Financial Manager Salary in Texas: Pay by Experience, City & Take-Home

A financial manager in Texas earns a median of $164,860 a year, or about $79.26 an hour, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (2025). Most pay lands between $127,480 at the 25th percentile and $214,070 at the 75th. Texas charges no state income tax, so that median translates to roughly $123,435 in actual take-home pay.

How Texas pay compares to the national figure

The national median for financial managers is $166,570 a year, per the BLS (2025). Texas sits just below that at $164,860, a gap of $1,710, or about 1 percent. For a job category this senior, that’s close enough to call a tie. The headline number is national-grade pay, and the absence of a state income tax means a Texas financial manager keeps more of it than a colleague earning the same gross salary in most other states.

The state mean, which gets pulled up by the highest earners, is $180,170. That mean sitting more than $15,000 above the median tells you the top of this field stretches a long way. The 90th percentile in Texas reaches $309,290, nearly double the median, while the 10th percentile starts at $98,250. Texas employs about 71,870 financial managers, one of the largest concentrations of the role in the country, spread across energy, banking, healthcare, real estate, and a fast-growing technology sector.

There’s a second reason the Texas number beats the national figure in practice even though the gross is slightly lower. The $166,570 national median is a blend of high-tax and no-tax states. A financial manager earning $166,570 in a state with a 6 or 9 percent income tax keeps thousands less than a Texan earning $164,860 with zero state tax. So while Texas trails the national gross by $1,710, the Texan typically nets more spendable income. That’s the practical answer most national salary pages skip, because they stop at the gross figure and never carry it through to take-home.

Financial manager salary in Texas by experience

Pay in this field tracks closely with years on the job, the size of the budgets you control, and whether you carry a title like controller, treasurer, or VP of finance. The BLS percentile points are the cleanest proxy for that progression. Here is how earnings climb from entry level to senior in Texas.

The jump from early career to mid career is the steepest part of the curve in percentage terms. Moving from the 25th percentile at $127,480 to the median at $164,860 is a $37,380 raise, roughly 29 percent, and it usually comes with the move from analyst or senior accountant into a manager seat that owns a department’s numbers. The climb from experienced to senior, $214,070 to $309,290, adds $95,220 and tends to require a director or officer title, profit-and-loss responsibility, and often a CPA, CFA, or MBA behind your name. An entry-level financial manager at $98,250 already out-earns most workers in the state, which is part of why competition for these roles is steep.

Worth noting how wide the full band is. The distance from the 10th percentile at $98,250 to the 90th at $309,290 is $211,040. That’s a larger spread than you’ll see in almost any other single occupation, and it reflects how much the title covers, from a department budget manager at a mid-size firm to a corporate treasurer or finance VP at a Fortune 500 employer. Two people can share the job title “financial manager” in Texas and have a three-fold difference in pay. When you read a single average for this role, remember it’s hiding that range. Your own number depends far more on title, employer size, and industry than on the statewide median.

One practical takeaway from the curve: the years between early career and mid career are when raise potential is highest. A financial manager who lands the median seat in their early thirties has decades to compound that $164,860 base through promotions, bonuses, and equity. Delaying that move, or staying in an analyst role too long, leaves real money on the table given how steep the next step up is.

Financial manager salary by Texas metro

Where you work inside Texas changes the math more than most people expect. The Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston corporate hubs pay well above the smaller metros, and they hold the lion’s share of the jobs. Here are the five largest Texas metro areas for financial managers, ranked by employment, with median pay from the BLS (2025).

Dallas-Fort Worth pays the highest median in the state at $169,200 and employs 26,600 financial managers, more than any other Texas metro. It’s the corporate-headquarters capital of the state, home to large banks, insurers, and a heavy concentration of Fortune 500 finance departments. Austin comes in second on pay at $167,180, driven by its technology and venture-backed employer base, despite holding far fewer of these jobs. Houston, the energy and healthcare anchor, sits at $166,910 with 18,570 roles.

The spread between the top and bottom metros is real. A financial manager in Dallas-Fort Worth earns a median of $169,200, while one in El Paso earns $131,580, a difference of $37,620, or about 29 percent. San Antonio at $144,710 falls in between. Part of that gap reflects the size and complexity of the employers in each market, and part reflects local cost of living. El Paso’s lower median comes with housing and living costs well under those in Dallas or Austin, so the take-home goes further than the raw number suggests.

The four big metros, Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, Austin, and San Antonio, together account for roughly 57,290 of the state’s 71,870 financial manager jobs, about 80 percent of the total. If you want maximum employer choice and the highest medians, those four markets are where the openings are. Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston alone hold 45,170 positions between them, so a financial manager in those two metros can change employers, and often industries, without ever leaving the region. That depth is a quiet advantage when it comes time to negotiate, because a credible outside offer is rarely more than a few miles away.

Austin is the metro to watch on pay relative to its size. With only 7,210 jobs it carries a $167,180 median, the second highest in the state and within $2,020 of Dallas-Fort Worth, despite employing barely a quarter as many people. That premium comes from the concentration of venture-backed technology firms and corporate relocations into the Austin market, which compete hard for finance talent. The flip side is Austin’s housing cost, which has risen faster than the rest of the state, so the higher gross does not stretch as far against a mortgage there as the same pay would in Houston or San Antonio.

