Reply to Study shows that 350k/year is barely scrapping by as middle class

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Middle class people do not own $1.8m houses. Nor do they spend $24,000 on preschool. Or $2,000 a month on food.

What a stupid article. [/quote]

I think the spreadsheet is realistic--whether you call it middle-class or not.  COL in DC is high and 24,000$ for two-working parents is the norm here.[/quote]

The spreadsheet is realistic for a couple living in a very nice neighborhood in a high COL area, understanding that a high income like that almost certainly comes with some high-end tastes and expectations.  I'm not going to use the word "rich" here, bit these people are not "middle class." Take the $24k preschool bill.  Thats solidly on the high end for preschool even in a HCOL area.  Is it common? Sure, but only because you have a lot of upper class people in those areas.

Having a neighborhood of all upper-class people doesn't shift the meaning of middle class...[/quote]

So you’re saying the DC metro area is all upper-class?[/quote]
 
PP here.

No, I wouldn't say that.  But I would say large swaths of it are.

I'm not going to say this is an easy thing to quantify.  I certainly agree that high-income and/or high-assets alone don't tell the whole story.  Nor can't you simply dismiss those things by saying you're in a HCOL area.

I'm saying you should be looking at how others the metro area live, and the tradeoffs they're forced to make (*not* just your neighbors).  Someone living in Bethesda/Chevy Chase might feel the financial troubles of a middle-class life, but you do have to consider that they've bought their way into a nicer neighborhood, with nicer schools and a shorter commute than someone in, say, Wheaton or Germantown.  For a lot of people, living in those expensive neighborhoods simply isn't an option.  Someone is getting an extremely skewed view of reality if they live in those areas and are only comparing themselves to their neighbors.

It's fine to drop $1.8M on a home and $24k/year on preschool, but surely you know those aren't viable choices for most in the area- not even most people with good white-collar jobs.  For example, that's beyond the means of two maxed-out career feds making ~$330k.
[/quote]

The original point of the article was that family feels the pinch of middle class at 350k HHI, it sounds like you agree but there are a lot of posters quite strongly arguing that cannot be called middle class.

[/quote]

I said they might feel middle class. I didn't say they were middle class.

You can't spend your way down to middle class.[/quote]

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