I think people’s reactions to being labeled upper class are pretty much the same as for any other kind of privilege. Just because life isn’t handing you everything on a golden platter, doesn’t mean you don’t have a ton of advantages.
To a degree anyone associated with the military has a degree of ses range from technically below poverty (but with healthcare and housing) up to umc (few would be close with the highest ranks, though you might know them in a controlled informal setting outside the office.
At this point, most of my friends are through mil and most would be in low 6 figures, with some dual mil making, well, double that. It's hard to say average $because housing allowance varies widely, but it's supposed to keep standard of living same across locations. It's a very narrow window in part dictated by circumstance as well as by official design.
Beyond mil, I've mostly known umc and up, with a few very wealthy more than the friends in some type of public assistance. I'm not counting close friends/ family in ther countries.
Post by imobviouslystaying on May 23, 2018 4:50:56 GMT -5
On topic, (sorry, pixy0stix,) I have a few but not many friends above my socio economic class and I think most of them are through here. I have some friends who are lower.
Post by mrsukyankee on May 23, 2018 6:39:41 GMT -5
I took this survey which is a BBC survey for Great Britain. My H and I came out at Elite (UC). We are very fortunate to have inherited a house and for his family to have been able to give him help in getting on the property market (though he didn't move out until 30 as he was saving to get a good down-payment & his family are Indian and that's normal).
They stated that there are now 7 social classes - they don't just base it on what you earn or how much your house is worth, but also about who you socialize with and how you socialize. The classes are Elite, Established Middle Class, Technical Middle Class, New Affluent Workers, Traditional Working Class, Emergent Service Workers and Precariat.
I grew up LC, my immediate family is now spread between LMC and UMC. I'd say most of my friends in London are MC or UMC, though a few are LC. My friends in the US are spread from LC to UC.
I mean, I do think it would be interesting to hear from someone who came from a lower-income family and is now pulling in somewhere in the mid-six figures as the owner of a plumbing or auto repair business. I’d be fascinated to hear what aspects of upper-class society are still closed to him or her. Because I do believe the U.S, unlike other countries, is still a place where money talks. Maybe you won’t be accepted into every country club, but does that really matter?
Since it’s all about personal anecdotes, I want to respond to this. I grew up lower-income and now make about $300k on my own. I don’t own a blue collar business, but I can relate a bit to what you’re getting at here. Some of it might be my own imposter syndrome showing through, but no matter how much money I make, there are just certain things that will just never be in my comfort zone or I don’t know how to navigate. I haven’t exactly applied for membership, but I have to attend a lot of country club type events for work and every time, I stick out like a sore thumb. Like I don’t know enough about nice wine or golf, and I take vacations the wrong way. It’s like there’s a secret code for people who are actually wealthy and I will never actually get into the club because they all can just tell I used to be poor and could plummet back there at a moment’s notice since I don’t have family money as a safety net.
It feels like that when I need to network, too, it seems impossible to build a rich person’s network from scratch, IMO. That’s a disadvantage I will always have, I think. People always talk about how everything is about who you know, and it’s true. “Real” rich people always know a guy.
Fwiw I used to feel this way 8, 9 years ago when my husband first started to make decent money. I don't feel that way anymore and I haven't in a long time. It's not a hard code to crack (I'm sure it helps that we're white), at least where we live, and building your savings will give you that feeling of security. It just takes time, which I think may be why tacom feels the way she does.
Yes. Both my H and I were very poor growing up. We are firmly middle class according to the link someone posted on the second page, but feel like we're doing better than that for a variety of reasons that don't necessarily have anything to do DIRECTLY with money. Maybe it's because I SAH so we're basing it on one income in a VHCOL area? Anyway- I'd say about 50-60% of our interactions are with that SES.
Many of H's family and many of his HS and college friends that we keep in touch with are still quite poor. When his dad died he had less than $100 to his name. His brother is middle class.
My family members are now all middle class up to 1%er.
Oh! And the reason I met the wealthy person (a woman) was because the family member (a man) felt I was the most polished/cultured in our family next to my mom and they wanted to impress wealthy person who lives here. I am not especially polished or cultured, but my experience as a reporter has helped me learn how to just blend in which helps with crossing SES groups. Wealthy person took a shine to me and even though they aren’t dating anymore she keeps in touch.
I don’t know or spend any time with poor or LC people.
