&gt; Northeast Coast, this is barely enough to buy a house (and I hope you like driving &#x2F; riding the train for a few hours).<p>That&#x27;s not true, I live outside Manhattan and you can buy a very nice house for $250,000. I&#x27;m not in NYC (New Jersey) but close to the city. Well, it&#x27;s a condo, not a house.<p>Also, what&#x27;s wrong with riding the train? More people should be riding the train.<p>&gt; A better analysis would be to draw the line somewhere in the the $200,000 - $500,000 range<p>That&#x27;s wild! No, that&#x27;s approaching upper class.<p>&gt; Sad to say, there are many areas of the country where living on $125,000 still definitely sucks.<p>Proof? I don&#x27;t think this is true unless you have no idea how to manage your money.<p>I can&#x27;t imagine a single place where it would suck to live on ~$7,000 take home pay a month...