Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I love how 95% of people think they are "middle class"
Very funny
How would you classify me?
I own two houses in two different states, one is in the mountains while the other is near the beach.
My income is in the six figures.
I am collegs educated.
Houses in my area range from $375.000 to $1,000.000
How would you classify me?
I own two houses in two different states, one is in the mountains while the other is near the beach.
My income is in the six figures.
I am collegs educated.
Houses in my area range from $375.000 to $1,000.000
Am I middle class?
Assuming all your bills are current...I would say yes.
It's not your income level. It's based on what kind of job you have, if you own or are buying a house, and how you are perceived by society.
The town may offer you 50k a year to sweep the streets, but its still a lower class job.
Middle class is usually defined as working professionals and small business owners. If you work in a factory, or in service, you aren't middle class. If you rent, you aren't middle class, regardless of your income.
I guess I wouldn't be middle class because I rent. But I just don't think its prudent to buy right now. I was thinking about it before the market crashed but I didn't. I also like mobility at this point. I think I'll wait until its smart to buy a house, instead of getting suckered into buying an overpriced monstrosity that I don't need and can't afford.
I make about 33% more than "average" for my county, yet I consider myself squarely middle class.
I define middle class as being able to afford 2-3 kids, put them through college with some loans, have two cars, and go on vacation once every two years and occasionally go out to eat and shopping. Add on top of that having a savings account for the kids and a retirement account to make sure I don't have to depend on anyone when I grow old, and my wife and I can enjoy our "sunset" years together.
Essentially the same as it was in the 1950s. IMHO, corporations and "elite" have been raping the middle class since the 1970s and "middle class" is a shadow of its former self. Why else would both parents now have to work?
Simply from a sociological point of view. For instance, Bill gates isn't upper upper class because he isn't old money. His children would be.
It depends more on your position in society, and if you aren't a working professional "someone with a college degree, etc" and don't own a home, yiu are lower class. All blue collar workers are considered lower class.
Let's see.... I own 2 houses outright, I owe on one, I have no other bills and make a six figure income. I am self employed and have no debt for the company. Yeah, I think I probably qualify as middle income. Point is though, I didn't always and it took me years to be able to say these things. So far, it is still possible in this country, but the government, little by little is taking that opportunity away. This has no political party... It is something they have both done. Soon, this will not be an opportunity if the government continues it's expansion.
Gee, guys! You've got me wondering if I'm really Middle Class! I thought we'd made it. But maybe I was wrong.
It was always my greatest ambition to be maybe Lower Middle Class. I never dared dream I'd actually be UPPER Middle Class, or even Middle of the Middle Class. I mean, when I was tiny, reading old copies of The New Yorker that had been thrown away by the one Upper Middle Class household in our 'community', I never dreamed I'd actually be one of the legitimate readers of that classy mag. I just knew that by reading it, I could bring myself closer to being good enough to be around people like that...in a servile capacity, of course.
I figured I could be one of their Secretaries. I dreamed of a life in some hidden corner of an office, where I could work without anyone seeing my hideous little self...the bottom rung of a ladder I knew might be...just within my reach, to grab that bottom rung. And I dreamed of having my own Garage Apartment...with indoor plumbing, and a light bulb in every room. Maybe, there'd even be a Kitchenette, and an actual plug in one of the walls, into which I could plug things....rather than the precarious arrangement in our home, where we'd plug an extension cord into a receptacle screwed into the socket of the one light bulb in our shack. But I was going to be grateful, if I could just make enough money to keep the lights on ALL THE TIME! (The ongoing personal crisis that my Mom lived instead of a 'life' meant that the Electricity was cut off a good deal of the time. It was an abandoned Sharecropper's shack, at the back of a farm owned by a family of aristocratic 'High Yellows', who allowed My Mom and her Mom and my Great-Grandmother and me to inhabit it, out of charity...and $30.00 a month rent....when we could pay it).
But I'd seen a Garage Apartment once, when I got to ride along with somebody, to Greenville, Mississippi...back then, the most sophisticated place in the whole South. What a town! In the middle of each squared-off block, there was an alley. On the alleys, there were garages, nicer than just about any house in our own squalid settlement, and some of them had apartments for the servants! I got to see one! So nice! Someday.... Maybe....
I was certainly ridiculed for reading Town & Country and The New Yorker (and an erudite English magazine devoted to antiques). I'd been spotted going through the garbage, at the two best houses in town, getting my reading material. I caught hell for that, at school.
