A $100K Salary Sounds Great Until You Live in These 25 NJ Towns

Making $100,000 a year used to sound like you had officially made it.

Honestly, I still hear "six-figure salary" and instinctively think someone is doing pretty well.

Then I remember we live in New Jersey.

A $100,000 salary certainly isn't pocket change, but depending on where you decide to live in the Garden State, that money can disappear surprisingly quickly. Housing is the big one. Throw property taxes, transportation, insurance, groceries, and everything else into the equation and suddenly six figures doesn't necessarily provide the lifestyle you might expect.

$100,000 Can Feel Very Different Across New Jersey

Just look at New Jersey's housing market.

According to 2025 residential statistics from the New Jersey Division of Taxation, the average home sold for more than $4 million in Alpine. In Deal, it was more than $3.8 million. Stone Harbor averaged above $3.1 million, while Avalon approached $3 million.

And it isn't only the purchase price of the house.

Some North Jersey communities have average annual residential property-tax bills exceeding $20,000.

That's why I wanted to see which New Jersey communities really make $100,000 feel a lot less impressive.

YOU'LL ALSO LIKE: 

NJ's Safest Towns Just Got Ranked, See Where Yours Landed

Ranked: The 25 Most Dangerous Towns in New Jersey

How These 25 New Jersey Towns Were Selected

For this list, we're looking primarily at two pieces of 2025 data from the New Jersey Division of Taxation: average residential sale prices and average residential property-tax bills.

This isn't meant to suggest that you literally cannot live in these towns while earning $100,000. People obviously have different circumstances, including whether they rent or own, when they purchased their home, household size, debt, and whether there's more than one income.

Instead, think of this as a look at the New Jersey communities where the local cost of housing makes a $100,000 salary lose some of its swagger.

And in some of these places, it loses it pretty quickly.