Many people dream of securing a job that lets you earn an annual salary that hits that 6-figure salary mark.
It can be challenging, however, to calculate how many hours you would have to work hard to reach that salary and what sort of lifestyle it could give you.
So an important question is if $100k per year would be enough for you to live the comfortable life you want, and how many long hours you would have to work to make that sort of income.
If your salary is $100k a year, your hourly pay would be $48.08. How do we get to that? Let’s assume that you work 40 hours a week.
There are 52 weeks in one year, so to discover your hourly salary, you divide your annual earnings by 52 (the number of weeks), and that result again by 40 (the number of work hours per week).
To check if you have done this correctly, you can multiply your calculated hourly pay by 40 to see your weekly pay and then multiply that result by 52, the number of weeks in a year. Again, we assume that you work 40 hours a week.
Annual salary to monthly, weekly, daily, and hourly pay
Let’s break it down a little further. If your annual salary is $100k, your monthly income would be $8,333.33; your biweekly earnings would be $4,166.67; your weekly salary $1,923.08; your daily salary $384.62; your hourly pay is $48.08.
As said before, there are 52 weeks in the year. So if you have a full-time job and work 40 hours per week on average, you can multiply these numbers (40 hours and 52 weeks), and you’ll see that each year, you work 2,080 hours in total.
So you can also take your annual earnings ($100k) and divide that number by 2,080 (the total number of worked hours) to learn what you make per hour ($48.08).
In case you would take some time off to go, for example, on a vacation trip, you would reduce the number of hours worked in that year. This may cause your hourly wage to change slightly.
Is $100k a year a good salary?
Consider this: in the US, the federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour though most states have laws that require employers to pay considerably more per hour. Now, if you would make $100k per year, you would make $48.08 an hour, assuming you work 40 hours per week.
In that case, you are making more than six (!) times that federal minimum hourly wage.
Consider also the average weekly salary in the US. On average, the American worker takes home $865 per week, assuming they work full-time. That translates to almost $45k a year. So If your earnings are $100k, you earn a salary that’s well above the average American income, and even in basic industries, the average annual pay is higher.
Of course, it all depends on your personal financial goals, and in some areas, living can get rather expensive, but on average, you may say that $100k annually is a very good salary.
What can you afford with $100k a year?
To answer that question properly, you would have to consider your lifestyle and personal circumstances. It’s getting a bit complicated. A single person, for example, would easily be able to live a pretty comfortable life on a job that pays $100 per hour or an annual income of $100k. A large family living in an expensive area, however, would not be able to live a comfortable life that easy on that sort of income.
Then again, earning $100k a year would mean you’re making more money than some 70% of all American households. So yes, a salary of $100k annually can be enough for a single-person household without children or any major debt.
Here’s a little example. Let’s assume that you pay a monthly rent of $3,000 per month. This means you’ll pay $36k in rent a year. Let’s also assume that, after tax, your income is $76k a year, meaning that after rent, your income would be $46k.
Now, let’s say that you will spend some $1,500 per month on other necessities such as bills and food. That means you spend $18k a year on those necessities, which would leave you with just $28k that you may use for savings or investments, for instance. This would also be a good chunk of money toward purchasing bigger things like a car. This only applies, however, if you don’t have any serious debt. Otherwise, your money would probably go to paying off that debt.
In the United States, the average one-person household income is just over $40k a year, and a single person could, in general, live perfectly well on that sort of income. Their lifestyle, however, would be quite different from households or persons that make $100k per year; that goes without saying, right? Check also this article on where to find a job that pays $50k a year. You may learn some interesting things!
At a salary of $40k a year, you would probably not be able to afford a monthly rent of $3,000. So, chances are you would have to size down or if you run a one-person household, find a roommate to afford such an expensive place.
So you see, this sort of income might definitely not be enough for families, especially if there’s no other source of income in that household. In 2019, for example, the average income for U.S. households was almost $63k, but in these expensive times, that sort of income may not be sufficient for most families.
And in some areas, families would require to make a lot more than that. There are regions where larger families need to reach an annual income in the $100k-200k range to make ends meet. In general, families need to consider more expenses such as college savings and insurance fees if the employer doesn’t cover them.
So usually, a $100k annual salary will be sufficient for a single American household to live a rather comfortable life. However, for larger families with multiple children, it may be only just enough to get by, especially if they live in more expensive regions.