http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/What-does-it-really-cost-to-live-in-Seattle-in-10970605.php
What does it really cost to live in Seattle in 2017?
Time for an annual look at the costs of surviving and the costs of thriving
Updated 8:38 pm, Wednesday, March 1, 2017
I haven’t seen his tax returns, but I’m fairly certain President Donald Trump could afford to live in Seattle.
The rest of us? Maybe not.
Since I last crunched the numbers a year ago, things have only gotten more expensive here.
If you pay rent, you may have seen yours go up in the last year. If you bought a house or were lucky enough to sell one, you know the values have continued to rise.
If you own a car, you know the cost of registering it just went up significantly (to help pay for the vast expansion of transit under Sound Transit 3). And the traffic you drive in? It probably got worse instead of better (and there’s a cost to that, too).
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Media: MediaOS VideoThe median household income in Seattle ticked up over $80,000, according to the most recent U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey. And Seattle’s minimum wage has officially reached $15 per hour for large employers who don’t contribute to medical benefits. It’s $13.50 for those that do.
And yet, the gap between the haves and the have nots seems still to be widening.
With all that in mind, I decided it’s time to go back and tally it all up again to see just how much you need to earn to live in the Emerald City, and once more answer whether a person can make it on $15 per hour -- $31,200 before taxes (you can’t, and I’ll tell you why).
Buying a house in Seattle is almost a nonstarter for a single person (certainly for a single person earning minimum wage or anything less than six figures), as the median price has risen to $604,300, according to Zillow’s home value index. Using Zillow’s mortgage calculator, the monthly payment on that median-priced home (with a 10 percent down payment) would run $3,417 a month.
If our Seattleite (let’s call her Jane Doe) earned minimum wage (about $2,675 a month before taxes) that wouldn’t even be enough to cover the mortgage. Sorry, Jane, that part of the American Dream will have to wait.
Onward.
A one-bedroom rental in Seattle has hiked up to a median price of $1,796 in Seattle --$136 more than when I did this a year ago, according to Zillow. In theory, the idea is that Jane doesn’t spend more than a third of her income on housing costs, but there’s no way she’s doing that on minimum wage, so we’ll have to let that rule slide.
Rental price noted, moving on.
Jane will need to buy groceries, electricity, a phone, occasionally clothing, transportation and probably a few other things.
To calculate the best estimated costs, I returned to Numbeo.com, where the average costs for all these things are listed for pretty much any city you’d like to look up. You can set the specifics, such as how many people will live in a home, how often they go out to eat and so forth.
I set it for a single person (Jane wants to live alone) with no car -- she has a bus pass -- who goes out (to a movie or date or whatever) three or fewer times per month, eats at home 90 percent of the time (and eats cheaply most of the time when she does eat out) and rarely drinks alcohol. Since Seattle is a coffee mecca, Jane drinks coffee out moderately, which apparently is still only two and a half coffees a month.
Jane also never takes a vacation, saves no money, pays nothing for healthcare or insurance and has zero debt. And if you follow the Pew Charitable Trusts, you’ll find a survey that reported that 80 percent of Americans have some amount of debt.
But anyway, with those improbable assumptions, Jane will still need $941 a month for her costs of living besides housing.
Now to do some basic addition.
With Jane’s $1,796 apartment and her $941 in monthly costs, she needs $2,737 a month to scrape by.
That’s $337 more than she cleared with her minimum-wage job.
Wait, if she lived in a studio -- Zillow puts the median studio rent at $1,460 -- she could save some money.
Another calculation, and I come up with $2,401 per month. Sadly, Jane’s take-home pay (assuming she loses the average 13 percent to taxes) is only $2,262 per month, still not enough.
At a bare minimum, to simply exist in Seattle with these cost assumptions, Jane needs to bring home, after taxes, at least $28,812 to live in a studio apartment (which is probably tiny). For the luxury of a bedroom, she’ll need to bring home $32,844.
Jane can’t afford to live in Seattle on minimum wage.
If Jane were married and they had a child (a household of three), the costs go up.
With a median rent of $2,382 for a two-bedroom apartment (per Zillow) and other costs of living at $2,588.42, Jane’s family would need $4,970 to make it -- just shy of $60,000 a year, still without any "frills" like healthcare or savings.
And yes, I know, some of you are going to tell me things like, “Hey, you can get a roommate to help save costs,” or “You can find cheaper apartments than $1,460 a month!” And yes, you certainly can, but half of the apartments are also more expensive.
But here’s the real rub.
If you paid attention, you saw that my imaginary Seattleite, Jane, saved no money. So when Jane has a medical issue -- and remember, she doesn’t have insurance -- she’ll have no money to pay for it. If literally any extra cost comes into the picture, Jane has no financial plan to deal with it. She’ll probably have to incur some debt, and then -- SNAP -- a new monthly payment is added to her already overburdened budget.
Jane also can’t afford to enjoy the things that make Seattle so great. She can’t eat the amazing food, drink the many wonderful craft beers, ride the ferries or even ride to the top of the Space Needle without scrimping and saving for months.
And as for the outdoors our region is so famous for? If it requires a ticket or any gear, Jane can’t even think about it. Sure, she can do some things with little or no cost. But she’ll have to get creative to access anything far from the city because, you’ll remember, Jane doesn’t have a car.
If Jane is just trying to eke out a living, she’d do better to move to Omaha, Nebraska, where the cost of living is a fraction of Seattle's, since she can’t really enjoy Seattle anyway.
Now, back to reality.
If Jane actually only spent a third of her income on rent, and rented the studio apartment, she’d need to make about $5,493 a month -- $65,925 a year -- before taxes.
Or even if Jane spent more than a third (like many of us do) but paid for health insurance at a modest $167 per month (one estimate of average national cost for catastrophic coverage), then bothered to save even 10 percent of her income (most financial planners advise more like 20 percent), and went out a little more, she might squeak by on $34,636 a year. But she’d need to earn about $40,000 before taxes to be able to spend that $34,636.
So, to return to my original question: Can you afford to live on minimum wage in Seattle?
The answer is still no.
Daniel DeMay covers Seattle culture, business and transportation for seattlepi.com. He can be reached at 206-448-8362 or danieldemay@seattlepi.com. Follow him on Twitter: @Daniel_DeMay.
