What $60K Actually Buys You Outside of Chicago

By Jay Kimbol · October 9, 2025 · More posts

A friend of mine, who I'll call M because she'd be annoyed if I named her, makes $60,000 a year as a graphic designer in Chicago. She's been at the same company for three years. They are not going to give her a raise this cycle. Her lease is up in March.

I asked her the other day, mostly out of curiosity, whether she could actually live on $60k somewhere else — not just survive, but live a real life with a savings account and a vacation now and then. She looked at me like I'd asked her if water was wet, and said "obviously not, I can't even live on $60k here."

I went home and ran the numbers. I want to walk through what I found, because the answer is more interesting than either of us assumed, and I think the conclusion has implications for a lot of people in M's position.

First, the baseline. $60,000 a year in Chicago, single filer, no 401k contribution (just to keep the math clean), looks like this:

So M is taking home about $3,965 a month in Chicago. (I'm rounding throughout. Don't @ me, I am not your accountant.)

Now her actual budget, as she described it to me roughly:

That leaves $525 a month, or $6,300 a year, theoretically available for savings. M says in practice she saves about $2,500 a year, because the $525 figure assumes nothing breaks, no flights home, no sister's wedding, no Christmas. So the real-life math is: she works full-time, lives modestly, and clears about $200 a month of true financial slack.

That is not poverty. That's also not a sustainable middle-class life. It's the situation a lot of people in their late twenties through thirties are in right now in expensive cities, and the conventional advice ("live within your means," "skip avocado toast") is either wrong or insulting depending on which version of it you got.

So what does the same $60k look like in three of the cities I've been writing about? Let me run them.

Memphis, Tennessee

Tennessee has no state income tax. So the federal and FICA situation is the same, but the state line goes to zero:

That's about $200 a month more than Chicago, just from the tax difference. Then the cost-of-living side:

Notice the car line. This is the trap I almost missed when I first ran these numbers. Memphis is not a transit city. You will own a car. Even a modest used car — $250 payment, $130 insurance, $140 gas a month — is $520. That eats most of the rent savings if you're not careful.

Even with the car, M's monthly slack in Memphis would be about $1,343 versus $525 in Chicago. That's $818 a month, or roughly $9,800 a year, of additional financial breathing room. That is the difference between treading water and actually building a savings account.

Indianapolis, Indiana

Indiana's state income tax is a flat 3.05% (lower than Illinois's 4.95%, but higher than Tennessee's zero). Take-home math:

Surprisingly close to Chicago on take-home, because Indianapolis has a county-level income tax that most people don't know about until they move there. So the headline "lower state income tax" win is largely eaten by the local tax. This is the kind of detail the cost-of-living calculator catches if it's any good and most casual searches don't.

Slack: $1,057/month versus Chicago's $525. That's $6,400/year of additional breathing room. Smaller than Memphis but still real, and Indianapolis comes with significantly less of the asterisk Memphis has.

Cincinnati, Ohio

Ohio's state income tax is graduated; at $60k it works out to about 3.0% effective. Cincinnati city tax is 1.8%. Combined, the tax bite is similar to Indianapolis.

About $42 a month less take-home than Chicago, actually. Cincinnati's local tax is the second-highest of the four cities. This was the most surprising number in this whole exercise — the income side does not favor Cincinnati. The win is entirely on the cost side.

I left the car off this one because Cincinnati's downtown and OTR are walkable enough that some people actually skip the car. If you have one, add about $400/month and the slack drops accordingly.

Slack without a car: $1,333/month. With a car: ~$933. Still significantly better than Chicago.

What this all means for M (and people like her)

Here's the thing this exercise made obvious to me: the difference between $60k in Chicago and $60k in Memphis isn't a small lifestyle adjustment. It's the difference between not really being able to save money and being able to save $10,000 a year. Compounded over five years, that is meaningfully different paths through life. It's a down payment on a house. It's a real emergency fund. It's the optionality to quit a job you hate.

The catch, and I want to be honest about this: M's job is not portable. She is not a remote worker. Her company is in Chicago. If she moves to Memphis, she is taking a $60k Memphis-area design job, which on average pays around $52,000, not $60,000. That's a $670/month cut in pre-tax pay, which mostly erases the savings advantage. Suddenly the math is a wash.

So the moves I've been working through really only make total sense for one of two profiles:

Profile 1: remote worker. If your salary doesn't depend on your zip code, the cities I've been writing about are dramatic upgrades. The math isn't subtle. You should think about it.

Profile 2: career changer. If you're moving anyway — if your old job is ending or your field is dying or you're just done — then the destination city's local salary is the relevant number, and a lower cost of living lets you be patient about your next role.

If you're in neither bucket — if you're a stable employee at a local-to-Chicago company — the math on moving for the savings is mostly an illusion, because your salary will adjust down by more than your costs go down. The exception is if your company has gone hybrid or remote since the pandemic and would let you keep your job from elsewhere. That is the actual ticket.

I told M most of this. She thought about it for a few minutes and said, "so basically, ask my boss if I can work from Memphis."

I said yes. That's basically the only version of this that works for her.

I haven't heard back from her yet on whether she's going to ask.

Jay Kimbol is still in Chicago, still hasn't moved, and is now doing other people's spreadsheets for them at parties because he won't shut up about this. The next post is the one this whole series has been building toward: My Lease Is Up. Here's What I'm Actually Doing.