Atlanta ranks 9th most affordable city, but capital living still ain’t cheap

But the financial strain is being seen in more ways than homeownership.

Atlanta among most affordable U.S. cities

To determine the most affordable cities in the United States for 2025, Motley Fool Money compared the median household income to their estimated cost-of-living in hundreds of towns by looking at data from the Council for Economic and Community Research and the Census Bureau. Atlanta ranked ninth, beating out 10th ranked neighbor Charleston, South Carolina. It was the only state capital to make the list.

According to their report, Atlanta households make around $85,880 right now. That’s 4% less than the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta’s earlier-mentioned $89,565 estimate for the 11-county metro this year.

Whether you live inside city limits or in the surrounding metro area, Atlanta households are still making significantly more than the national norm. In the U.S., the median household income is about $79,281, the Atlanta bank reported.

Even with Motley Fool’s more conservative Atlanta income estimate, local workers are enjoying a hearty 8.35% pay bump compared to much of the U.S. It’s a mighty reason to want an Atlanta job, but it’s important to remember that many residents are still concerned about their finances.

A city still concerned with affordability

According to a 2024 survey from the Atlanta Regional Commission — the largest perception and attitude survey in Georgia — local workers have still been struggling.

Kennesaw State University conducted the survey across 11 metro Atlanta counties, featuring 4,081 respondents. Approximately 32% of metro Atlanta residents said the economy was their top concern — outranking crime, taxes, education and more.

Much of the concern was laid at the feet of unexpected expenses and difficulty finding jobs. About 70% of respondents said they were either about the same (39%) or worse off (31%) financially than they were in 2023. Based on rising costs, around 64% said they could not afford to move to another house or apartment in their own neighborhood if they wanted to.

Only half said they could come up with $400 for an emergency without having to use a credit card (22%), borrow from someone (9%) or pawn a possession (4%). Around 12% of people said they simply couldn’t get $400 at that time if they needed it for an emergency.

Less than half (48%) of people asked said last year was a good time to find a well-paying job.

The high price of health care

From hundreds of thousands in Georgia being at risk of losing health insurance next year to the state ranking as one of the worst for health care overall, health care is a major statewide crisis too.

According to a Forbes report, Georgia ranked in the bottom 16% of the country for health care affordability last year. The Peach State’s patients averaged an annual $10,976.67 in combined premium and deductible prices for family plans, when getting their coverage through employer-provided health insurance.

According to the Georgia All-Payer Claims Database, the median cost of being hospitalized in Georgia for 2023 (the latest year for which it has data) was $7,000. The average was $13,098. The latest data from the Census Bureau (2022) showed that Georgia had the fourth most uninsured people under 65 years old in the country (13.6% of its population). That’s 1.2 million people, including 171,000 children.

In an Emory University survey, over half (52%) of respondents nationwide were concerned with health care affordability last year. The nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation polled U.S. adults last year too, revealing that roughly half of Americans asked found it difficult to afford health care. A quarter said they postponed or completely put off treatments at some point in the past 12 months because they couldn’t afford to.

The bottom dollar

Surveys have shown around half of Americans asked have struggled to pay for health care, and rankings have shown Georgia to be one of the least affordable states for treatment.

Houses are unaffordable here, requiring significantly more money than many Atlanta workers can make. But, home’s are even more expensive elsewhere, as Atlanta houses are cheaper than the national median right now.

According to the Atlanta Regional Commission, Atlanta’s cost of living — a city that has had an 80% increase in its consumer price index since 2000 — was slightly less than the national average last year.

But the truth is that affordability is relative, and Atlanta still has a long way to go before a lot of local workers are going to start feeling comfortable.