The average accountant salary in San Francisco is $87,000 per year. This figure includes accountants who have been working for more than 20 years, as well as those who are just starting out. However, the cost of living in San Francisco is very high, so it is important to consider this when looking at your options for employment.
For example, if you were to make $87,000 per year and live on your own without any roommates or family members, you would need to earn about $64.65 per hour in order to afford rent alone (the current median price of a one-bedroom apartment). If you were to get married and have children with your partner, this number would increase dramatically because you would be responsible for supporting four people instead of just yourself.
San Francisco is one of the most expensive metropolitan areas in the United States. In fact, it’s so expensive that it’s almost impossible to find an apartment that falls below $3,000 per month.
And when you take into account all of the other expenses associated with living in San Francisco—including food, transportation, and entertainment—a person’s budget can quickly become strained if they aren’t careful about how they spend their money.
But what about accounting salaries? How much does someone working as an accountant in San Francisco make?
To answer this question, we did some research on Payscale and Glassdoor to find out what people working in various industries earn there.
According to these sources:
The average salary for an accountant in San Francisco is $92,000 per year. This includes accountants at small businesses as well as those who work for large companies like Twitter or Uber.
The median salary for an accountant in San Francisco is $96,000 per year. The median represents the middle number in a group of numbers—in this case, there are more people earning less than $96K than there are earning more than $96K each year in San Francisco (according to Payscale).
Accountant Salary In San Francisco
A good salary in San Francisco, CA is anything over $75,000. That’s because the median income in San Francisco is $75,000, which means if you earn more than that you’re earning more than 50% of the people living in San Francisco. The average salary in San Francisco is $88,264.
A good hourly wage in San Francisco is $36.06 per hour. That works out to a good weekly wage of $1,442 per week and a good monthly wage of $6,250 per month. However, using the median income is only one way to calculate a good salary in San Francisco.
Another way to calculate a good salary in San Francisco is to look at the price of housing and use that to back into a good salary. Experts agree that you want to maintain about a 5 to 1 home price to income ratio. Based on the median home price of $1,097,800, a good salary in San Francisco would be $219,560.
Lastly, we can determine a good salary in San Francisco by looking at the cost of living and comparing it to the US average salary. The cost of living in San Francisco is 104% higher than than the national average. The national average salary is $56,310, so a good salary in San Francisco is anything over $115,435 by this measure.
AVERAGE ANNUAL SALARY IN SAN FRANCISCO, CA
| Percentile | Annual Salary | Monthly Pay | Weekly Pay | Hourly Wage |
| 10th | $36,000 | $3,000 | $692 | $17.31 |
| 25th | $51,000 | $4,250 | $980 | $24.52 |
| Median | $75,000 | $6,250 | $1,442 | $36.06 |
| 75th | $110,000 | $9,166 | $2,115 | $52.88 |
| 90th | $154,000 | $12,833 | $2,961 | $74.04 |
