What does middle class mean to you?

[Anonymous]

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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.

Roseanne and family were working middle class. I don't get you people. There is poor/poverty, middle class (there is a range), upper middle, and rich.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, I largely agree with your definition (and it fits my DH and I) but will note that I think part of the problem with discussing what constitutes working class versus middle class versus UMC or upper class is how much small shifts can change what people feel they can afford.

We know people in DC in their 30s who are dual income with an HHI of around 300k, who do not own a home and do not "feel" they can afford one. Now, I live in a condo. They will not buy a condo. I live in a neighborhood with a bad IB school (which my child does not attend). They will not buy a home with a bad IB school. So they might look at your list and say "we are middle class" but I will look at them and say "no you are not." They are just unwilling to compromise, but everyone compromises except the ultra wealthy. Even rich people compromise. We have rich friends who own gorgeous multi-million dollar homes with bad IB schools who are grumpy that they "have" to send their kids to private. They don't -- they could move to a suburb with amazing public schools and come out way ahead in the real estate deal. They don't want to. This does not magically make them middle class.

I see a lot of what OP describes here.

[Anonymous]

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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.

You've gotten yourself tied up in such a defensive knot you can't absorb what I am saying to you. People are making a list of what MC people can afford. You took on unusually crappy housing for MC. Of course that left you with more leeway for other things (and I bet it was more than trips, I bet you more comfortably got into your next home than you would have otherwise, have a better emergency fund than most MC). It's not that no MC people ever do what you did, it's that the classic MC basket of goods includes a slightly more comfortable and more expensive housing choice, and leaves less left over than you have had.

[Anonymous]

The definition of what middle class can afford has changed over the decades. My grandparents had only 1 family car in the 1960’s, but my parents had 2 cars in the 1980’s. Airplane travel used to be extremely expensive, but it has actually gotten more affordable, so a middle class family can in fact take a vacation by plane if they look for good deals.