Article: $350,000 salary is middle class

[sadlebred]

Interesting article:

www.cnbc.com/2019/09/11/you-need-to-make-350000-a-year-to-live-a-middle-class-lifestyle-today-heres-why.html

[simpsongal]

That article is some clickbait bullsh*t. There is nothing about their example jobs or example budget that is middle class.

Eta- the numbers are wrong bc w/ that mortgage interest they wouldn’t be taking the std deduction for fed taxes.

[jinkies]

I mean... I get what they are saying. But their example family is electing to save $50k/year between 401k and college savings. Which is great! But don't tell me how you are only middle class because too much is going to long-term savings.

We could probably come up with a zero-sum budget for almost any income, all with "reasonable" line items. That doesn't mean that you are middle class.

[kadams767]

Also, this article is geared towards the FI/RE community. Not being able to retire before 60 has absolutely nothing to do with a middle class life nor whether or not a couple at that income level have a good life. Which they do, in abundance.

[jinkies]

Good lord. From the "Trending Now" sidebar, an even less sympathetic story of these poor NYC lawyers who only earn 500k/year: www.cnbc.com/2018/03/06/budget-breakdown-of-a-couple-that-makes-500000-a-year-but-cant-save.html

[steamboat185]

This is stupid. We make about that and live in one of the city’s mentioned in the data. We have 2 kids and both work full time. We easily save over 100k a year and with what is left we are far above a typical middle class lifestyle- I mean in 2019 my kids will have gone to both Australia and Belize.

In no way shape or form do we spend over 2k a month on groceries.

I’m not saying it isn’t possible to spend every penny you make at 350k, but that doesn’t make you middle class.

Edit and this-
“2. Stop wanting a middle-class lifestyle. It’s worth sacrificing your lifestyle in the short term for long-term gain. By renting a more modest home for $4,000 a month, this family will free up $27,000 a year in cash flow. By sending their oldest to public elementary school, this family will gain another $24,000 a year in cash flow. An additional $51,000 a year in cash flow is huge when coupled with $38,000 a year in 401(k) contributions.

This couple could also limit their vacations to more local destinations, and cut back on meal spending by doing more bulk cooking and focusing on simple foods.”

What part of private school is middle class? People seem to want to fit everything into “middle class” and it’s just not.

[waverly]

I feel like we have had this discussion here or on PCE every couple of months. I think we are still comparing ourselves to the generation and boat that sailed when everyone had pensions and amazing health insurance. College was affordable and could be paid in full by your parents/ summer jobs. More stay at home parents lead to cheaper or non existence childcare costs. It’s just not like that anymore.

I don’t have any sympathy for these high earners. They should be able to make it work. They are upper class, but I understand that because reality has changed so much they don’t feel that way. But it’s not really about them, I mean we think it is because those seem to be the people with the voice that write these articles.

But how does the true middle class make it work? Bankruptcy from medical bills, cheaper or less quality childcare, or childcare thrown together by family and friends and opposite shifts, no savings for retirement? What happens when they get to retirement and have no savings?

[mommin]

I read this yesterday and all I could think was that their CHOICES are limiting their expendable income and making them feel middle class but that has little to do with reality. We all make choices that impact us financially and I'm sure just about all of us could do better but our choices aren't always reflective of where we fall on the income scale.
Three weeks of vacation, mortgage PITI of almost $6k, $2k in food, and so on. I get it, some cities are very expensive but there are definitely choices that could be made to improve their bottom line. If this article highlighted a family with large medical bills or someone spending a lot to care for a child with a disability I would sympathize but in this case I don't particularly care if their choices made them feel less than the upper class status where they reside. Also, I am pms-ing so I think I find this more annoying than I usually would. Haha.

[goldengirlz]

Sept 13, 2019 16:40:45 GMT -5 waverly said:

I feel like we have had this discussion here or on PCE every couple of months. I think we are still comparing ourselves to the generation and boat that sailed when everyone had pensions and amazing health insurance. College was affordable and could be paid in full by your parents/ summer jobs. More stay at home parents lead to cheaper or non existence childcare costs. It’s just not like that anymore.

