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As a kid, a $100,000 salary sounded like the most amount of money a person could ever hope to make. In the mind of a young person who made $2 a week for emptying the dishwasher, even just squeaking into the six figures made one certifiably rich.
Today, though, that paycheck isn’t what it once was. At least, it isn’t in Dallas.
A study by the financial technology company SmartAsset recently weighed the true value of $100,000, measuring the dollar amount against the federal, state and local taxes, cost of living and other costs of nearly 70 major cities across the U.S.
Luckily, Dallas wasn’t the worst. But we aren’t exactly bringing home the big bucks either. Notably, $100,000 far outpaces Dallas’ area median income, which was $52,000 for a family of four as of last month, according to the Child Poverty Action Lab. Still, if the purchasing power of a six-figure salary is diminished by the cost of living in this town, the problem is trickling down.
Using an internal SmartAsset analyzer and data from the Council for Community and Economic Research, a $100,000 salary in Dallas was found to actually have the purchasing power of around $80,103 annually. In terms of how far our dollar stretches, we tied with Nashville and came in at spot number 22 out of 69.
We did manage to improve, a bit. In 2024, a $100,000 paycheck only went as far as $77,197.
Perhaps predictably, Manhattan is the place where $100,000 is worth the least. That Big Apple salary has the purchasing power of $29,420 annually, thanks to the double whammy of a high cost of living and a high tax rate. And unlike Dallas, which actually saw the dollar’s power grow stronger between 2024 and 2025, Manhattan is only getting pricier.
Another Texas city is also lagging behind Dallas in affordability. In Plano, a $100,000 salary has the purchasing power of $72,653, making the Collin County town the most expensive of the Lone Star State cities surveyed.
Austin, Lubbock, Houston, San Antonio, El Paso and Corpus Christi all beat Dallas’ dollar exchange rate, with Corpus coming in as the place where your dollar goes the farthest. Our peer cities, San Antonio, Houston and Austin, came in at 8th, 10th and 17th, respectively.
But the biggest bucks are down on the Gulf. If you can land a $100,000 job in Corpus Christi, it’ll feel like $91,110. The beach town was the second-best value city identified in the survey, bested only by Oklahoma City.
