“Comfortable” is one of those words that means something different to everyone. For one person, it means living downtown and walking everywhere. For another, it means a backyard on Johns Island and enough margin to travel. For a family, it might mean a specific school zone, a short commute, and predictable monthly costs.
So instead of pretending there’s one magic number, here’s how I explain it to clients relocating to Charleston—and to locals trying to plan their next move.
Start with a baseline: what does “enough to cover the basics” look like?
MIT’s Living Wage Calculator is a helpful benchmark because it estimates what a full-time worker needs to cover basic expenses in the Charleston–North Charleston metro area.
For example, it lists a living wage around $26.05/hour for one adult with no children, which is roughly $54,177/year at full-time hours. For one adult with one child, the figure is substantially higher.
That’s not “luxury.” That’s “cover the basics without constant stress.”
Add the Charleston reality: housing and lifestyle choices drive everything
Charleston rent data underscores how quickly housing costs can scale depending on unit size and location, with recent averages around $2,750 across unit types in Charleston proper.
If you’re buying, your “comfortable salary” depends heavily on:
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Down payment and interest rate
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Insurance (home + flood where applicable)
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HOA regimes (common in condos/townhomes and many planned communities)
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Commute preferences and fuel/time costs
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Childcare needs (often the biggest swing factor for young families)
A local benchmark: what do households actually earn?
U.S. Census QuickFacts lists Charleston city median household income around $93,038.
That doesn’t mean you need $93K to live here, but it’s a useful anchor and base number: it reflects what a “typical” household in the city earns—not the entire metro—and it helps explain why some neighborhoods feel more competitive than others.
So what salary is “comfortable” in Charleston?
Here’s the honest way to frame it:
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Single adult, modest lifestyle, flexible location: often “comfortable” begins around the living-wage range and improves meaningfully as housing cost stays controlled.
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Couple without kids: comfort rises quickly if you’re dual-income and can keep housing under control, but it depends on whether you’re trying to be close-in (peninsula / Mount Pleasant / beach areas) or more value-oriented (parts of West Ashley, Park Circle, Summerville).
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Family with kids: childcare + housing + insurance is where Charleston gets real. Families usually feel “comfortable” when there’s margin—meaning savings, activities, travel, and the ability to absorb a home repair without panic.
Here is some more food for thought based on a Mt. Pleasant median home price:
For a baseline “comfortable” family budget in Mount Pleasant with 2 kids, I like to start with the most objective benchmark we have and then adjust for Mt. Pleasant’s higher housing costs. The MIT Living Wage Calculator (updated Feb 10, 2025) estimates that in the Charleston–North Charleston metro, a household with 2 adults (both working) and 2 kids needs about $115,390/year before taxes to cover core basics (housing, childcare, food, transportation, health care, and other necessities). In Mt. Pleasant specifically, those baselines tend to feel tighter because the area is simply more expensive: the U.S. Census shows Mt. Pleasant’s median household income is about $131,364 and Census Reporter puts the median owner-occupied home value around $825,300—both signals that “average” Mt. Pleasant households are operating at a higher cost level than the broader metro. To qualify for a conventional loan on an $825,300 home, you would generally need an annual income between approximately $210,000 and $280,000 or more, depending on your specific financial situation, debt-to-income ratio (DTI), down payment, credit score, and current interest rates. So for a typical family aiming to live comfortably in Mt. Pleasant—especially if you want strong location flexibility (schools, commute, lifestyle proximity) and breathing room for savings, kids’ activities, and the inevitable home/insurance surprises—the practical target often lands well above the metro “basic needs” number.
The takeaway
Charleston can be lived in comfortably at different income levels—but the definition of comfortable is heavily tied to where you live, how you want to spend your time, and whether your housing cost leaves you breathing room. The best approach is to decide what lifestyle you’re buying (walkable? beach-close? school-driven? space-driven?) and reverse-engineer the salary range that supports that lifestyle without stress.
By: Dustin Guthrie, Realtor
📞 Call/Text (843) 697-7757
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