Cost of Living
per year
per month
How The Colony's prices compare to the US city average across major spending categories.
How far does your salary go in The Colony?
Your $100,000 in The Colony has the same purchasing power as $92,790 in the average US city. You'd need $7,210 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 The Colony's cost index of 108, sorted by closest match.
So why do people move to The Colony? The honest answer involves a few specific things the data backs up — most clearly no state income tax and paychecks come in above the us average, plus 1 more things worth knowing. The detail on each one is below.
Texas is one of the handful of US states with no state income tax on wages, so the only income-tax bite on a paycheck in The Colony is federal. For a household earning $100k, that's a tangible four-figure difference every year compared to a comparable salary in California or New York.
The typical household in The Colony pulls in $106,518 — 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.
The Colony has a college-educated share of about 46% 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 The Colony'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, The Colony 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 The Colony sit around 40°F — sweater-and-jacket weather most days, with the occasional cold front that reminds you it's still winter.
Properly hot. The Colony's summer averages around 96°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.
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 The Colony. (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.)
Roughly 531 feet (162 m). That's modest elevation — comparable to most inland-Midwest and Southern cities.
Officially, Atlantic hurricane season runs June 1 through November 30, but most of the action lands between mid-August and mid-October. For The Colony, that's when to keep half an eye on the National Hurricane Center forecast cone — and when an actual evacuation plan is worth having in the drawer if you're in a low-lying or coastal neighborhood.
Middle of the pack. The Colony comes in around 3,131 per 100,000, basically the national average. The interesting question is usually which neighborhood, not which city — that's where the real variation lives.
It's a middle-of-the-road US city on cost. The Colony's index of 108 sits within a few points of the national average — your money buys roughly what it would in a typical American metro.
The Colony's Walk Score is 7/100, firmly in the car-required tier. The layout assumes you'll drive to the grocery store, drive to work, drive everywhere.
As a rule of thumb, plan on about $75,439 to live in The Colony 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 The Colony runs about $1,739/mo — keeping housing under 30% of gross income points to a similar floor on what you'd want to earn.