Post by lolalolalola on May 23, 2018 8:43:22 GMT -5
We are UC based on our current income. We don't really cross boundaries, other than into UMC, I suppose. We do know one really rich person, and we also have one friend who is middle class, (retail manager & bus driver); every one else we know, and our neighbours are all white-collar professionals. DH's mother is poor, we support her financially.
I'm UC and I'd say most of the people I associate with and my family are also UC. The only exception I can really think of is my grandmother who is definitely LC (single mother of 4 in VHCOL who worked as a waitress). You'd never know it though. All 4 of her kids are UC now. I'm definitely not a 1%er, but many of the people we associate with would probably be considered 1%ers.
I wasn't trying to start the age old Obama rich debate. Its just that my BFF lives on the Continent. She is limited while dating because of her high Socioeconomic class. First I thought that wasn't an issue we had here, then I thought again. Just wanted to know of others experiences, regarding who they hang out with.
So I don't know about where she lives, nor do I remember where I saw this, but I have definitely read that in the U.S., women generally marry laterally or up in terms of socioeconomic status/educational achievement while men tend to marry laterally or down. So you'll see male MDs married to grade school teachers with a BA and maybe eventually a master's. And you'll see female MDs married to other MDs or PhDs or JDs or maybe high ranking business execs with a BA. But you won't see a female MD married to a man with a BA who sells insurance. (Before everyone hits me with their anecdotes, this was obviously generally speaking and yes, of course there are always exceptions.)
We are middle class, earning lower than those with the same education.
We do cross ses, but I can't think of anyone lower than us ses wise. Basically, h got his PhD in physics, so many of his friends went into industry and make bank, while he's doing academia track. We were both raised MC/UC, so I definitely 'feel' the difference in our life and the life I was raised in.
Post by irishbride2 on May 23, 2018 9:27:55 GMT -5
Although I said we cross less over time, I will say most of my colleagues are likely solidly middle class. My H's family would fit in that category, too. As well as some of my family.
I admittedly have less and less interaction with members of the lower class. Some of h's family fit those criteria. I have, unfortunately, become more sheltered as I have aged. A huge chunk of our social lives either revolves around our private school or around charity galas and such. So that significantly narrows down who we interact with regularly.
I think about this topic a lot--while for the most part our friends are in the same SEC as us (MC), where we live is very spread out in terms of wealth. In our town we are considered pretty well off, though the calculator puts us at the top end of middle class.* However, the people literally 3 houses down from us a LC and if you go one mile in the other direction the families are mostly UC.
My parents and BFF are both lower class, my parents right on the poverty level based on HHI alone. However, they have some social security and other small funds that get them out of poverty and in to LC. We have other family members are a few friends and colleagues who are UC and I know one or two families (though we are not close with them) that are solidly close to the 1%.
Most of our friends and family members are in the middle class range, though.
We work EXTREMELY hard for our money. My goal is to be UC. And really my fantasy is to be a stay at home millionaire, lol. I will be very proud when I get to be in the UC.
*though the calculator does not show where in the middle class range we are, when I added $5000 to our combined HHI, it moved us to UC rather than MC, so I am thinking within the next year we will be considered upper class.
Even in New York City a household income above 200,000 a year is in the top 10% of income earners. I really do not see how that can be anything other than upper class, no matter what other factors you’re attempting to consider.
I get that no one wants to claim they are wealthy but this idea that “everyone” is upper middle class except multi billionaires is really grating and doesn’t reflect the data.
Bragposting a HHI of ~350k then sidling in here UMC...
I wasn't trying to start the age old Obama rich debate. Its just that my BFF lives on the Continent. She is limited while dating because of her high Socioeconomic class. First I thought that wasn't an issue we had here, then I thought again. Just wanted to know of others experiences, regarding who they hang out with.
So I don't know about where she lives, nor do I remember where I saw this, but I have definitely read that in the U.S., women generally marry laterally or up in terms of socioeconomic status/educational achievement while men tend to marry laterally or down. So you'll see male MDs married to grade school teachers with a BA and maybe eventually a master's. And you'll see female MDs married to other MDs or PhDs or JDs or maybe high ranking business execs with a BA. But you won't see a female MD married to a man with a BA who sells insurance. (Before everyone hits me with their anecdotes, this was obviously generally speaking and yes, of course there are always exceptions.)
This generally holds true for most people I know.
I know a woman with a professional degree who married a blue collar guy a few years ago. She said she gets a ton of shit about it. Apparently people at her job get super weird or snooty over the fact that he’s got a blue collar job. She is a WOC so that probably compounds the judgment.
