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"Poor" people, "normal" people, "affluent", "wealthy", "rich", etc.
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Anonymous
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So, these terms get thrown around a lot, on this forum and some others. This one seems particularly prone to it for some reason.
We need common definitions for the above terms. I desperately want to know whether I am "normal" as opposed to abnormal. Anyone want to suggest some definitions? Perhaps if we can agree we can get Jeff to post them. |
Anonymous
| Are you f***ing kidding me with this post??!!??!! |
Anonymous
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Nope. I'm not. I am frankly sick and tired of being accused of not being "normal" or having people assume if I complain about affording tuition in the crappy economy that, because my family doesn't look just like theirs, it MUST be because somehow I've made irresponsible lifestyle choices.
I mean, look at the titles of the posts in this forum: where are the NORMAL people... what are the poor people's schools... Plus, let's not forget the attack on the poor public school parent who mentioned in passing that she was affluent. Someone actually threw out a number as defining a median DC family on one of these threads (I think it was 150K), so I am just curious to see what everybody thinks about it. If you make $150 are you median? Normal? What about $200K? Is that still normal or are you aproaching affluent? What is rich? More than $1 billion in assets? Bill Gates? $201K? Maybe all these years I have actually been rich or poor and abnormal or normal but just never realized it until the good and civil people at DCUM pointed it out. |
Anonymous
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From the April 08 DCUM survey:
My/our annual household income is: Response Percent Response Count Under $50,000 2.5% 5 $50,000-$100,000 18.5% 37 $100,000-$200,000 43.0% 86 $200,000-$500,000 29.0% 58 More than $500,000 7.0% 14 answered question 200 skipped question 5 Subject to all usual caveats about informal polls... |
Anonymous
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Then there's what's "normal" west of the Park vs. east of the Park vs. east of the river.
Hmmm...I don't think I'd be normal in upper NW and I'm definitely not normal in my SE neighborhood. But I might be normal in Takoma Park (if I had bought a house in 1992  ).
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Anonymous
| I am the PP who asked "are you _ _ _ kidding" and I am going to ask it again! Are you kidding? Post like this make me sick! Why do you care to "rank" everyone based on income? You should be ashamed of yourself and find something better to do. |
Anonymous
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I don't know if there is anything wrong with trying to determine where you fit into an income distribution.
I can tell you I am, financially speaking, normal. Meaning, I find more than not I am about in the middle. There are people way richer at my child's school (private) and there are people who are clearly less affluent. I don't get financial aid, but I don't have a big fancy house. |
Anonymous
Posts like this make me sick, too. That was the point. I don't want to rank everyone based on income. And I am sick of hearing on this board comments that amount to: you are so rich you don't have a right to complain. I'm a a person too, folks, even if I do make over $200K and fall into the top 7% (according to a PP). I'm not at all ashamed of myself because I was trying to make a point. It may be futile on this board. True story: someone a few years ago posted a vent thread, and in it a vented about my frustration that my DH would not let me quit my jo to stay home. I mentioned in it what we made together, in the context of saying, "Do we need all this money? No." You would not believe the response. OMG!! What do you DO to earn all that money! Zero, zilch, nada on support for my plight except for one poster. People who are so obsessed with what other people make that they can't even answer a question without asking questions like: "What do you do to earn all that money" or who have to google all the parents in their kids' classes at schools to see how they rate are what REALLY make me sick. I accepted long ago that I am a lot better off than many people, but a hell of a lot poorer than many others, including some of the families in my kids' classes. So, the point was, to tell the obsessed people to get over it. Now we'll see if it works. Sigh. Why am I not optimistic? |
Anonymous
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It's all relative. Also to some extent people like to see a justification of their choices in the choices other people make. Overall my observations is that there are quite a few people that make more money than their parents may have made. At least in my case it leads to wanting to downplay what we have and while we didn't grow up in the Great Depression, we both remember very well our parents barely having enough until the next paycheck. So not only are we frugal and love when we hear other people talk about how they save money or very conservative with money but I would have to make a heck of a lot more than I make now to ever consider myself wealthy. In my world view - the terms affluent, wealthy and rich mean you don't need to worry about money. That nice purse you see - don't need to wait for it to go on sale. That vacation you were thinking about - don't need to priceshop to get the best price. It's truly when you can pay more for convenience every time and it isn't a big deal. A more common term you will see is "comfortable". For me it means having enough not to be paycheck to paycheck but not so much that you can pay for the convenience of whatever you want every time. So for example maybe you can afford to hire someone to say mow the grass but you either shopped around for that service and or don't have an expensive car or premium cable channels.
Hopefully you don't take what people say to heart too much. I think it is human nature that when you have to make tough choices and compromises there are some hard feelings when you see other people that don't have to make those choices. Prime example with the economic meltdown - I've heard people that can't really afford to save money in their 401K practically gleeful that this mess doesn't directly impact them. I don't know if this falls under misery loves company or a validation of their decision not to save money in a 401K. So if you try to say you lost 20% of your 401K - you can't expect too much sympathy from the person that can't afford to save in their 401K. When I hear about the golden parachutes some of the executives are getting I am pissed. I have trouble understanding how it's worth a 5 million bonus or whatever for a company that had to be bailed out by the government but I am sure those CEOs can try to explain how it is similar to what other executives get paid, the risk they take on, the fact it wasn't really their fault etc. etc. etc. |
Anonymous
| I thought none of us had money anymore. |
Anonymous
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Washingtonians truly think more about status and the pecking order than any other place I've lived.
For God's sake, chill out and enjoy your life. If you find out that you have cancer tomorrow, will you be proud of yourself for having thought so much about this kind of stuff? |
Anonymous
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hee hee
not have to worry about money?? Rockefeller had a pay phone in his house so if his guests needed to make a call they could use that. Leona Helmsley had lavish parties and refused to pay the cleaning bill Jackie Onassis had someone give her an estimate for repainting the house and then said she wanted it to be done for free, she would give his name as a referral to freends in return. |
Anonymous
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6:50 -- ha ha!
I don't think this question is sickening at all. One thing that's missing from this board is any sense of perspective on the whole class thing, and threads like this are trying to find it. The private school environment distorts peoples' perspectives on income and wealth, it can't be helped. It's an insidious process of explaining to your kids why you can't go abroad every single year like some of the other kids, driving crummy cars on the pick-up line, et cetera. To me, the people who are calling this "sickening" just have their heads in the sand. Getting this out in the open might even reduce the class warfare that goes on here. My suspicion is that most of us are going to realize that we're actually doing really well if we can send a kid to private school without financial aid. Here's one way (not the only way) of gaining some perspective: there's "normal" for the population of this forum, and then there's "normal" for the wider world. The two are pretty different, it would seem. Here are some stats (copied and pasted from another thread): Median income in DC is $47,000 - http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/histinc/h08a.html Top 10 1. Loudoun County Va. $107,207 2. Fairfax County Va. $105,241 3. Howard County Md. $101,672 4. Hunterdon County N.J. $100,327 5. Somerset County N.J. $97,658 6. Calvert County Md. $95,134 7. Arlington County Va. $94,876 8. Morris County N.J. $94,684 9. Douglas County Colo. $92,824 10. Montgomery County Md. $91,835 http://www.cleveland.com/datacentral/index.ssf/2008/08/county_household_income_washin.html Which is about a GS-13 or GS-14 government worker and a SAHM. Or a dual-earning couple with a total household income of a GS-13 or GS-14. |
Anonymous
Versus NYC or LA or numerous other cities? I doubt it. But thanks for the finger-wagging anyway. |
Anonymous
Defensive much? |