WACO, Texas — A new report is highlighting what a comfortable annual wage really looks like, and 25 News' Bobby Poitevint explored with a Central Texas economical research expert and locals, to learn what those dollar amounts look like in our communities.
Eleonora Suteu is a university professor here in Waco and told me she believes a comfortable annual wage starts at “$60,000 up would be like a good amount.”
The Perez's are both restaurant managers in the Waco area and say $70,000 to $80,000 a year for each one of them would be enough money to live comfortably.
“How achievable is that for you?” Poitevint asked.
Husband, Aramado Perez believes that's achievable in about a year and said, “You need to work too many hours for that.”
Diana Loredo agrees with those numbers and said "now, I’m able to achieve that as a nurse.”
Those numbers are not far off from what Ray Perryman estimates as a comfortable salary for Central Texans based off data from a new report.
He's the President of Perryman Group, an economic research firm here in Central Texas.
He doesn’t believe many Central Texans are making that kind of money.
“Again, we don’t have the information to do a deep dive specially on that," Perryman said.
"Looking at the data we can look at, you probably have somewhere around I would say 40 percent who are comfortable or well above comfortable and then another 20 percent in the middle who are pretty close, and then about 40 percent that are substantially below that.”
SmartAsset, a website for consumer-focused financial information and advice, released a report late last month that is trending across the nation.
It says on average, an individual needs $96,500 for sustainable comfort in a major U.S. city and that a family must make over $300k to raise two kids comfortably in some cities.
While Waco is not used in the report, Perryman estimates from the findings of similar Texas cities named in the report, a Central Texas family of four would need to make $170,000 to live comfortably.
Perryman says jobs and industries are moving in the right direction to close income gaps and added that “We have closed that gap some over time.”