I can’t picture a white man’s professional life being made unpleasant over his wife’s lack of college degree.
Although I said we cross less over time, I will say most of my colleagues are likely solidly middle class. My H's family would fit in that category, too. As well as some of my family.
I admittedly have less and less interaction with members of the lower class. Some of h's family fit those criteria. I have, unfortunately, become more sheltered as I have aged. A huge chunk of our social lives either revolves around our private school or around charity galas and such. So that significantly narrows down who we interact with regularly.
We need to branch back out.
How do you go about doing that? When I was going up my Momma played softball with her coworkers. She worked for DC government so I got exposed to a different class of people. That's the only time I ever crossed the Anacostia river and went into S.E. DC.
Although I said we cross less over time, I will say most of my colleagues are likely solidly middle class. My H's family would fit in that category, too. As well as some of my family.
I admittedly have less and less interaction with members of the lower class. Some of h's family fit those criteria. I have, unfortunately, become more sheltered as I have aged. A huge chunk of our social lives either revolves around our private school or around charity galas and such. So that significantly narrows down who we interact with regularly.
We need to branch back out.
How do you go about doing that? When I was going up my Momma played softball with her coworkers. She worked for DC government so I got exposed to a different class of people. That's the only time I ever crossed the Anacostia river and went into S.E. DC.
I mean, it probably depends on where you live. But in our case, we opted not to move out to the fancy suburb where everyone lives in a huge McMansion even though we could afford to. We wanted to stay closer to the city to be near all the places we frequent (I hate spending time stuck in the car - I want to be within a 5-10 minute drive of the places I go on a daily basis). A house down the street from us just sold for ~ $350k so it's more affordable to live here than in other cities and our neighborhood has a good mix of middle class to upper middle class families. Plus it's much more racially and ethnically diverse than the McMansion suburbs.
Post by rondonalddo on May 23, 2018 10:28:28 GMT -5
I have one uncle who lives under the poverty line. I'd guess most of the rest of my family is middle class like me, some may be somewhat lower in income than us, though. I have an advanced degree, and that's rare in my family (and in my husband's family, his lawyer stepdad and stepbrother being the exceptions), but I work in nonprofitland. We live in a generally low-income, rural community-- about 70% of the students at my daughter's school qualify for reduced or free lunch-- so we interact with folks in lower SES day to day, I guess. I work an hour away, so it's not really day to day. I don't really have many friends who aren't family or co-workers, so I can't speak to that. My interactions with people in the UMC/UC is basically just people I work with who are in higher-paid positions and a few interactions with donors. Growing up, the "rich" families were the ones where one parent was a doctor or a banker or whatever.
I'm so so late to this post, but figured I'd share. I grew up poor because my dad was an enlisted Navy man and had no mother. We lived with aunts/uncles from grades 7-12 and they were solidly in poverty, struggling each month to pay rent/bills. There was nothing extra.
We are middle class right now, I think, but I carry a TON of debt, including student loans, so it feels like we will never get ahead. My sister also is there, after a decade or so of living in poverty as well. The common denominator there is college. We have white collar jobs. I can't think of a single member of my dad's family that isn't still in poverty, except my one cousin who is a retired Navy guy who then became a cop and retired from that. None of them have college educations.
My friend circle is solidly MC, but that's because most of my friends are internet friends or teacher friends. DH still has some friends from high school that are still living in our tiny hometown just struggling to live. I don't foresee any of that changing. I try my best to teach my kids gratitude through giving and volunteering and stories of what it was like when I was growing up, but I don't know what impact that is having.
Now I will go read the rest of the thread and try to figure out how it got to 9 pages. Sheesh.
How do you go about doing that? When I was going up my Momma played softball with her coworkers. She worked for DC government so I got exposed to a different class of people. That's the only time I ever crossed the Anacostia river and went into S.E. DC.
I mean, it probably depends on where you live. But in our case, we opted not to move out to the fancy suburb where everyone lives in a huge McMansion even though we could afford to. We wanted to stay closer to the city to be near all the places we frequent (I hate spending time stuck in the car - I want to be within a 5-10 minute drive of the places I go on a daily basis). A house down the street from us just sold for ~ $350k so it's more affordable to live here than in other cities and our neighborhood has a good mix of middle class to upper middle class families. Plus it's much more racially and ethnically diverse than the McMansion suburbs.
