What does middle class mean to you?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:MC in DC is UMC in Alabama.

This

Yes. Maybe there is a limited MC around here (I think there is). But middle class elsewhere looks a lot different. The trips, Disney and international happen for the factory worked and spouse that works. they also save something for retirement and something for college.

I think people are missing how out of touch this area is. Even in more rural New England 120k combined salary means needs and most wants met. And those jobs exist and families like that exist.

There may *now* be a limited MC in DC, but when I was growing up in DC there was a vast and thriving middle class. My neighborhood - Capitol Hill - was solidly middle class.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are so many posts about the income or wealth levels associated with being middle class. Setting aside dollar amount, what does MC mean to you.

For me:
Owning a home by your 30s, not necessarily at detached SFM
Can easily afford food, clothing, and utilities
Can afford a vehicle
Can retire someday

What you said is good, but I would change it to owning a home before 40s. Buying at 35 is still middle class since many people don’t have families until then.

I would add:

- can afford 1 vacation involving a plane per year (most likely domestic, but with an international vacation once every few years)
- can easily support a family of 4 including extra supplemental activities such as school sports, with spouse making income as well
- each child has their own bedroom, or at most 2 kids of the same gender share a large room
- can afford extras like going out to the movies or a meal at an average sit down chain restaurant without sweating at all about money
- has an emergency fund of approx 2 months income

You think middle class families of 4 take international vacations every few years????

Right? The bubble some people live in is insane.

Not PP but yes. Maybe top half but yes -- Mexico, Central America, London, Ireland -- yes this is what happens.

Maybe drive up to see Niagara Falls and cross to the Canadian side, or even go camping, although that's less likely now that a passport is required. But generally middle class vacations involve cars and not airplanes.

My teenagers don't have passports, and have only flown to places where we had family to stay with for free. That's pretty common for middle class families.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are so many posts about the income or wealth levels associated with being middle class. Setting aside dollar amount, what does MC mean to you.

For me:
Owning a home by your 30s, not necessarily at detached SFM
Can easily afford food, clothing, and utilities
Can afford a vehicle
Can retire someday

To me I've always felt the best depiction of middle class is the tv show Roseanne. The majority of "middle class" descriptions outlined on this board are all forms of the upper middle class to me.

Roseanne and Simpsons represented middle to lower middle class back when they came out. Now that area/house/lifestyle would require an upper middle class income.

Which means there is no longer a true middle class. Regular people with regular incomes can’t afford the same lifestyles people with the same relative incomes could 30 years ago. That’s significant. And no one is talking about it.

Most DCUMers have zero interest in living like in Roseanne. They’d be horrified at the thought of their kid sharing a bedroom, not doing travel or club sports, commuting from home to college or having “vacation” be driving to the beach & staying a motel.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are so many posts about the income or wealth levels associated with being middle class. Setting aside dollar amount, what does MC mean to you.

For me:
Owning a home by your 30s, not necessarily at detached SFM
Can easily afford food, clothing, and utilities
Can afford a vehicle
Can retire someday

To me I've always felt the best depiction of middle class is the tv show Roseanne. The majority of "middle class" descriptions outlined on this board are all forms of the upper middle class to me.

Roseanne and Simpsons represented middle to lower middle class back when they came out. Now that area/house/lifestyle would require an upper middle class income.

Which means there is no longer a true middle class. Regular people with regular incomes can’t afford the same lifestyles people with the same relative incomes could 30 years ago. That’s significant. And no one is talking about it.

Most DCUMers have zero interest in living like in Roseanne. They’d be horrified at the thought of their kid sharing a bedroom, not doing travel or club sports, commuting from home to college or having “vacation” be driving to the beach & staying a motel.

Of course, but it’s really not about them. I mean, doesn’t anyone care about the condition of our society and the quality of life across the board?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Public school for children
Good cars, not luxury
Can afford rent or small house
Vacations at beach or lake
Saves a bit for retirement and college

What kind of public school? BCC? Richard Montgomery? Einstein? Kennedy?

