Cost of Living
per year
per month
How Salina's prices compare to the US city average across major spending categories.
How far does your salary go in Salina?
Your $100,000 in Salina has the same purchasing power as $118,850 in the average US city. You'd need $18,850 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 Salina's cost index of 84, sorted by closest match.
These are the reasons people actually move to Salina, ordered roughly by what shows up loudest in the data. Living costs come in under the US baseline and low unemployment, plenty of openings lead, plus 2 more things worth knowing — the rest unpacked below.
The composite cost-of-living index lands at 84, a comfortable 16% 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 $863/mo against a typical household income of $56,945, which is the kind of ratio that leaves room to save.
At about 4.0% unemployment, Salina'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.
With a citywide Walk Score of 72/100, Salina sits firmly in the walkable-by-US-standards camp. Pick a central neighborhood and most daily errands happen without keys in your hand.
Average commute time in Salina runs around 14 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 Salina'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.
Salina does winter the real way. Averages around 25°F keep snow on the ground for weeks at a time, and lakes and rivers tend to freeze hard enough to walk on.
Properly cold. Salina's winter sits around 25°F on average — and that's the average, meaning plenty of nights drop well below zero. People here own gear.
Properly hot. Salina'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 7, give or take a half-zone. Salina's typical winter low puts it in that band on the USDA Hardiness map, which is what nurseries label plants against. Use Zone 7 as your starting filter; the USDA's interactive map is more precise for borderline cases.
Roughly 1,240 feet (378 m). That's modest elevation — comparable to most inland-Midwest and Southern cities.
Middle of the pack. Salina comes in around 3,785 per 100,000, basically the national average. The interesting question is usually which neighborhood, not which city — that's where the real variation lives.
Salina is a genuinely affordable city by US standards. The composite index sits at 84 versus the 100 national baseline — about 16% cheaper overall, with housing doing most of the heavy lifting.
Salina scores 72/100 on Walk Score, putting it in the "very walkable" tier. 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 $58,898 to live in Salina 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 Salina runs about $863/mo — keeping housing under 30% of gross income points to a similar floor on what you'd want to earn.