Cost of Living
per year
per month
How Folsom's prices compare to the US city average across major spending categories.
How far does your salary go in Folsom?
Your $100,000 in Folsom has the same purchasing power as $83,493 in the average US city. You'd need $16,507 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 Folsom's cost index of 120, sorted by closest match.
These are the reasons people actually move to Folsom, ordered roughly by what shows up loudest in the data. Above-average earnings, not just for a few people and among the safer us cities of its size lead, plus 3 more things worth knowing — the rest unpacked below.
Folsom's typical household earns $134,935, 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.
The reported crime rate in Folsom runs about 1,641 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.
Bike Score of 67/100 in Folsom. 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 Folsom 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.
Folsom has a college-educated share of about 54% 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 Folsom'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 40°F, Folsom 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 Folsom sit around 40°F — sweater-and-jacket weather most days, with the occasional cold front that reminds you it's still winter.
Properly hot. Folsom'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. Folsom'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.
Around 325 feet (99 m) above sea level — flat enough that nothing about Folsom's altitude shows up in daily life.
The headline number is reassuring. Folsom's reported incident rate of about 1,641 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.
More expensive than average — by enough to plan around. Folsom's composite index is 120 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.
Folsom scores 43 out of 100 on Walk Score, which translates to "car-dependent but not aggressively so". Some neighborhoods buck the citywide average; the dense inner cores are usually noticeably more walkable than the city number suggests.
As a rule of thumb, plan on about $83,839 to live in Folsom 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 Folsom runs about $2,164/mo — keeping housing under 30% of gross income points to a similar floor on what you'd want to earn.