How far will a $100,000 salary take you in Louisville? A financial website did the math

Rae Johnson, Louisville Courier Journal
·2 min read

A six-digit salary in Kentucky will take you further than it will in some parts of the country, but the Bluegrass State isn't leading the pack.

Louisville ranked No. 38 out of 76 cities in a study put together by SmartAsset, a financial advising website, that looked at how much a $100,000 salary is actually worth after adjusting for taxes and the cost of living locally. Louisville residents end up taking home $70,424 of their salary, the study said, revealing the effects of "rampant inflation" that has pushed the cost of living upward. More than half of people who earned more than $100,000 said they lived paycheck to paycheck last December, nine percentage points higher than a year earlier, a survey from PYMNTS and LendingClub found.

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Lexington fared a bit better, coming in on the list at No. 26 on the list. Residents of that Kentucky city who make $100,000 take home $73,405 of their salary, while residents in nearby Cincinnati ranked No. 25, with residents taking home $73,759.

Memphis, Tennessee topped the list. Check out the top five:

  • Memphis, Tennessee: $86,444

  • El Paso, Texas: $84,966

  • Oklahoma City: $84,498

  • Corpus Christi, Texas: $83,443

  • Lubbock, Texas: $83,350

New York City was the lowest-ranked location, with a take-home pay of $35,791 on a $100,000 salary.

To calculate the data, SmartAsset said it used its own paycheck calculator to subtract local, state and federal taxes from $100,000, taking into account both hourly and salaried jobs. It then adjusted for the cost of living in 76 of the biggest cities in the U.S. with data from the Council for Community and Economic Research, the website said. Cost of living includes groceries, housing, utilities, miscellaneous goods and services and transportation.

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Contact reporter Rae Johnson at RNJohnson@gannett.com. Follow them on Twitter at @RaeJ_33

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Study shows how far a $100,000 salary will go in Louisville