Yes I think where you live plays a huge role.
My area is not diverse racially, but it is pretty diverse economically and I think the longer we live here the more interaction we will have with people in our neighborhood and town (right now almost all our friends are from law school and/or work - so they're lawyers too).
We live in an old rancher surrounded by lots of older people who lived here for 50 years who are now selling and the people moving in are either buying their starter home, or probably here for the long haul. There are lots of people in my particular neighborhood who have jobs like firefighter, or work in home improvement type jobs (but don't own the companies - yet) and then some who have clearly been here for a while and do own their companies (the mold removal company down the street must do pretty well based on the cars and stuff, but they are still in their little rancher.)
Of course I imagine once you move to the more expensive neighborhoods that diversity goes away a great deal. But you still have the schools and daycares.
So I don't know about where she lives, nor do I remember where I saw this, but I have definitely read that in the U.S., women generally marry laterally or up in terms of socioeconomic status/educational achievement while men tend to marry laterally or down. So you'll see male MDs married to grade school teachers with a BA and maybe eventually a master's. And you'll see female MDs married to other MDs or PhDs or JDs or maybe high ranking business execs with a BA. But you won't see a female MD married to a man with a BA who sells insurance. (Before everyone hits me with their anecdotes, this was obviously generally speaking and yes, of course there are always exceptions.)
This generally holds true for most people I know.
I know a woman with a professional degree who married a blue collar guy a few years ago. She said she gets a ton of shit about it. Apparently people at her job get super weird or snooty over the fact that he’s got a blue collar job. She is a WOC so that probably compounds the judgment.
I can’t picture a white man’s professional life being made unpleasant over his wife’s lack of college degree.
I have two anecdotes contrary to this - but both are people who married high school boyfriends, so the career "mismatch" was not apparent at the time they got together. So...exceptions that prove the rule perhaps.
I mean, it probably depends on where you live. But in our case, we opted not to move out to the fancy suburb where everyone lives in a huge McMansion even though we could afford to. We wanted to stay closer to the city to be near all the places we frequent (I hate spending time stuck in the car - I want to be within a 5-10 minute drive of the places I go on a daily basis). A house down the street from us just sold for ~ $350k so it's more affordable to live here than in other cities and our neighborhood has a good mix of middle class to upper middle class families. Plus it's much more racially and ethnically diverse than the McMansion suburbs.
Yes I think where you live plays a huge role.
My area is not diverse racially, but it is pretty diverse economically and I think the longer we live here the more interaction we will have with people in our neighborhood and town (right now almost all our friends are from law school and/or work - so they're lawyers too).
We live in an old rancher surrounded by lots of older people who lived here for 50 years who are now selling and the people moving in are either buying their starter home, or probably here for the long haul. There are lots of people in my particular neighborhood who have jobs like firefighter, or work in home improvement type jobs (but don't own the companies - yet) and then some who have clearly been here for a while and do own their companies (the mold removal company down the street must do pretty well based on the cars and stuff, but they are still in their little rancher.)
Of course I imagine once you move to the more expensive neighborhoods that diversity goes away a great deal. But you still have the schools and daycares.
Where we live, each town has it's own school district. So who you interact with at school is very much a neighborhood affair. The suburb I was talking about above supposedly has "great" schools - 10/10 on GS and they make the top 100 on those US News lists. However, they're also 98% white and it's expensive to buy a house there. I used to teach there and believe me, there is nothing special or unique going on with the teaching or administration. The supposed success of the schools has to correlate highly with the kids' economic background. They come from families where kids are going to do well despite shitty teachers not necessarily because of good ones. And yet the # of people who cite the schools as their number one reason for moving there...
Since it’s all about personal anecdotes, I want to respond to this. I grew up lower-income and now make about $300k on my own. I don’t own a blue collar business, but I can relate a bit to what you’re getting at here. Some of it might be my own imposter syndrome showing through, but no matter how much money I make, there are just certain things that will just never be in my comfort zone or I don’t know how to navigate. I haven’t exactly applied for membership, but I have to attend a lot of country club type events for work and every time, I stick out like a sore thumb. Like I don’t know enough about nice wine or golf, and I take vacations the wrong way. It’s like there’s a secret code for people who are actually wealthy and I will never actually get into the club because they all can just tell I used to be poor and could plummet back there at a moment’s notice since I don’t have family money as a safety net.
