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If you're renting, you know how much you need to pay each month. But have you ever considered how much you need to earn per hour to afford rent?
As you consider ways to help pay for your rent, the data shows how much you'll need to afford even a small home.
Here's how much you'll need to earn per hour to rent a two-bedroom home in your state.
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A National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC) report examined how much you would need to earn per hour to afford a two-bedroom home in each state. They call this the Housing Wage.
The "wage needed to afford rent" estimates a full-time worker's hourly wage to rent a two-bedroom home at the fair-market rate (FMR). They also assumed that the wage-earner would spend 30% of their income on rent, the "accepted standard of affordability."
To get the "wage needed to afford rent" number for each state, the NLIHC multiplied the FMR by 12 to get the yearly cost and then calculated 30% of that amount.
For example, the average FMR for a two-bedroom rental in the U.S. is $1,486.25. Multiplied by 12 months gets us $17,835 in rent for the year.
If we only want to spend 30% of our earnings on rent, we'll need to multiply the annual rent by .3 to reach the total yearly income needed to afford a two-bedroom rental of $59,450 ($17,835 / .3 = $59,450).
To get the "wage needed to afford rent," we simply divide the total annual income needed to afford a two-bedroom rental in each state by 52 (weeks per year) and then by 40 (hours per work week.
That gives us $28.58 as the average "wage needed to afford rent" in the U.S. ($59,450 / 52 = $1,143; $1,143 / 40 = $28.58).
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