The neighborhood school where they housing they can afford is of course.

So a homeowner in Great Falls zoned for Langley is “middle class”?

depends on when they purchased it or if they are a renter

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Public school for children
Good cars, not luxury
Can afford rent or small house
Vacations at beach or lake
Saves a bit for retirement and college

What kind of public school? BCC? Richard Montgomery? Einstein? Kennedy?

The neighborhood school where they housing they can afford is of course.

So a homeowner in Great Falls zoned for Langley is “middle class”?

depends on when they purchased it or if they are a renter

No, even if they were MC when they bought a home there, if they still own it and have successfully made their mortgage payments, they are no longer MC because of the massive increase in their property value. Even if their incomes are not super high. If you bought for $275k in 1999, and now your house is worth $1m and paid off, plus you've had had regular income increases to match current COL even though your housing costs are locked in at a very low rate (enabling you to save a lot of this increase in income), you are not really MC anymore because you own a million dollar asset free and clear. Middle class people don't own million dollar homes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Public school for children
Good cars, not luxury
Can afford rent or small house
Vacations at beach or lake
Saves a bit for retirement and college

What kind of public school? BCC? Richard Montgomery? Einstein? Kennedy?

The neighborhood school where they housing they can afford is of course.

So a homeowner in Great Falls zoned for Langley is “middle class”?

depends on when they purchased it or if they are a renter

There aren’t renters there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So many of these comments are about using consumer goods/experiences as class signifiers. I think you are missing some obvious errors with this.

Middle class families, by definition, have some wiggle room. Meaning they can make some choices that might enable them to afford things that you normally associate with UMC or rich people. So you can't always ascertain someone's class status just looking at consumer goods or something like vacations, because you don't understand HOW they afforded that. If you don't know what they gave up in order to get it, or whether it was bought with cash or on credit, or whether it was new or used, or whether it was purchased or gifted, then consumer goods/vacations are actually not a great signifier for class status.

A lot of the stuff people on this thread are saying are "out of reach" for MC, I know a lot of MC how have them. But in most cases they are compromising elsewhere in a way that's harder to see.

I think you’re missing a nuance as well. A middle class person can go on say, a Bahamas vacation on credit. But they cannot *afford* it. Thus the debt.

Oh, I'm not missing that. My point is that you can not, as an outsider, look at that person and say "Well they went to the Bahamas last year, so they can't be middle class!" Which is the mistake a lot of people seem to make. Or conversely "Well my middle class sibling went to the Bahamas last year, so all middle class people can afford the Bahamas."

But also, a middle class person might be able to actually afford the Bahamas. Not every year, but as a for instance: I decided I wanted to celebrate my 45th birthday with a family trip to an all inclusive resort in the Caribbean. I shifted some of my savings into a ladder CD to keep it fairly liquid but earn a little better interest, and also instituted a couple other cost savings (doing really cheap lunches, asking DH to forgo birthday gifts for me so we could put the money toward the trip, bought no new clothes for two years) to build that fund up. And then we took a nice vacation to a resort we would never have normally gone too. It was so worth it! And paid for in cash without changing retirement or college savings practices.

The point is: you can't look at someone's consumer activity and assume you know whether they are middle class. The peopel on here saying that a middle class family simply CANNOT go to Europe are just not thinking very creatively. Of course they can. It just takes diligence, sacrifice, and a little luck (MC people always have to worry about a job loss or health emergency derailing them financially).

Wait what is your HHI and PITI? Because what you describe actually doesn’t sound very MC to me. It sounds more like a UMC person pretending. Or someone with unusually low housing costs.

This is EXACTLY what I'm talking about -- you just can't believe that someone could simply save up for a splurge as a middle class person. Why is this so hard for people to understand.

Anyway, Our HHI is 180k now but it was around 140k around the time I was doing this. Our mortgage payment back then was $2800 (we were actually house poor back then, so the opposite of having low housing costs -- have since sold that place and moved further out so now have a much lower PITI). So yes, absolutely MC. If we'd had any kind of emergency, even like our dog getting sick or a major appliance breaking, we would not have been able to do it. But we got lucky and it worked out.

