Cost of Living
per year
per month
How Richmond's prices compare to the US city average across major spending categories.
How far does your salary go in Richmond?
Your $100,000 in Richmond has the same purchasing power as $70,368 in the average US city. You'd need $29,632 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 Richmond's cost index of 142, sorted by closest match.
Richmond has at least one strong card to play — paychecks come in above the us average. Here's the longer version.
The typical household in Richmond pulls in $86,618 — 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.
Reasons are pulled from Richmond'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, Richmond 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 Richmond 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 Richmond 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 Richmond. (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 30 feet (9 m) above sea level — flat enough that nothing about Richmond's altitude shows up in daily life.
Middle of the pack. Richmond comes in around 3,691 per 100,000, basically the national average. The interesting question is usually which neighborhood, not which city — that's where the real variation lives.
Significantly. Richmond's index of 142 puts it in the top tier of US cities for cost of living — roughly 42% above the national baseline. The pattern is familiar: housing eats a large share of incomes, and people earning median-equivalent jobs from cheaper metros feel the difference fast.
Richmond scores 48 out of 100 on Walk Score, which translates to "car-dependent but not aggressively so". Transit Score is 38 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 $99,477 to live in Richmond 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 Richmond runs about $1,853/mo — keeping housing under 30% of gross income points to a similar floor on what you'd want to earn.