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No. Some of these Washington Post articles can be strangely out-of-whack.
You're not going to have a middle-class lifestyle in the Washington DC metro area on $71,000. Unless somebody thinks that a family living in an apartment is middle class.
Those who live in apartments in London, Tokyo or Hong Kong, not to mention NYC can be a lot more middle class than someone in the DC suburbs.
Judging class by what kind of housing they choose is stupid. Not everyone likes to live in giant cookie cutter house in the fr**king middle of nowhere with nothing nearby.
I am going to assume that these numbers are baloney. I read somewhere that middle class in NYC meant you make $300k. I'm 20 years old, the second oldest of 4, grew up in NYC and my dad is CPA who makes like $80k and my mom was a housewife when they were married. We live in a nice house with a yard, all of us kids got cars when we got our licenses, we went to Disney once a year, wore nice clothes, and didn't live on ramen noodles. And no we didn't inherit our home or live in the ghetto. We just lived in Staten Island. Living in a city does not mean living downtown/in Manhattan in NYC's case. Maybe the numbers posted are what qualifies as middle class if you want to live in the city center but it is incredibly out of touch with reality.
I would consider 52k lower-middle class in Los Angeles.
Its pretty sad when you can make almost 6k a month a become lower middle class but you are probably right the cost of living is that high in California, welcome to the new Murica.
I don't want to share our family's gross income, but here's a list of key expenses of living in the Cleveland area, the 2nd cheapest city to be "middle-class":
Nanny - $25K (because our parents work or live far away, and can't watch our two young children)
Daycare - $7K (part-time, because we want our daughter to have a running start when she's off to school later this year)
Healthcare - $10K+ (Includes premiums, prescriptions and out-of-pocket expenses)
Taxes - $20K+ (Fed, State, Local, Local (yes, I did local twice), SSI, Medica)
Car - $8.5K+ (Including financing, insurance, maintenance, tolls and gas)
Bank Loan - $7K (in order to stay afloat with our current "lifestyle", this is what we can pay back, not what we put in)
Rent - $14.4K (rental house in the cheapest neighborhood in Shaker Heights, in a safe'ish and diverse neighborhood close enough to the train station for me to walk)
We still have to eat and turn the heat and lights on, and this is more money than we make in a year. This also does not include a loan we took from both of our parents when I was out of a job for a bit years ago.
Kids and healthcare have made us live closer to lower-middle class than middle class, on a higher average income than the median. Our middle-class values of placing our children's health and education at the forefront is clearly driving a big percentage of our family expenses, plus, both my wife and myself have medical conditions that always put us at the out-of-pocket max in healthcare expenses. I don't know how anyone does it on say $30K, the supposed median of Cleveland.
Last edited by Min-Chi-Cbus; 04-17-2015 at 08:09 AM..
I am going to assume that these numbers are baloney. I read somewhere that middle class in NYC meant you make $300k. I'm 20 years old, the second oldest of 4, grew up in NYC and my dad is CPA who makes like $80k and my mom was a housewife when they were married. We live in a nice house with a yard, all of us kids got cars when we got our licenses, we went to Disney once a year, wore nice clothes, and didn't live on ramen noodles. And no we didn't inherit our home or live in the ghetto. We just lived in Staten Island. Living in a city does not mean living downtown/in Manhattan in NYC's case. Maybe the numbers posted are what qualifies as middle class if you want to live in the city center but it is incredibly out of touch with reality.
$80K is not a lot of money even for S.I. nowadays. Housing prices have risen a lot in the last 20 years. And increases in salary have not been commensurate with the increases in home prices.
I don't know how anyone does it on say $30K, the supposed median of Cleveland.
Simple. They run large balances on credit cards and probably overdraft their bank accounts every other month or so.
IMO, an "upper middle class" lifestyle is when you don't have to worry about budgeting. Wanna go to Bermuda? No problem. Wanna lease a new car? No problem. Wanna eat out at nice restaurants 3 times per week? Easy. You're basically free of the financial worries of most ordinary Americans without having to exercise much fiscal discipline.
Of course, there are people with upper middle class incomes ($150K+) who experience the same financial woes as poorer people.
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