Living comfortably on $40,000 a year is achievable, particularly in smaller, lower-cost-of-living cities and rural areas across the U.S. Midwestern and Southern states generally offer the best affordability. Prime, budget-friendly locations include Sheboygan, WI, Abilene, TX, Fort Walton Beach, FL, Cleveland, OH, and Cañon City, CO.
Depending on how many of you there are, where you plan on living, and your lifestyle, it is certainly possible to live on $40000 a year. 1/3 of entire households in the US live on that much or less.
If you earn around $40,000 per year, the kind of house you can afford typically depends on your debt, down payment, and local housing costs, but generally, you could afford a home mortgage loan of around $120,000.
Safest and most affordable places to retire often feature low crime, low cost of living (especially housing), and good amenities, with the US Midwest dominating recent lists, featuring cities like Columbus, IN; Fort Wayne, IN; Des Moines, IA; and Fargo, ND, while international options like Portugal and Ecuador also rank highly for security and budget. Key factors include low crime rates (violent/property), affordable healthcare, reasonable housing costs (mortgage/rent), and manageable taxes.
Popular Bluff, Missouri, is the cheapest, safest place to live in America. The annual cost of living is $32,941. Violent crime rates are 0.372 and property crime rates are 2.111 for every 1,000 residents. Midwestern cities dominated the top 10, accounting for nine spots.
Here are some of the cheapest and safest places to live in the US!
A strong credit score could help you secure a lower mortgage rate. You generally need a credit score of at least 620 to qualify for a conventional mortgage, though every lender is different. FHA loans, which are backed by the federal government, may be an option for individuals with credit scores as low as 500.
Low earners
In short, £40,000 in 2025 remains a good salary by national standards — above the average and offering solid financial stability — but it's not within the top-earning tier, and its real value varies significantly by region and cost of living.
Here's an idea of the ideal rent for different salaries based on the 30% rule: If you make $30,000 a year, you can afford to spend $750 a month on rent. If you make $40,000 a year, you can afford to spend $1,000 a month on rent. If you make $50,000 a year, you can afford to spend $1,250 a month on rent.
$40,000 a year is approximately $19.23 per hour, assuming a standard 40-hour workweek (2,080 hours per year). You calculate this by dividing your annual salary by the total working hours in a year: $40,000 / 2,080 hours = $19.23/hour.
A single person needs to earn £30,500 a year to reach a minimum acceptable standard of living in 2025. A couple with 2 children needs to earn £74,000 a year between them. April 2025 saw an inflation-based increase in benefits of 1.7%, pegged to the CPI rate in September 2024. By April 2025, CPI was 3.5%.
Now, rents and mortgage payments are much closer. Even when putting 20% down on a home purchase, rents were cheaper than mortgages in nearly three out of five (29/50) major metros at the start of 2024. And it takes a renter four more years to save for a down payment now than it did pre-pandemic.
These are the U.S. cities where Americans can actually afford to live on a single person's income—and the ones out-of-budget for singletons
Other top retirement destinations include Florida, Illinois and Kentucky, all with more moderate living costs. Not surprisingly, the FinanceBuzz report finds that a Social Security check doesn't go all that far in Hawaii, Massachusetts or California, all states with relatively high costs of living.
The average retiree's monthly expenses in the U.S. hover around $4,600 to $5,400, with younger retirees (65-74) spending more, often over $5,000 monthly, while those 75+ spend closer to $4,400 as transportation and entertainment costs decrease, though healthcare costs can rise, with housing, transportation, healthcare, and food being the biggest categories.
The list below includes some 6-figure jobs without a college degree: