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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I don’t really think there’s a true middle class in our country anymore: UMC is middle class, then there’s absurdly wealthy and poor.

I know two people who grew up in the 80s/90s in LCOL towns.  Both had a dad who worked in a factory and was able to purchase a home and have their wife stay home (with kids).  They owned a couple of cars and went to the beach every year.  There is no common, similar job in the US today that can afford this lifestyle.  But I consider their lives to have been typically middle class (for that era).

I grew up in DC, between Capitol Hill and Bethesda (parents were split).  My mom worked in nonprofits and my dad was a restaurant manager.  We were able to take a vacation every year.  I went to private school. There is *no way* my parents would be able to afford to finance that lifestyle today, doing what they did.

My husband and I now live in a MCOL area and make a combined income of $250k.  We live in a small house with three kids and are not comfortable paying what we would have to pay to have a house that would properly fit us.  We both work FT.  We don’t take lavish vacations and our kids go to public.  We share one car.  Intellectually I understand that our HHI is ostensibly UMC, but our existence feels pretty middle of the road MC.  YMMV.[/quote]

There definitely are still jobs like that in LCOL places. One example: being a nurse.

But I think people forget how much more austere a lives these families led. They just did a lot less consumer spending in general. [/quote]

I’m not so sure that anyone’s lifestyle was *that* much more austere in the 80s/90s - I also grew up at that time and there seemed to be plenty of consumer spending going on.

Also, I think you could describe what I outlined as my current situation as relatively “austere.”  Not many families share one car, for example, and we don’t spend money constantly.  Things are just a lot more expensive.  They just are.[/quote]

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