Numbers We Calculated Ourselves
Most of what you read online quotes a number from somewhere else. These four tables don't exist anywhere else — we built them from primary government data because nobody had published them in this form.
Free to use. Copy any table, republish it, screenshot it. We only ask that you link back so readers can check the method.
1. U.S. wage percentiles — what salary puts you in the top 1%, 10%, 20%
The Social Security Administration publishes the full wage distribution of every W-2 earner in the country. It does not publish percentile thresholds. So we computed them.
| You earn more than… | Annual wage (2023) |
|---|---|
| Top 1% | $387,481 |
| Top 5% | $178,312 |
| Top 10% | $127,946 |
| Top 20% | $87,720 |
| Top 25% | $76,474 |
| Top 30% | $67,655 |
| Top 40% | $53,971 |
| Top 50% (median) | $43,263 |
Source data — SSA, "Wage Statistics for 2023," the frequency distribution of all 173,670,935 wage earners. 2023 is the most recent year SSA has published.
How we calculated it — SSA reports cumulative percentages at the boundary of each $5,000 wage interval. Thresholds between boundaries are linearly interpolated.
Accuracy checks — Our interpolated median came to $43,263 against SSA's own published median estimate of $43,222.81, a difference of +0.09%. Our interpolated share of earners at or below the average wage came to 67.6%, matching SSA's own stated figure exactly.
What to know before quoting it — SSA counts every person with W-2 wages, including part-time and part-year workers. 16,795,991 people earned under $5,000 for the year and are in this denominator. That is why the median sits at $43,263 and not near a full-time salary. It is not an error; it is what SSA chose to count.
→ Full article: What Percentile Is My Salary?
2. What one $100,000 salary buys — under seven different lending standards
Every mortgage calculator gives a different answer. We held the borrower, the rate, and the assumptions constant and changed only the debt-to-income standard being applied.
| Standard applied | Housing budget | Approx. max home price |
|---|---|---|
| 28% front-end (the "28" in 28/36) | 28% → $2,333/mo | ~$353,000 |
| 30% front-end (Zillow's stated guideline) | 30% → $2,500/mo | ~$381,000 |
| FHA 31% front-end | 31% → $2,583/mo | ~$394,000 |
| 36% flat DTI, no other debt | 36% → $3,000/mo | ~$464,000 |
| FHA 43% back-end, no other debt | 43% → $3,583/mo | ~$560,000 |
| Fannie Mae automated underwriting max | 50% → $4,167/mo | ~$657,000 |
| FHA automated scorecard max | 56.9% → $4,742/mo | ~$753,000 |
The finding — Same person, same rate, same assumptions. The answer ranges from $353,000 to $753,000, a spread of more than 2×, depending only on which standard the calculator applies.
Assumptions held constant — $100,000 gross salary, 20% down, no other monthly debt. The 20%-down assumption was held even for the FHA rows on purpose, to isolate the effect of the ratio itself.
What to know before quoting it — Adding other monthly debt pulls every row down. A mortgage rate one point higher or lower moves every number by tens of thousands. Treat this as a snapshot of how the standards differ, not a promise of what any lender will approve.
A correction worth carrying with the table — The 43% DTI cap that calculators still cite as "the" standard was removed from the General QM definition by the CFPB, effective 2021, and replaced with price-based thresholds. The underwriting ceilings in the last two rows (50%, 56.9%) are separate and still in force.
→ Full article: How Much House Can I Afford With a $100K Salary?
3. Health coverage after you leave a job — what the multiplier actually is
Your employer was paying most of your premium. COBRA charges you 102% of the whole thing. We ran the arithmetic on KFF's published figures.
| Coverage | You paid at work (per year) | COBRA (102% of full premium) | Multiplier |
|---|---|---|---|
| Single | $1,440 | $9,512 | 6.6× |
| Family | $6,850 | $27,533 | 4.0× |
Source data — KFF 2025 Employer Health Benefits Survey (total premiums: single $9,325, family $26,993; worker contributions as shown). COBRA's 102% rule: 26 CFR 54.4980B-8.
How we calculated it — Total annual premium × 1.02, divided by what the worker was contributing.
The finding that surprises people — Single coverage jumps more than family coverage. Employers cover roughly 84% of a single premium and 75% of a family premium, so the single-coverage worker loses a larger share when the employer's contribution disappears.
What to know before quoting it — These are national averages. Your own plan's split may differ. The multipliers are our calculation from KFF's figures, not a KFF-published statistic.
→ Full article: How Much Is COBRA Insurance Monthly?
4. What "billions forfeited in FSA money" actually traces back to
This one is not a table. It is a correction, and it may be the most useful thing on this page.
Headlines report that Americans forfeit $3 billion, $4.5 billion, $5.1 billion, or $7.2 billion in unused FSA money each year, usually citing EBRI.
EBRI does not publish a national dollar total. What EBRI publishes, from a database of 3.2 million real FSA accounts, is:
- Over half of accountholders forfeit some balance each year
- The average forfeited is about $420–$441 per account
The billions figure comes from multiplying that per-account average by an outside estimate of how many FSA accounts exist nationwide. That multiplication is done by journalists, not by EBRI — which is why the published totals disagree with each other.
Both numbers are real. Only the per-account figure is something EBRI itself published.
→ Full article: HSA vs FSA — Does Your FSA Roll Over?
Why we publish these separately
Every table above sits inside a longer article, where it is hard to find and harder to cite. Researchers, journalists, and anyone building a calculator should be able to reach the number directly, see exactly how it was derived, and check it against the source.
If a figure here turns out to be wrong, we want to know. Every table names its source data and its method so that checking is possible.
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