This is how much you need to make to live comfortably, if you're single in California

LOS ANGELES - A new study out earlier this month breaks down just how expensive it is for single people.

For the analysis, GoBankingRates looked at 100 cities across the United States and found out just how much a single person needs to make a year in order to live "comfortably."

The backstory:

Living in the U.S. has gotten more expensive recently. The latest Consumer Price Index was released Wednesday. It's up 3% from last January, meaning Americans are spending more on groceries (like eggs), gas and more.

Combine that with the fact that the American Dream costs nearly $250,000 in California, according to a GoBankingRates analysis from April 2024, and it paints a bleak picture, especially single folks, who only rely on one income, and can't split their bills with someone else.

Big picture view:

So what does living "comfortably" mean? To figure out the numbers, GoBankingRates looked at things like median household income, the cost of living index and home values.

Then, they doubled the cost of living to figure out what salary a person in that city would need to live "comfortably."

By the numbers:

Unsurprisingly, many California cities were toward the high end of the spectrum when it came to the cost of living.

Irvine in Orange County topped the list. Single people in Irvine need to make over $291,000 annually to live comfortably, GoBankingRates said. In fact, seven of the cities with the highest requisite salary were in California — many of them in Southern California. 

Los Angeles was the eighth-highest, at more than $186,000 a year.

The top 10 were:

1. Irvine, California — $291,586
2. Fremont, California — $277,753
3. San Jose, California — $262,265
4. San Francisco, California — $241,107
5. Honolulu, Hawaii — $234,876
6. San Diego, California — $200,416
7. Arlington, Virginia — $186,390
8. Los Angeles, California — $186,176
9. Anaheim, California — $173,571
10. Seattle, Washington — $170,902

The other side:

Across the 100 cities analyzed in the study, single, comfortable living costs less than $50,000 a year in just two — Toledo and Cleveland, Ohio.

Most of the cheapest cities were in the Midwest.

Here are the cheapest cities, according to GoBankingRates:

1. Cleveland, Ohio — $47,874
2. Toledo, Ohio — $49,425
3. Detroit, Michigan — $50,519
4. Memphis, Tennessee — $54,379
5. St. Louis, Missouri — $58,829
6. Wichita, Kansas — $62,101
7. Lubbock, Texas — $62,231
8. Baltimore, Maryland — $63,132
9. Tulsa, Oklahoma — $63,547
10. Oklahoma City, Oklahoma — $63,698