It feels like that when I need to network, too, it seems impossible to build a rich person’s network from scratch, IMO. That’s a disadvantage I will always have, I think. People always talk about how everything is about who you know, and it’s true. “Real” rich people always know a guy.
Fwiw I used to feel this way 8, 9 years ago when my husband first started to make decent money. I don't feel that way anymore and I haven't in a long time. It's not a hard code to crack (I'm sure it helps that we're white), at least where we live, and building your savings will give you that feeling of security. It just takes time, which I think may be why tacom feels the way she does.
Well, I am over 10 years into it now and am an equity partner in a law firm and still feel this way. It isn't about financial security, my savings are just fine and I am well aware that I will likely never be financially insecure again (barring a major catastrophe). I don't know that there is a way to say this that is not offensive, but I suspect that, in addition to of course individual people's feelings being different, our respective comfort levels also have to do with the fact that you are a female spouse of a high earning white male. In my case, I am the high earner and I am female. Respectfully, I don't find it an easy code to crack in my situation.
I know a woman with a professional degree who married a blue collar guy a few years ago. She said she gets a ton of shit about it. Apparently people at her job get super weird or snooty over the fact that he’s got a blue collar job. She is a WOC so that probably compounds the judgment.
I can’t picture a white man’s professional life being made unpleasant over his wife’s lack of college degree.
I have two anecdotes contrary to this - but both are people who married high school boyfriends, so the career "mismatch" was not apparent at the time they got together. So...exceptions that prove the rule perhaps.
I am definitely an anecdote contrary to this. DH comes from an upper class family, but as he didn't finish college, didn't "stay" upper class. I met him after I had a BA, but not a career yet. He was working part time and basically living off his father's money. He eventually became a blue collar worker and while he has his AA now, there's not much else open to him unless he wants to go back to school. I am currently getting my MBA, so we'll be even further apart in that aspect, but we currently make very similar money b/c construction work is so good right now. He also ::fingers crossed:: may be getting a full time instructor position at his trade school, so that would put him above me in pay, but still not in "class" as it's still blue collar vs. my white collar job.
With luck, I'm now in UC. Yes, I do cross class lines; friends and family fall in all 3 classes.
I probably grew up LC though I "feel" we were MC since we were comfortable and could do things most others in our neighborhood couldn't. I grew up in a developing country doing farm work, walking to school in flip flops, etc.
I now live in a very white area in the US. And now I'm thinking it was a bad choice to have a house in a rich neighborhood. Just yesterday a stranger asked where I'm from. <sigh> I hate that question.
I need more context here. Were you just minding your business and someone approached you and asked where you are from? Are you not white?
I know a woman with a professional degree who married a blue collar guy a few years ago. She said she gets a ton of shit about it. Apparently people at her job get super weird or snooty over the fact that he’s got a blue collar job. She is a WOC so that probably compounds the judgment.
I can’t picture a white man’s professional life being made unpleasant over his wife’s lack of college degree.
I have two anecdotes contrary to this - but both are people who married high school boyfriends, so the career "mismatch" was not apparent at the time they got together. So...exceptions that prove the rule perhaps.
I have a PhD and Mr. Smock has a BFA. We met in college while I was applying to grad school. I know a lot of women with PhDs married to people with lower degrees, but then again in my field PhDs make shitty salaries and I know as many unmarried women with the degree as married. Maybe more, actually. /anecdote
I keep getting interrupted before finishing my post answering the original question, but I find it interesting given how flat the socioeconomic structure here in Norway is. Among my closest friends, one is a fellow immigrant who cleans housing for a living, and another is an executive at a Fortune 50 company who's married to someone with local family money going back ~100 years. I am definitely at the upper end of my age demographics, and the first makes a little over half my salary. The second makes roughly double what I do. There's really not much of a spread. Of course there are a few 0.1%-ers floating around (plus the royal family), and at the other end there are a small number of people who won't accept government assistance, but the vast majority of people pretty equal. Even my friend who has a wife and kid and spends most of his time on unemployment lives a pretty similar lifestyle.
Among my friends in the US, I see a much wider spread. I grew up in a rural reduced-lunch single-income household and scholarshipped my way through state engineering school. They cover the gamut from retail workers and small-town school teachers to highly-paid tech professionals. There are only a few that fall below the lower threshold for middle class, but they cover all of these sub-categories of middle class. While plenty land in the upper class, I don't think I have any friends who are ultra-rich (if they are, they're very subtle about spending money).