Cost of Living
per year
per month
How Brentwood's prices compare to the US city average across major spending categories.
How far does your salary go in Brentwood?
Your $100,000 in Brentwood has the same purchasing power as $99,030 in the average US city. You'd need $970 more here to maintain that standard of living.
Demographics and workforce data from the US Census ACS 5-Year.
bachelor's or higher
Climate, safety, and walkability indicators.
See a side-by-side breakdown of cost of living, housing, and salaries.
Popular comparisons
Sorted by affordability — most affordable first.
Within 10 points of Brentwood's cost index of 101, sorted by closest match.
These are the reasons people actually move to Brentwood, ordered roughly by what shows up loudest in the data. Wage income stays untaxed at the state level and above-average earnings, not just for a few people lead, plus 3 more things worth knowing — the rest unpacked below.
Wage income in Brentwood isn't taxed at the state level. Tennessee is one of the few US states with no income tax, which is one of the reasons people relocating from high-tax states tend to land here in the first place.
Brentwood's typical household earns $181,576, which puts it in the top tier of US cities for household income. The bottom of the wage distribution isn't necessarily different from anywhere else, but the median and above sit meaningfully higher.
At about 2.2% unemployment, Brentwood's labor market is running on the tight side. Easier to land a role, easier to negotiate, easier to leave one job for a better one — the practical things that matter when you're actually looking.
The reported crime rate in Brentwood runs about 915 per 100,000 residents — meaningfully below the national norm. People who care about safety as a baseline rather than a feature tend to land in cities with numbers like these.
Brentwood has a college-educated share of about 75% among adults 25+, which is higher than the national norm. It shows up in the local job mix, in the school district's reputation, and in the kind of conversations you have at the coffee shop.
Reasons are pulled from Brentwood's actual data — Census ACS, BLS, BEA, NOAA, EPA AQS, FBI, and Walk Score. We don't list positives that aren't supported by the numbers, which is why different cities show different sections.
Not really a snow town. With winters averaging 35°F, Brentwood sits in the mild-cold band where snowflakes appear occasionally and everything melts within a day. Most years see one storm worth talking about.
Cool, not cold. Winters in Brentwood sit around 35°F — sweater-and-jacket weather most days, with the occasional cold front that reminds you it's still winter.
Properly hot. Brentwood's summer averages around 91°F with daily highs that routinely break 100°F. The trick to summer here is starting the day at sunrise and staying inside through the worst of it.
Zone 9, give or take a half-zone. Brentwood's typical winter low puts it in that band on the USDA Hardiness map, which is what nurseries label plants against. Use Zone 9 as your starting filter; the USDA's interactive map is more precise for borderline cases.
Roughly 764 feet (233 m). That's modest elevation — comparable to most inland-Midwest and Southern cities.
The headline number is reassuring. Brentwood's reported incident rate of about 915 per 100,000 is comfortably below the US norm of around 3,500 per 100k. Specific neighborhoods always vary, but the broader picture is on the safer side.
It's a middle-of-the-road US city on cost. Brentwood's index of 101 sits within a few points of the national average — your money buys roughly what it would in a typical American metro.
Brentwood's Walk Score is 1/100, firmly in the car-required tier. The layout assumes you'll drive to the grocery store, drive to work, drive everywhere.
As a rule of thumb, plan on about $70,686 to live in Brentwood the way a $70,000 earner lives in a typical US city. The math gets less forgiving the lower you go below that. Median rent in Brentwood runs about $2,459/mo — keeping housing under 30% of gross income points to a similar floor on what you'd want to earn.