200k HHI is just getting by Six-Figure Salary No Longer Means You're Rich 5k leftover see this chart

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No, that's not what I said. I said that UMC vs UC has nothing to do with rich. Most UMC people are rich (especially someone with a mid-six figure income). I consider myself UMC and rich (HHI of $600K)...even in a HCOL area.

You are out of touch with reality. Several people have pointed out that the top 1% of the DC metro area is somewhere around $450K and the top 1% of DC is just over $550K. You are easily in the top 1% of the region. With over 2M households, you are in the top 20K households in the region. How does that make you only upper middle class. If you are anywhere in the middle class, including in the upper middle class, only a couple thousand households in the region with over 2M households would be upper class.

You are in the top 0.5% or less of the nation where the top 1% is about 400K. While you may not feel rich, you are so far above the median that you really don't have much in common with the median. Yes, you are not in the 0.1% of the nation that are super wealthy that can afford a jetsetting lifestyle, but you really are nowhere close to the middle or even upper middle class. You are upper class by every definition of the class structure. See a few examples at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_class_in_the_United_States where you are comfortably into the range called the corporate class, the upper class ($500K+) or the super-rich ($350K+) by various sociologists.

A couple of different sources from 2015:
http://money.cnn.com/2015/01/27/news/economy/top-1/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I still think some of y'all need to look at redfin.com and do some housing searches. There is affordable housing within 30 miles of the Beltway, you just have to look to find it.

w/ bad schools

Different PP, but that is irrelevant. Since there are 20,000 households in this region that have HHI's over $500K, plus another 80,000 or so that have HHI's over $250K the real estate prices in the communities with the best public schools are higher. Supply and demand. When the demand for good public schools is high, the price of the limited supply goes up. So the true middle class cannot afford to buy a SFH in a community with a good public school. They rent or they buy condos or townhomes if they want to live in the good public school districts. Alternatively, they can buy bigger or better homes in less affluent communities with weaker schools. Essentially everyone who owns a SFH in most of MoCo and NoVa are upper class, even if they send their kids to public schools.

Just because you spend a lot of money to buy a home in a community with a good public school system, does not make you middle class. It really doesn't matter if you prioritize to spend your money on housing, but since you earn enough to live very comfortably in other parts of the DC region and have a very affluent life-style, you are NOT middle class.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No, that's not what I said. I said that UMC vs UC has nothing to do with rich. Most UMC people are rich (especially someone with a mid-six figure income). I consider myself UMC and rich (HHI of $600K)...even in a HCOL area.

You are out of touch with reality. Several people have pointed out that the top 1% of the DC metro area is somewhere around $450K and the top 1% of DC is just over $550K. You are easily in the top 1% of the region. With over 2M households, you are in the top 20K households in the region. How does that make you only upper middle class. If you are anywhere in the middle class, including in the upper middle class, only a couple thousand households in the region with over 2M households would be upper class.

You are in the top 0.5% or less of the nation where the top 1% is about 400K. While you may not feel rich, you are so far above the median that you really don't have much in common with the median. Yes, you are not in the 0.1% of the nation that are super wealthy that can afford a jetsetting lifestyle, but you really are nowhere close to the middle or even upper middle class. You are upper class by every definition of the class structure. See a few examples at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_class_in_the_United_States where you are comfortably into the range called the corporate class, the upper class ($500K+) or the super-rich ($350K+) by various sociologists.

A couple of different sources from 2015:
http://money.cnn.com/2015/01/27/news/economy/top-1/

I'm really not the person you want to be arguing with...I consider myself to be very rich. I think the distinction between UMC (or even UUMC) and UC isn't about being rich, it's about whether you have to work for your income or not. That being said, UMC vs UC is a pretty useless distinction for things like taxes. Policy-wise, I think mine should probably be higher.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I still think some of y'all need to look at redfin.com and do some housing searches. There is affordable housing within 30 miles of the Beltway, you just have to look to find it.

w/ bad schools

Sure there are bad schools but there are a number of neighborhoods with more affordable housing with good schools. Not the best of the best. But that's OK in my book.

I think other than technology getting a lot better (kids getting iPad's and/or laptops, having to use Blackboard or a variation of it) and kids not be able to lie about their grades as easily as they used to be able to, I haven't seen a difference in school in the 20+ years I have been out of it. The other reality is it boils down to teachers, and some are simply better at it than others. There are also kids that think they can skate by, then they get to college and get a huge reality check.