Reply to Make 350k-400k, feel middle class

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]If you want to feel like the upper, upper middle class family that you statistically are, then move to a less expensive area.  You will be much happier.[/quote]

Good advice, but do you deny the previous decades of washington area middle class is not the same as today's?[/quote]

Two things:

1) 100K in 1985 buys the same as $220K today. http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=100%2C000.00&year1=1985&year2=2014

2) Your parents likely had more to spend because they did not have to contribute to their employer-provided health plan, and they also most likely spent less on retirement because they had a pension or a 401K match.

Inflation by itself makes most of the difference between your parents and you. Taking the stuff their employers paid for, adding it to your salary and making you pay for it explains the rest. So in fact you have the same standard of living as your parents because you make roughly the same amount they did. Sorry, you didn't move up.

If there's any left over, it's pretty easy to see where that's gone -- the price for a median-priced home in the DC area has gone from about $150K in 1987 to over $400K today. http://www.jparsons.net/housingbubble/washington.html
[/quote]

Thank you!

This post should be made sticky at the top of this page and required reading before anyone posts. FFS. [/quote]

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