Please understand that that’s a very low PITI for the DC area today. And with inflation your income was probably more than you think in today’s dollars.

SO actually, yes, this is EXACTLY what I’M talking about. People who are wealthier than they are admitting to themselves crediting stupid stuff like “cheap lunches” for the fact they can afford stuff that they should of course be able to afford because they have a high income. And in your case, YES very LOW housing costs.

Is it a low PITI for a 2 bedroom condo in a neighborhood with high crime and poor schools? Because that's what it paid for. And we only moved last year, so actually I know exactly how much housing in the DC area costs "in today's dollars."

You can twist yourself in knots to convince yourself that I must be UMC (on 140k, with a kid, in DC!) because I went on one nice vacation. If you want to say I'm "faking" becaus I spent 6 days at a resort, wait until you hear about some of the MC people I know who go to Disney every.single.year (no, I do not know how they do it, but these people are not rich -- I suspect some grandparent help coupled with credit card debt I'd not be comfortable with). You cannot ascertain someone's income or class based on their consumer choices. You just can't. You don't know how they are affording whatever it is -- vacation, house, private school, dinners out, designer clothes. You don't know what you don't know.

Sigh you just don’t get it. The point about PITI, as in, the reason I even asked, is you did NOT have middle class housing costs because you were living in something closer to LMC living conditions. As many people in this thread have said, they mean a comfortable-enough townhome for a family of 4. You made a big sacrifice on living conditions, despite a healthy salary, which is why you had more wiggle room. NOT your cheap lunches or whatever nonsense. It was a game-changer choice that took one of your other “middle class lifestyle” qualifiers off the board.

[Anonymous]

All else being equal, I think that if you can put kids through college and fully pay for retirement, then you are not middle class. You are upper middle class.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are so many posts about the income or wealth levels associated with being middle class. Setting aside dollar amount, what does MC mean to you.

For me:
Owning a home by your 30s, not necessarily at detached SFM
Can easily afford food, clothing, and utilities
Can afford a vehicle
Can retire someday

To me I've always felt the best depiction of middle class is the tv show Roseanne. The majority of "middle class" descriptions outlined on this board are all forms of the upper middle class to me.

Yea this board is full of people totally out of touch with middle class. Middle class is one car for the entire family where most repair work is done at home using your own hands, middle class is maybe owning a home, but likely renting. Middle class is family vacations that are a drive, never an airplane ride. Middle class is rec sports, not travel. Middle class is dining out only on very special occasions so maybe 6xs a year. Middle class is modest college savings for state schools with kids shouldering half the cost in the form of loans. Middle class is working until full retirement age.

Most people on here think a UMC life is middle class which shows how little they get out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So many of these comments are about using consumer goods/experiences as class signifiers. I think you are missing some obvious errors with this.

Middle class families, by definition, have some wiggle room. Meaning they can make some choices that might enable them to afford things that you normally associate with UMC or rich people. So you can't always ascertain someone's class status just looking at consumer goods or something like vacations, because you don't understand HOW they afforded that. If you don't know what they gave up in order to get it, or whether it was bought with cash or on credit, or whether it was new or used, or whether it was purchased or gifted, then consumer goods/vacations are actually not a great signifier for class status.

A lot of the stuff people on this thread are saying are "out of reach" for MC, I know a lot of MC how have them. But in most cases they are compromising elsewhere in a way that's harder to see.

I think you’re missing a nuance as well. A middle class person can go on say, a Bahamas vacation on credit. But they cannot *afford* it. Thus the debt.

Oh, I'm not missing that. My point is that you can not, as an outsider, look at that person and say "Well they went to the Bahamas last year, so they can't be middle class!" Which is the mistake a lot of people seem to make. Or conversely "Well my middle class sibling went to the Bahamas last year, so all middle class people can afford the Bahamas."

