Reply to What is Middle Class....Really?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]

Not PP and I agree it's not struggling, but you forgot about student loans, utilities & house maintenance, car & life insurance, and medical care, among other things.  All of this adds up to more than $1,000 a month.  My student loan payment is $1000/month alone and I'm in the public service loan forgiveness program.  And to keep that "middle class" lifestyle after retirement, most people would need to save more than the minimum $18k/year/person in 401k's. [/quote]

I can definitely see some of those things being additional expenses, but not all of them, and certainly not at a deal-breaking level.

For car insurance you're looking at $200 a month extra at most. That's a rounding error in this kind of budget.  And I would assume (or at least hope!) that by the time you are on your second child and have bought a million dollar house you have paid off your student loans. But hey, we are also talking about people who can't figure out how to make ends meet on $350K a year, so who knows, maybe they couldn't figure out that 2 or 3 more years in that 1BR without child expenses would have paid off their loans!

A quick quote from state farm says $2,000,000 in term life insurance is $253 a month for someone in good health. Assuming you are in good health and you're around 40 years old your medical bills shouldn't be too much, especially with the kind of insurance you can buy at $350K/yr.

You're right, there is more than meets the eye with regard to expenses, but the point remains that anyone with a modicum of common sense could easily run a middle class household on $350K a year, and it would not require much more financial savvy than that to figure out how to run it while affording a trip to Europe. [/quote]

You think it takes 2 or 3 years in a one-bedroom to pay off student loans?  [/quote]

No shit...a lot of people in this area have taken on a ton of student loans to be able to make that 350k salary. Not 50-70k but 200k for the household. And spare me the crap about "well they shouldn't have done that, I didn't do that" because the reality is that most people making that much have a ton of student loans. The question was also whether or not a family with 350k hhi could afford a FIRST class trip to Europe, which will cost at least 15-20k. Does anyone really think this family can comfortably afford to lay out that much while paying for the additional expenses which another poster's dumb budget conveniently didn't account for?[/quote]
OP again. And here we are, arguing about whether a family earning $350k can afford a FIRST class trip to Europe, because apparently that is what's required to move out of the middle class. Having to fly coach to Europe on the family vacation lands one in middle-income land, I suppose,

And how do you think this type of out-of-touch bubble thinking is received by the real middle class in America, earning $80k combined, living in a 1500 square foot home built 50 years ago, paying the bills, and maybe....maybe....being able to afford a week at the beach?

Or, what about the lower-middle and working class, making do on $50k, and renting an apartment in a so-so neighborhood, and staying in a Motel 6 during vacation? Because that group comprises the largest voting block, and they are turned off by the bubble talk. 
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