Cost of Living
per year
per month
How Montgomery's prices compare to the US city average across major spending categories.
How far does your salary go in Montgomery?
Your $100,000 in Montgomery has the same purchasing power as $120,919 in the average US city. You'd need $20,919 less 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 Montgomery's cost index of 83, sorted by closest match.
These are the reasons people actually move to Montgomery, ordered roughly by what shows up loudest in the data. Living costs come in under the US baseline and among the safer us cities of its size lead, plus 2 more things worth knowing — the rest unpacked below.
The composite cost-of-living index lands at 83, a comfortable 17% under the US norm. It shows up most clearly in housing, which is where the gap to coastal metros usually opens up. Median rent in town runs about $1,026/mo against a typical household income of $54,166, which is the kind of ratio that leaves room to save.
The reported crime rate in Montgomery runs about 37 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.
Average AQI in Montgomery comes in around 43, 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.
Average commute time in Montgomery runs around 20 minutes one-way — short enough that it doesn't restructure your day. Compared to the 45-plus-minute commutes that are normal in major metros, the difference adds up to a real lifestyle gap.
Reasons are pulled from Montgomery'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 39°F, Montgomery 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 Montgomery sit around 39°F — sweater-and-jacket weather most days, with the occasional cold front that reminds you it's still winter.
Properly hot. Montgomery's summer averages around 93°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. Montgomery'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 269 feet (82 m) above sea level — flat enough that nothing about Montgomery's altitude shows up in daily life.
Atlantic basin storms can form from June 1 to November 30, but the serious ones cluster in August, September, and the first half of October. Residents of Montgomery learn the season's rhythm fast: watch the cone, board up when it's the call, and don't shrug off the slow-mover storms — those are usually the ones that flood.
The headline number is reassuring. Montgomery's reported incident rate of about 37 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.
Montgomery is a genuinely affordable city by US standards. The composite index sits at 83 versus the 100 national baseline — about 17% cheaper overall, with housing doing most of the heavy lifting.
Montgomery scores 44 out of 100 on Walk Score, which translates to "car-dependent but not aggressively so". Transit Score is 22 out of 100. 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 $57,890 to live in Montgomery 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 Montgomery runs about $1,026/mo — keeping housing under 30% of gross income points to a similar floor on what you'd want to earn.