Leftover leaderboard, September 2026

A cost-of-living index will tell you McAllen is cheaper than Manhattan. You already knew that. What it will not tell you is how much of an $80,000 or $160,000 paycheck is still in the account after the IRS, the state, a city wage tax if there is one, and the one-bedroom you would actually rent.

Leftover is that dollar. It is the same number on every city page, every ranking, and every head-to-head on this site. This leaderboard is not a second model. It is September 2026's snapshot of the calculator, run three times, on three salaries, then sorted by leftover instead of by fit. The 2026 best leftover metros report is the other snapshot: local nurse pay, same size cutoff, one table.

At $120,000 held flat, McAllen currently leads large metros at $5,021 a month. That is One adult, renting a 1-bedroom, remote pay, and asking rent for one bedroom — not a metro-wide average and not a household of four.

Each table is the top 20 metros with at least 500k people, ranked by leftover at that salary. The salary does not get scaled by local wages. That is the remote switch on the homepage: you keep the paycheck and the city only changes the tax and the bills.

The names move between bands. A state with no wage tax looks better as the paycheck grows, because more of the raise survives. A cheap one-bedroom looks relatively more important at $80k, when rent is a larger share of take-home. If you want local-market pay for a specific job, leave this page and run the calculator with an occupation instead of a custom salary.

City names open that metro with these inputs already set. The ranking link above each table opens /results sorted by leftover for the same household, including metros this list omitted as too small.

A single paycheck that would feel tight on the coasts. Leftover here is what remains after tax, a one-bedroom, and the rest of the modelled month.

Open the live ranking at $80,000 to change bedrooms, filing household, or local vs remote pay. Each city name uses the same household as this table.

The middle band. Tax brackets start to matter more than they did at $80k; rent still decides the top of the list.

Open the live ranking at $120,000 to change bedrooms, filing household, or local vs remote pay. Each city name uses the same household as this table.

More take-home in every metro, but the ranking is not a carbon copy of $120k. Higher brackets and the same asking rents reshuffle a few names.

Open the live ranking at $160,000 to change bedrooms, filing household, or local vs remote pay. Each city name uses the same household as this table.

The arithmetic is the leftover equation on the methodology page:

• Gross pay is the salary in the table header, held constant in every metro.
• Federal income tax, Social Security, Medicare, state income tax, and city wage tax where it exists. Filing status is inferred from the household: one adult and no children files as single.
• Minus asking rent for one bedroom, not an ACS median and not a two-bedroom blend.
• Minus groceries, healthcare, utilities, getting around and the rest of the modelled month, scaled by that metro's non-housing price level.

Tiny metros can look even cheaper. They are left off on purpose so the list is a set of places large enough to have a labour market, not a ranking of college towns. Change the population cutoff in your own head; the full leftover ranking does not apply one.

• Rent is a one-bedroom asking rent. A couple that needs two bedrooms, or a buyer putting 20% down, is not on this list. The bedroom switch on the homepage is the fastest way to break a pretty ranking.
• Filing status is the site default. One adult, no kids, single. Married filing jointly, or head of household, changes the federal and state bill. The calculator infers that from adults and children; it does not ask you to pick a form.
• Remote means the paycheck does not follow the city. If the job is local, a nurse or a teacher does not take $120k to McAllen. Use local-market pay for that question.
• Leftover is not take-home minus rent only. Groceries, a car in most metros, healthcare and utilities are in the subtraction. That is why a cheap-rent city with a long drive can lose to a slightly pricier one you can walk.

None of those caveats are unique to a monthly table. They are the same limits as the rest of the site. The leftover versus a COL index guide is the longer version of why a percentage is the wrong first number. Best leftover metros for remote workers walks the same $80k / $120k / $160k household in prose, including why you might skip #1. Why a cheaper COL score can still lose leftover is the worked-example version.

These three bands are a filter, not your offer letter. Set the job, the real paycheck, the people in the house and the bedrooms you need on the homepage, then sort the map ranking by leftover. If two cities survive, open a compare — New York vs Raleigh and Las Vegas vs Reno are the pairs this month's corridors keep coming back to.

The stable address for this series is /guides/leftover-leaderboard. Next month's edition gets its own dated URL; the hub always points at the latest one.