And when I announced my intention of going off to college, people would actually go into rolling-on-the-floor fits of laughter. I guess that smelly little Gloria, the most pitiful and ugly of all the little Indian girls in 'the country', announcing she'd be going off to college, was just too ridiculous to not be hilarious. After all, plenty of the other Indians around home had gone off for the free college, and flunked-out. And they were good-looking and affluent, compared to wretched little Gloria. So, if Football-star Bubba, with the glorious blue-black mane and the bubble-butt, was sent back home after one semester, how dare the girl who was frequently sent to the Principal's office for coming to school smelling bad...how dare she even think of taking a secretarial course... much less dare to go off to a four-year college that called itself a university?
Well, I did.
And I got knocked-up at seventeen, by a boy there, who was just as pitiful as me. But we were a team from our first day of class. And somehow, the combination of weight-lifting, improved nutrition, vitamin supplements, endless sex/love, and coaching each other....somehow all that transformed us.
We bought a derelict apartment building, the first moment it was legally possible for us to do so. Our first owned-home was a unit there. Soon, we had instructors at the U living there. One of our friends was a budding Decorator, and he advised us. I have never decorated my own home (Is that Middle Class or Upper Class?).
I managed to dress us in seconds/returns from Saks Fifth Avenue. Our new 'look' got us invited to ritzy on-campus parties. That got us better part-time jobs while we were in school. I was fought-over as an assistant. I was the perky little minority girl who gave campus tours to rich people. DH and I sometimes volunteered to give private workouts in the U's new gym, to VIPs. That was before the days of Personal Trainers, and the VIPs ate up all the pampering we gave them. We met Governors and Senators. Bigwigs actually came to little parties we (and my Decorator, and my future Public Relations man) threw in our apartment building. Little Debbie Snack Cakes and cheap Champagne. They didn't care. They had a blast (and slipped us money, to pay for the Champagne)!
We moved to Jackson, to take the best of many job offers. I ran a great office. DH, too, excelled. When we'd be at Nick's (ritzy restaurant) with our Bosses, former Governors and Senators would come over to say hello, and reminisce about our parties, or their workouts, or the tours we'd given them. We moved to the top so fast, it made us dizzy. Then, we had to go out on our own, having outgrown our employers. Scary dizzy.
And all the while, we were raising three kids, and adding to their trust funds, and our real estate portfolios. And we were cooking up little consortia within our fledgling investment clubs. The college Economics study groups I'd started had somehow morphed into Investment Clubs, and a sub rosa network of people in-the-know. Are trust funds and rental properties Middle Class or Upper Class?
Well, we finally both attained 'Terminal' degrees, and decided to stop living in units in our collection of apartment buildings. We bought a foreclosed fixer-upper in 'Leftover' (on the edge of 'Eastover', where the richest people in the state lived), in Faaaaaahshionable Nawaaaaaahth Eeeeeust Jahhhhhkson, and let our Decorator make it a showcase. It hit the magazines. I'm told vignettes shot at that house still pop up in a Southern Regional home magazine. Do Middle Class people have their homes in the maggies, or do Upper Class people?
Then, we sold that house for a profit and moved to 'Posh, Privileged Madison', where we bought a 'builder nightmare' McMansion, with 'problems, but possibilities'. Our Decorator hid the 'bad bones' with acres of satin and velvet and bullion fringe. His Landscape Architect hid the ugly exterior. More magazines. Another sale. Another big profit.
We bought another 'builder spec' McMansion; this time, finished to suit our Decorator. All the while, we were amassing a collection of Nineteenth-century antiques, and collecting Mississippi Impressionist paintings. The magazines were more enthralled with this house. Is that Middle Class or Upper Class, to collect paintings and fine antiques?
We sold the second Madison McMansion, after our Decorator (and the Architect and LA on his team) created what we thought would be our 'Forever Home'. It is a Creole Compound, set behind tall walls and gates, within an enclave which is, itself, gated. A Native Plant Specialist, and an Arborist, used all the native plants I'd come to love as a child foraging in the woods for food. Cypress trees, Palmettos... It was a little corner of Heaven. Soon, Bluebirds floated down into our garden, to nest in the little nooks we'd had made for them. Ginger Lilies, Jasmine, and potted Lemon trees perfumed the air. Inside, there are Scagliola Corinthian Columns, with Water-gilded capitals and bases. The floors are Marble. The decorating followed precedents in the 19th Century homes of the Rothschilds. Do Middle Class people pay a thousand dollars for a handmade French Silk Tassel? Or do Upper Class people? Do Middle Class people live in compounds, with swimming pools and cabanas, behind tall walls and elaborate gates? Or do Upper Class people?