But also, a middle class person might be able to actually afford the Bahamas. Not every year, but as a for instance: I decided I wanted to celebrate my 45th birthday with a family trip to an all inclusive resort in the Caribbean. I shifted some of my savings into a ladder CD to keep it fairly liquid but earn a little better interest, and also instituted a couple other cost savings (doing really cheap lunches, asking DH to forgo birthday gifts for me so we could put the money toward the trip, bought no new clothes for two years) to build that fund up. And then we took a nice vacation to a resort we would never have normally gone too. It was so worth it! And paid for in cash without changing retirement or college savings practices.

The point is: you can't look at someone's consumer activity and assume you know whether they are middle class. The peopel on here saying that a middle class family simply CANNOT go to Europe are just not thinking very creatively. Of course they can. It just takes diligence, sacrifice, and a little luck (MC people always have to worry about a job loss or health emergency derailing them financially).

Wait what is your HHI and PITI? Because what you describe actually doesn’t sound very MC to me. It sounds more like a UMC person pretending. Or someone with unusually low housing costs.

This is EXACTLY what I'm talking about -- you just can't believe that someone could simply save up for a splurge as a middle class person. Why is this so hard for people to understand.

Anyway, Our HHI is 180k now but it was around 140k around the time I was doing this. Our mortgage payment back then was $2800 (we were actually house poor back then, so the opposite of having low housing costs -- have since sold that place and moved further out so now have a much lower PITI). So yes, absolutely MC. If we'd had any kind of emergency, even like our dog getting sick or a major appliance breaking, we would not have been able to do it. But we got lucky and it worked out.

Please understand that that’s a very low PITI for the DC area today. And with inflation your income was probably more than you think in today’s dollars.

SO actually, yes, this is EXACTLY what I’M talking about. People who are wealthier than they are admitting to themselves crediting stupid stuff like “cheap lunches” for the fact they can afford stuff that they should of course be able to afford because they have a high income. And in your case, YES very LOW housing costs.

Is it a low PITI for a 2 bedroom condo in a neighborhood with high crime and poor schools? Because that's what it paid for. And we only moved last year, so actually I know exactly how much housing in the DC area costs "in today's dollars."

You can twist yourself in knots to convince yourself that I must be UMC (on 140k, with a kid, in DC!) because I went on one nice vacation. If you want to say I'm "faking" becaus I spent 6 days at a resort, wait until you hear about some of the MC people I know who go to Disney every.single.year (no, I do not know how they do it, but these people are not rich -- I suspect some grandparent help coupled with credit card debt I'd not be comfortable with). You cannot ascertain someone's income or class based on their consumer choices. You just can't. You don't know how they are affording whatever it is -- vacation, house, private school, dinners out, designer clothes. You don't know what you don't know.

Sigh you just don’t get it. The point about PITI, as in, the reason I even asked, is you did NOT have middle class housing costs because you were living in something closer to LMC living conditions. As many people in this thread have said, they mean a comfortable-enough townhome for a family of 4. You made a big sacrifice on living conditions, despite a healthy salary, which is why you had more wiggle room. NOT your cheap lunches or whatever nonsense. It was a game-changer choice that took one of your other “middle class lifestyle” qualifiers off the board.

You are jumping through a lot of flaming hoops to declare that middle class people can NEVER take nice vacations.

So your contention is that a family with an HHI of 140k, who lives in a 2-bedroom condo with a PITI of $2800/mo, is actually upper-middle class and faking being middle class because they went on one (1) nice vacation to celebrate a milestone birthday?

Why? What does this accomplish? What even is the point of this conversation.

I have tried to provide some perspective on what being middle class can look like (and how it can look different depending on circumstances and choices), because I’m actually MC. But you are so married to a narrow definition of what an MC person is that you can’t accept it. It’s really weird.

SIGH.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are so many posts about the income or wealth levels associated with being middle class. Setting aside dollar amount, what does MC mean to you.

