Single and making $100K in California? New study says youre still short of comfortable heres how much you need

A six-figure salary doesn’t buy what it used to — especially in California.A single adult living in the Golden State now needs to earn an eye-watering $126,797 a year before taxes to live “comfortably,” according to a new report from financial planning site SmartAsset.

That puts singletons who are bringing in an even $100,000 roughly $27,000 short of financial ease — squeezed between high rents, steep gas prices, sky-high state taxes, and seemingly persistent inflation.The biggest news, opinion and culture shaping California right now.

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Never miss a story And the bar is moving rapidly.The amount Californians need to rake in jumped 6.1% in just one year, marking the fourth largest increase of any state in the country.

Only Montana, where the required salary surged 8.6%, New York, up 8.4%, and Maine, up 6.5%, saw a steeper year-over-year increase.The findings cemented California as the third most expensive state in the nation for single residents, out priced only by Hawaii — where comfortable hovers around $129,002 a year — and Massachusetts at $127,213.SmartAsset’s researchers didn’t define “comfortable” as private chefs and weekend trips to Napa.The study drew basic cost of living data from the MIT Living Wage Calculator — the bare minimum required to cover rent, utilities, food, healthcare and transportation — and applied the popular 50/30/20 budgeting rule.Under the formula, 50% of after-tax income is earmarked for necessities such as housing, food and utilities, 30% can go towards wants and discretionary spending, and 20% to put in savings or paying down loans and debt.

If single life in California looks steep, raising a family requires corporate exec level income.For a household with two working adults and two children, the annual income needed to live comfortably in California has...