Well, all our Rothschildian furniture and drapery and picture frames are in storage. After a few years of happiness and magazine shoots, in our 'Forever Home'. We finally relented, and accepted the best of the offers being thrown at us for the (never listed) house.
Anyway, we'd begun moving our businesses overseas, when it became apparent that Barbara Bush's Brat had been instructed to kill America. In the meantime, we'd bought a homesite in Malibu. We made a lot of friends in the fitness/vegan community there. And we did short-term rentals in the Colony. Is the Malibu Colony Middle Class or Upper Class? Well, Malibu developed problems, the kids nixed Pepperdine as a possibility, and we took our profit on the homesite.
So, when Mississippi was just too provincial for DH and Kids, we decided on the richest community in Oregon. Our Decorator picked a 'Modernist Masterpiece' estate home for us, which we were able to pick up for a million less than what we'd gotten out of the Madison house. Embassy fencing hidden by hedges, with inner and outer perimeters, and a run for guards and dogs, should that ever be needed! But the owner's last girlfriend had butchered the interiors. Not having a real Decorator cost the owner at least two million, considering the offers we're getting, now. Presentation is everything! Anyway, our Decorator and PR man virtually scripted our entry into Portland. We went from Mississippi Rothschildian to Pacific Rim Zen in weeks. Not since the entry of Doña GraciaMendez into Constantinople has such a change of address been planned.
DH and kids went ahead to help Decorator. I planned to drive myself out there...grieving for Mississippi, a place I loved. My people had been there for thousands of years. I was the last of my family to leave. Oh, sadness... The plan was to spend a few days in Aspen...alone...in solitary contemplation. Well that was the plan. In reality, a blizzard hit, and I was spotted at the Jerome, by Vegan friends from Malibu. Nonstop party in the snow, with film people. So much for solitude and introspection. Oh well!
So, I hit Lake Oswego, and can barely put down the car keys, before I'm meeting the nabes. Everybody seemed to be a Scientist/Venture Capitalist. They're so relieved that 'Chinese' lady they'd seen with the Realtor two months back was not going to cut down all the trees. Next day, the Garden Club ladies are there, with a spiel about the importance of the estate and its plantings (and how they hoped I'd maintain their integrity). Were they ever relieved when I pulled out the books on the Landscape Architect, and started grilling them with advanced specifics about Horticulture in the Northwest. Next thing I know, I'm shucking off my jewels, jumping into my Carhartts, and grabbing a shovel, over at the home of the Gardening Grande Dame.
From that moment, we were a-listed. I carefully explained that we are not white, and both grew up in horrendous circumstances. "So? But look at you NOW!" And before we know it, we are bumped to the head of the line for membership in the best club in town (the 'minority' exception...). And most recently, our Daughter married a giant blond descendant of Gustavus Adolphus (over that, I feel actual guilt). Then, I come home, pop the door to my bay of the garage, and nearly collide with the surprise Ghost DH has bought for me. And I can remember when I told myself I'd never have a car (but could see myself as pert and neatly dressed, riding the bus...). Amerika gonif...
Anyway, I had considered us to be haute bourgeois Nouveaux Riches: Upper Middle Class New Money. Now, you guys have me wondering.
Simply from a sociological point of view. For instance, Bill gates isn't upper upper class because he isn't old money. His children would be.
It depends more on your position in society, and if you aren't a working professional "someone with a college degree, etc" and don't own a home, yiu are lower class. All blue collar workers are considered lower class.
It's just not that cut and dried, Memphis. I agree with your overall point that class isn't just about income and wealth, but what qualifies someone as a member of what class is extremely subjective. What class would a single mother who dropped out of high school and lives in a trailer be if she won the lottery? Most would agree low, I'm sure. How about a cop? Middle class? Let's say the cop went to Harvard and his dad and grandfather both did as well. (There are a lot of cops with ivy league educations on certain northeastern police forces.)
No blue collar no matter what? What if a guy again has a septic tank business. It's just him and a small crew that he employs. But let's say he's married to a musician who plays for a major city orchestra. He knows all of the ins and outs of the fine arts and blends easily with his wife's social crowd.
This is an interesting topic of conversation, but it's ultimately meaningless because it comes down to personal biases and prejudices. I think most Americans classify themselves as middle class, and most Americans pretty much are by American standards. Class just isn't a big deal on this side of the pond.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
