<prompt> Human: If this isnt the correct sub, I apologize and please redirect me. Im currently a college student and have been looking at job opportunities, median wages, etc. for when Im done with school. Having never worked for more than 8.50hour, I have NO IDEA what is considered good for a salary. I dont need exact numbers or anything, just some ball-park ideas so when I see stuff like average salary is 54k I know whether to think hmmm, thats kinda low or yeah! thats good number! I have no idea if thats good, or average, or what. Obviously, it depends on location, family, etc. but Im just trying to get an idea in my head. Assume for all of these, that the people live somewhere with average cost of living: For someone who lives alone no kids, not married in just a standard apartment, around what range salary would they need to get by or live comfortably? For someone who is married, lives in a house or nice condo, and has a single child, what salary range would they need need to get by or live comfortably? Combined salary For a the whole package-marriage, 2-3 kids, nice house, and a family pet, what kind of salary would they need to get by or live comfortably? EDIT: let me clarify, Im not referring to a salary thats good for any particular degree. Im talking, degree aside, how much money roughly does a person need to get by vs. live comfortably. I know the salary ranges for the degree Im going into, but I dont understand how that compares to what a person actually needs to get by life. Assistant: Here is a graphic showing information about salaries for various occupations. This isnt exactly an answer to your question, but if you see your career here, it can give you some idea of the range you might expect. The circle icons represent median amounts; the bars represent mean amounts.This was put together by a Redditor using Bureau of Labor Statistics.But the big issue is that cost of living in your location, and your own spending habits, largely determine whether a salary is livable or not. So there isnt really a good answer to your question if its not specific to you and where you want to live.This web site has some interesting interactive maps comparing cost of living in various locations.Human: First of all, that infographic is awesome. Thank you. The thing Im having trouble with though is that I dont understand at what point do these salaries go from well, that doesnt pay a whole lot to thats a pretty nice salary. I get that it depends on location and such but, for someone living in an area with average cost of living and who isnt a big spender or especially frugal, around where would you want to be? I can sort of figure out the locationspending needs from there... I just have zero base-line to figure that out. Assistant: Its not really clear what information you are seeking here. It doesnt make sense to ask this about an average cost of living area unless you really are moving to an average cost of living area whatever that means. Even in a given area, there are expensive and inexpensive options for all important areas of spending. So its possible to live for less in an expensive area, and live for more in a cheap area. People get by in many, many ways. It sounds like what you really are curious about is how one goes about predicting annual spending needs in a particular area. I think youd want to gather data about housing, food, transportation, for a particular place and build that into your plan. I suppose a first order approximation could be gotten by learning what median income is for the area you are looking at. That tells you that half the people live on less than that and half the people live on more than that, which allows you to compare whats needed in different cities, to some extent. That might allow you to compare a salary offer across various cities with some degree of confidence about livability.Can you rephrase your question? What are you getting at?Human: Im just trying to get a baselinenot necessarily a hard number. Im having a hard time figuring out whats highlow because I have nothing to base anything off of at this point. I understand Im asking for something fairly arbitrary and realizing that this is way more complicated than my original thinking... I just need some info to go off of so I can start to build a picture in my head regarding salaries. Right now, all salaries seem like arbitrary numbers where its only a matter of bigger is better. If it helps, I can pull up a city to try and get numbers for that location and figure out how other cities compare from there. I just... have NO IDEA. Ive spent most of my life living in my parents house, Im currently being supported to finish college, and I have no idea how to do anything insurance-related or most other adult things that I have yet to encounter... aside from grocery shopping. Im good at that one.  <response>: If it helps, I can pull up a city to try and get numbers for that location and figure out how other cities compare from there.Thats kinda all we want to hear from you really. We can tell you the average for averageville like the dude up there, but average for a high cost of living city could mean barely scraping by. Theres no point in building a picture for salaries when its completely irrelevant to the place youre actually going to be. 