Cost of Living
per year
per month
How Fairfield's prices compare to the US city average across major spending categories.
How far does your salary go in Fairfield?
Your $100,000 in Fairfield has the same purchasing power as $77,387 in the average US city. You'd need $22,613 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 Fairfield's cost index of 129, sorted by closest match.
So why do people move to Fairfield? The honest answer involves a few specific things the data backs up — most clearly paychecks come in above the us average and you can walk to most of what you need, plus 2 more things worth knowing. The detail on each one is below.
The typical household in Fairfield pulls in $98,857 — comfortably above the US median. Combined with the cost of living here, the income-to-expense ratio works out better than a quick look at either number in isolation would suggest.
With a citywide Walk Score of 74/100, Fairfield sits firmly in the walkable-by-US-standards camp. Pick a central neighborhood and most daily errands happen without keys in your hand.
Bike Score of 65/100 in Fairfield. That puts it in the small group of US cities where you can do groceries, commute, and run errands on a bike without it being a feat of urban survival.
Average AQI in Fairfield comes in around 44, well into the "good" band. Clean air isn't a thing you appreciate until you've lived somewhere it wasn't — and this is the side of that line you want to be on.
Reasons are pulled from Fairfield'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 43°F, Fairfield 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 Fairfield sit around 43°F — sweater-and-jacket weather most days, with the occasional cold front that reminds you it's still winter.
Warm without being brutal. Summer in Fairfield sits about 72°F on average. Afternoons can push into the high 80s, but mornings and evenings are usually genuinely pleasant.
Approximately USDA Hardiness Zone 9. That's the band gardeners use to pick plants — anything rated for Zone 9 or colder should survive a typical winter in Fairfield. (The estimate is derived from our winter-temperature data; the official USDA map uses station-level annual minimums and may differ by half a zone.)
Around 39 feet (12 m) above sea level — flat enough that nothing about Fairfield's altitude shows up in daily life.
Middle of the pack. Fairfield comes in around 3,087 per 100,000, basically the national average. The interesting question is usually which neighborhood, not which city — that's where the real variation lives.
More expensive than average — by enough to plan around. Fairfield's composite index is 129 versus 100 for the US, with rent and home prices driving most of the gap. Salaries in higher-paying industries usually move together, but the math still tightens for everyone else.
Fairfield scores 74/100 on Walk Score, putting it in the "very walkable" tier. Transit Score is 29 out of 100. It's the kind of city where you don't think of going to the grocery store as "going" to the grocery store.
As a rule of thumb, plan on about $90,454 to live in Fairfield 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 Fairfield runs about $2,047/mo — keeping housing under 30% of gross income points to a similar floor on what you'd want to earn.