For me:
Owning a home by your 30s, not necessarily at detached SFM
Can easily afford food, clothing, and utilities
Can afford a vehicle
Can retire someday

To me I've always felt the best depiction of middle class is the tv show Roseanne. The majority of "middle class" descriptions outlined on this board are all forms of the upper middle class to me.

Yea this board is full of people totally out of touch with middle class. Middle class is one car for the entire family where most repair work is done at home using your own hands, middle class is maybe owning a home, but likely renting. Middle class is family vacations that are a drive, never an airplane ride. Middle class is rec sports, not travel. Middle class is dining out only on very special occasions so maybe 6xs a year. Middle class is modest college savings for state schools with kids shouldering half the cost in the form of loans. Middle class is working until full retirement age.

Most people on here think a UMC life is middle class which shows how little they get out.

I agree. Many of these things may not be true for every single person, but most of these things are common among the middle class. Circumstances do change and sometimes people get more money or a new job and may spend more on some things. But at the core of it middle class people are not living like many of these people on this board.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are so many posts about the income or wealth levels associated with being middle class. Setting aside dollar amount, what does MC mean to you.

For me:
Owning a home by your 30s, not necessarily at detached SFM
Can easily afford food, clothing, and utilities
Can afford a vehicle
Can retire someday

To me I've always felt the best depiction of middle class is the tv show Roseanne. The majority of "middle class" descriptions outlined on this board are all forms of the upper middle class to me.

Yea this board is full of people totally out of touch with middle class. Middle class is one car for the entire family where most repair work is done at home using your own hands, middle class is maybe owning a home, but likely renting. Middle class is family vacations that are a drive, never an airplane ride. Middle class is rec sports, not travel. Middle class is dining out only on very special occasions so maybe 6xs a year. Middle class is modest college savings for state schools with kids shouldering half the cost in the form of loans. Middle class is working until full retirement age.

Most people on here think a UMC life is middle class which shows how little they get out.

Nope, you are both wrong.

The family on Roseanne was working class. No college degrees, working menial jobs with little job security.

Middle class was a term coined to describe people who used education and professional careers to reach a level of economic security that was out of reach of working class people. It originally mostly described managers, who earned salaries instead of hourly wages and had more reliable work hours and maybe even some benefits. It could also apply to white collar workers like accountants, lawyers, even doctors, but were not talking Big Law partners, Big4 accountants, or surgical attending— more like solo practitioners serving a community. But still, making more money and having more security and stability that people who worked on assembly lines or waiting tables.

So yes, middle class people likely own homes, work salaried jobs, have some savings. Might have two cars under some circumstances (especially if dual income and living in a suburb). Todays middle class includes jobs that used to be considered working class but now require more training and education, and which pay better thanks to unions and demand (and feminism) — nurses, teachers. Most government employees are middle class.

Upper middle class was coined to describe the highest achievers within the middle class grouping. These are people who still must work full time jobs (though a UMC family is more likely to be able to afford a SAHP or part-time spouse), but with far more security and disposable income.

So the family on Roseanne was working class in the 90s and it’s working class now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Public school for children
Good cars, not luxury
Can afford rent or small house
Vacations at beach or lake
Saves a bit for retirement and college

What kind of public school? BCC? Richard Montgomery? Einstein? Kennedy?

The neighborhood school where they housing they can afford is of course.

So a homeowner in Great Falls zoned for Langley is “middle class”?

depends on when they purchased it or if they are a renter

There aren’t renters there.

There are many “in law suites” that are rented.

[Anonymous]

When I was growing up, the middle class was split between the lower middle class and the upper middle class.

The lower middle class was also called the working class and included union jobs, plumbers, electricians and other jobs that did not require a college education. The upper middle class was college educated and generally worked in white collar professional jobs. Some of each had camps or rustic cabins where they vacationed.

The bosses were more ruling or upper class. They were the ones at the fancy country clubs and sent their kids to private schools and took fancy vacations or had 2nd homes where they “summered”.

Incomes did not factor as much as “place” and who your friends were.