it at $297K, then San Diego, LA, and NYC round out the top 5. What caught my eye is how much of that income goes straight to mortgage - in San Jose you're looking at over $9K a month just for housing. Meanwhile grocery costs are basically the same everywhere around $10K a year, so it's really the mortgage crushing people.

Boston and DC are actually cheaper than you'd think compared to the Bay Area - Boston needs $199K and DC is the most affordable of the list at $187K. Still brutal though. The study used the 50/30/20 rule (50% needs, 30% discretionary, 20% savings) and basically doubled the cost of living to figure out what income you actually need.

If you're thinking about chasing the dream in one of these cities, might want to run the numbers first. The gap between what you need to earn and what most people actually make is pretty wild.