Take-home pay after tax in Texas

Texas is one of the nine states with no personal income tax, so the only mandatory deductions from a financial manager’s paycheck are federal income tax and FICA (Social Security and Medicare). That’s a meaningful edge at these salary levels. The table below shows estimated take-home at each career stage for a single filer taking the standard deduction in the 2026 tax year.

At the median, a Texas financial manager keeps $123,435 of a $164,860 salary, an effective tax rate of about 25.1 percent, and brings home roughly $10,286 a month. The entry-level rate is lower, around 21.1 percent, because less income is exposed to the top federal brackets. At the senior level the effective rate climbs to 28.8 percent as more income falls into the 32 and 35 percent federal brackets, but the state column stays at zero the whole way down.

Here’s the comparison an AI overview won’t run for you. Take that same $164,860 median salary and earn it in California instead of Texas. A single filer in California pays state income tax on top of the identical federal and FICA bill, which drops net take-home to about $112,076. The Texas worker keeps $123,435. That’s an exact gap of $11,359 a year in the pocket, purely from where you live, for doing the same job at the same pay. Over a decade, before any raises, that’s more than $113,000 in extra take-home for the Texas resident.

That gap widens as pay rises. At the experienced 75th-percentile salary of $214,070, the Texas worker nets $159,156 and the state column is still zero, while a high-tax state would carve another five figures off that. The higher you climb the percentile ladder, the more the no-tax structure is worth in absolute dollars, because state income taxes are typically progressive and bite hardest at the top. For a senior financial manager netting $220,355 in Texas, the no-tax advantage over a high-tax state can run well past $15,000 a year on its own.

The number that actually matters is net pay minus local housing. A $10,286 monthly take-home goes a lot further against an Austin or Dallas mortgage than the same figure would against San Francisco or San Jose rent, which is where the no-tax advantage compounds. Texas has no state property-tax cap relief at the income level, and property taxes here run higher than in many states, so factor that into the housing line rather than the paycheck line. Run your own figure through the Texas paycheck calculator before you negotiate, then subtract your real housing cost to see what you keep. If you want help estimating the federal piece, a tool like TurboTax can model your bracket and deductions.

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How to earn more as a financial manager in Texas

The pay range here is wide enough that the right moves can add tens of thousands a year. The gap between the median of $164,860 and the 75th percentile of $214,070 is $49,210, and most of that is earned through credentials, scope, and industry choice. Here’s where the real gains sit.

• Earn a CPA or CFA. A CPA signals accounting depth for controller and finance-director tracks, while a CFA carries weight in treasury, investments, and corporate finance. Either one helps push past the median toward the 75th percentile.
• Target Dallas-Fort Worth or Austin. Dallas-Fort Worth pays the highest metro median in the state at $169,200, and Austin follows at $167,180. Relocating from a $131,580 El Paso role to a Dallas seat is a potential $37,620 raise on the median alone.
• Move into energy, banking, or tech. Houston’s energy majors, Dallas’s banks and insurers, and Austin’s tech firms run the largest, most complex finance functions in the state, and they pay for that complexity.
• Take on profit-and-loss ownership. The path to the 90th percentile at $309,290 runs through director, treasurer, and VP-of-finance titles where you own a business unit’s results, not just report on them.
• Add an MBA or finance specialization. Online coursework in financial modeling, FP&A, or corporate finance through a platform like Coursera can close skill gaps that keep you from the next title.
• Negotiate against the percentile data. Walking into a review knowing the state 75th percentile is $214,070 gives you a defensible anchor that’s hard to argue down.

Job outlook for financial managers in Texas

Texas employs about 71,870 financial managers, making it one of the deepest markets in the country for the role, according to the BLS (2025). That scale matters when you’re job hunting, because a large base of employers across Dallas-Fort Worth’s 26,600 positions and Houston’s 18,570 means more openings, more competition between employers, and more room to move between industries without relocating. Financial management is also one of the faster-growing management occupations nationally, driven by demand for budgeting, risk, and capital-planning expertise.

The mix of industries behind those 71,870 jobs is unusually broad in Texas, which is good news for stability. Energy and oilfield services anchor Houston, banking and insurance anchor Dallas-Fort Worth, technology and corporate relocations drive Austin, and healthcare systems and the military-adjacent economy support San Antonio. A downturn in any one sector rarely takes the whole state’s finance hiring with it. For a financial manager planning a long career here, that diversity means your skills stay in demand even when a single industry slows. To see what’s open in your metro and at what pay, a board like ZipRecruiter lets you filter by title and location across the state.

Related and higher-paying roles in Texas

If you’re weighing this role against neighboring finance jobs, the pay differences in Texas are large. A financial manager’s $164,860 median sits well above the roles people usually move up from. An accountant in Texas earns a median of $80,920, which is $83,940 LESS than a financial manager here. A financial analyst earns $99,150, or $65,710 LESS than a financial manager. The financial manager title is the senior end of this career ladder, and the climb from analyst or accountant into management is where the biggest single pay jump happens.

Frequently asked questions

Sources: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS), May 2025, SOC 11-3031. Take-home estimates use 2026 federal brackets and FICA rates for a single filer. Last updated 2026. See our methodology.