It depends on what area of the US you are in. In Western PA and the midwest, housing can still be found in decent neighborhoods at a reasonable cost. HSH did a

It depends on what area of the US you are in. In Western PA and the midwest, housing can still be found in decent neighborhoods at a reasonable cost. HSH did a study showing 27 metro areas and the cost to buy a house. http://www.hsh.com/finance/mortgage/salary-home-buying-25-cities.html http://www.hsh.com/finance/mortgage/salary-home-buying-25-ci... For Pittsburgh, a $29k takehome is roughly $40-45k a year. That is in the $20/hr range. I know at one point, my salary was $51k/year and I was brining home $36-37k annually. I was working a standard office job that was not particularly exciting, but all I needed was to have a bachelors degree. If you have one adult working full time and another part time for an extra ~15k a year, you can live relatively comfortably in Pittsburgh, and I am assuming other medium sized cities in the Midwest. The big costal cities (SF, NYC, LA, DC) do make it difficult to own housing, but almost every country has cities where it is more expensive to live.