I don’t have any sympathy for these high earners. They should be able to make it work. They are upper class, but I understand that because reality has changed so much they don’t feel that way. But it’s not really about them, I mean we think it is because those seem to be the people with the voice that write these articles.

But how does the true middle class make it work? Bankruptcy from medical bills, cheaper or less quality childcare, or childcare thrown together by family and friends and opposite shifts, no savings for retirement? What happens when they get to retirement and have no savings?

The bolded is the one area where I DO feel sympathetic. I do think a “middle class” salary no longer affords a “middle class” lifestyle as most people would define it (especially in other countries with a better social safety net.)

I’m totally here for a discussion about why we need the Affordable Care Act, subsidized childcare, more housing units in VHCOL cities, tuition reform, etc. Lay it on me. I’m a bleeding heart socialist. I vote in all tax increases on people like myself.

But I don’t want to hear about live-in nannies and international vacations and private school tuition. That’s not what’s eating into middle class incomes and further widening the gap between the haves and have nots. And so the more of these articles I read, the less sympathetic I feel for this upper income group. They’re clearly doing just fine. And NOT middle class.

[CheeringCharm]

Click baity title. I just skimmed the article but to me it sounds like its focus is more that it's hard to build significant wealth (i.e. save millions of dollars) on an income of $350k in an expensive coastal city if you have kids. Which, fine, that might be fair. 

But you should't say that means you "need" that much money just to live a middle class lifestyle. I don't think middle class people typically expect to build significant wealth anyway. My parents certainly didn't.

[awkwardpenguin]

This is so bizarre to me - it's like people have lost all touch with what the real middle class lives like. I grew up in a household in the dead middle of the income distribution. We went to public school, took one camping vacation a year, cooked at home except for takeout pizza once or twice a month, bought very few new clothes, owned used cars, and my parents saved very little for retirement or college. That is a middle class lifestyle to me.

[covergirl82]

Sept 17, 2019 9:19:32 GMT -5 awkwardpenguin said:

This is so bizarre to me - it's like people have lost all touch with what the real middle class lives like. I grew up in a household in the dead middle of the income distribution. We went to public school, took one camping vacation a year, cooked at home except for takeout pizza once or twice a month, bought very few new clothes, owned used cars, and my parents saved very little for retirement or college. That is a middle class lifestyle to me.

This sounds like my childhood too.  For summer vacation, we went up to grandma's house in the little beach town where my parents grew up, which meant we stayed for free and going to the beach was (and surprisingly still is!) free.  (Super lucky that they grew up in a beach town and my grandparents still lived there!)  The one difference is my parents did save for college for me and my sister.

[dr.girlfriend]

I'm still trying to figure out the janitor's salary being $234,000? Is that just one hell of a union job?

ETA:  NVM, I missed that it was clickable.

[Gato]

How My Family "Survives" on $350K in VHCOL? Lol. I have lived in the Bay Area, made a LOT less than that (like, even adjusted for inflation, 1/3 of that, as a family), and I felt pretty good about life.

Looking at that spreadsheet, this family is doing a lot more than surviving. They are taking a yearly vacation (the example is to Hawaii). They are paying over $2K a month for groceries. In addition, they've got $500 a month purely for entertainment. They are saving $1K a month for college. Making $350K, they are living very, very well.

[oswin]

Yeah, I think the most annoying part is the framing that $350k is required to be middle class, which is just plain false. I looked at some other stuff by Financial Samurai and he justifies that incomes in that range are middle class by showing that $350k is the top of the "upper middle class" income bracket. But that's not the same as $350k being a minimum for middle class, which is what the title of that article is saying. There's also a huge difference between UMC and MC. I grew up what I'd call comfortably middle class, which meant that we had everything we needed, my parents were saving for retirement (a little extra on top of a pension plan), and we took hiking/camping vacations and visited grandparents. I didn't fly until I was 15 and that was for a college visit. My parents like to remind me that they had $1000/year discretionary money (though I'm not sure exactly which decade(s) that applies to - possibly the 80s and 90s because having babies ate up all of that just in the bill for us being born).

The article tries to make it all sound so reasonable - like going to multiple expensive shows/concerts and sporting events every month is something that normal people do. Well guess what? It's not! It's what the top 5% do, and maybe some people in other income brackets who spend instead of saving for retirement.