The Big Items: Where Your Paycheck Actually Goes
Let's get the big gorillas in the room out of the way first, because this is where the budget gets wrecked or reinforced. The first thing to understand about Georgetown is the housing market. It's a pressure cooker. While the median household income sits at $95,160, that figure is for dual-income households. For a single earner, the math is a lot tighter. The median home price is a phantom in the data, but the market reality is clear: prices have been bid up by an influx of people chasing that "affordable" reputation. Buying a home here is not the slam-dunk investment it was a decade ago. With mortgage rates hovering, you're looking at a massive monthly outlay. A $350,000 home with a 20% down payment and a 7% mortgage rate will cost you over $2,200 a month in just principal and interest. Then you get hit with property taxes. Buying can easily become a trap if you haven't factored in the total carrying cost, locking you into a payment that consumes over half your take-home pay on a modest salary.
Renting, on the surface, looks like the smarter play for flexibility. A 2-bedroom apartment might run you around $1,280. That seems manageable. However, this is where the "average" number game gets you. You're competing with everyone else who saw the same low price tag and moved here. Vacancy rates are tight, meaning landlords have zero incentive to offer concessions. You want a garage? That’s extra. You want a covered parking spot? That's a premium. The advertised rent is the starting point, not the final bill. You're also dealing with a rental market that is chasing the property values, so expect your rent to increase by 5-8% annually. The rent isn't a stable cost, it's a liability that grows every year, eating away at any pay raise you might get. It’s a temporary shield from the property tax bullet, but it comes with its own long-term cost of never building equity.
Now for the taxes, the part of the equation that gets conveniently glossed over. Texas loves to brag about having no state income tax. Don't pop the champagne. That "savings" is immediately and aggressively diverted into another bucket: property taxes. To fund the lack of an income tax, the state and local entities lean on property owners like a crutch. In Williamson County, where Georgetown sits, the combined property tax rate can easily top 2.2% of the home's assessed value. Let's run that back to the $350,000 house. That’s $7,700 a year, or $642 a month, tacked onto your mortgage payment. That's a permanent, recurring cost that never goes away and will likely increase as the county's appraisal of your home's value rises. This is the core of the Texas fiscal model: you pay on the back end through ownership, and that cost is passed down to renters through higher rents. It's a shell game with your money.
Then you have the daily consumables: groceries and gas. Don't expect a massive break here. While Texas has no state grocery tax, the cost of food in Georgetown isn't significantly below the national baseline. Supply chain costs, labor, and the sheer demand from a growing population keep prices firm. You'll see a gallon of milk for $3.59 and a loaf of bread for $3.00, numbers that look normal until you realize the local competition isn't driving prices down. Gas is subject to the same crude oil whims as the rest of the country, but with a slight Texas discount. You might save a few cents a gallon compared to California, but you're also likely driving more, as public transportation is virtually non-existent and everything is spread out. That "savings" at the pump gets eaten by the sheer volume of fuel you burn driving to Austin for work or even just across town for errands.
