Six figures used to mean you made it. A $100,000 salary was the finish line — the number everybody chased. Well, the game has changed: according to a new MoneyLion study, a household pulling in $100,000 a year is still considered lower-middle class in 12 states.
Here is how the math works. MoneyLion used 2024 U.S. Census Bureau data and the Pew Research Center’s definition of middle class — households earning between two-thirds and double their state’s median income. Split that middle-class range into thirds, and the bottom third is “lower-middle class.” Run the numbers state by state, and in a dozen states, even $100,000 doesn’t lift a household out of that bottom third.
Massachusetts is the worst of them: a household there needs to earn more than $116,476 just to climb out of the lower-middle class — the state’s median household income is $104,828, the highest in the country. Only five states in America even have median household incomes over $100,000: Massachusetts, New Jersey, Maryland, Hawaii and California. In California, the basics alone — the annual cost of necessities — run about $81,674 a year, which is why a $111,277 income still lands in the lower-middle tier. Utah is the strange one on the list: it’s the only state of the 12 where overall expenses actually run lower than the national average.
And now the part Atlanta needs to hear: Georgia is NOT on this list. A $100,000 household income in Georgia still stretches — it is not top-tier money, but it plays a whole lot stronger in Atlanta than it does in Boston, San Jose or Honolulu, where six figures is scraping by. Where you live is officially worth as much as what you make.
So FreddyO family, we have to ask: in 2026, what does $100,000 a year really get you where YOU live?
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