Households Need to Earn $300,000 a Year to Live a Middle Class Lifestyle

Because this article completely misdefines &quot;middle class&quot;? Being middle class doesn&#x27;t mean you can afford absolutely everything you want. It just means you&#x27;re financially secure enough not to have to choose between food, clothing, shelter, and healthcare with every paycheck, and to be able to save up a buffer in case of emergency.<p>Example: $2100&#x2F;mo to feed 3 people is ridiculous. Instead of buying prepared foods, cook meals. You can feed 3 people on $750&#x2F;mo. If you&#x27;re spending $300&#x2F;wk on date night dinner, find something less expensive to do for date night.<p>Similarly for some of the other budgets. Drive a used Honda instead of a new Volvo. Find less expensive ways to entertain yourselves. If you insist on living in an expensive housing market, accept that middle class family living in a dense city means (and has always meant) a (cramped to midwestern suburban sensibilities but quite livable) 2BR without outdoor space, not a house with a lawn; and consider renting instead of buying.<p>Middle class living means making compromises. If you&#x27;re not making compromises, that&#x27;s upper class living. And yeah, that can cost $300k&#x2F;yr easily.

I think we should come up for a new term for working high income households, something like a &quot;City class&quot;.<p>They make between 250-699k. They have mostly what they need but work very hard and aren&#x27;t the leisure or power class that is associated with the upper. They don&#x27;t have or really identify with the same money problems as the true middle class but they certainly don&#x27;t have enough to spend frivioisly. They give up some things compared to the middle class in low cost cities though like yards and larger homes. They also have to pay expenses that other single income lcol dwellers don&#x27;t like nannies.<p>This seems to draw a real.line between the nonworking rich and the working well off.

I think the key here was costal living in economic hubs. I was looking a little while back to see if I should move closer to work to reduce my super commute. For the same price as a stucco 1000sqft house with near zero yard, bars on the windows, graffiti on the building with a homeless person sleeping on the sidewalk, and being right next to the freeway, you can pick up a house literally 3 to 6x larger on 10 acres in Montana that looks like it is out of a story book. It costs much, much more to live close to the economic-hub costal cities.

How can anyone pay any attention to yet another west coaster who lives in a bubble?<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;dqydj.com&#x2F;income-percentile-calculator&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;dqydj.com&#x2F;income-percentile-calculator&#x2F;</a><p>If you make $300,000 a year in household income, you are making more than 98.9% of households in the US.<p>Our household income is a little more than half that, we live in a major metropolitan city, have a 5 bedroom 3-1&#x2F;2 bath house in one of the affluent counties in the country that was brand new build in 2016 that costs $320k. Our mortgage is around $2000 a month.<p>We aren&#x27;t able to max out both of our 401Ks right now, but I do max out mine and my wife works in the education system with a pension.<p>We are a family of 3 and our grocery build is around $800 a month.<p>We explicitly decided not to save for college. We are in a state that has practically free tuition to any public college as long as you maintain a 3.2(?) GPA. If our child can&#x27;t keep that GPA in high school, why would we pay a lot of money for him to go to an expensive college? We can afford to pay tuition for four years out of pocket for him to go to a public two year college his first two years and then transfer.

This post has a bad title. HN should change it to reflect that OP is specifically talking about living in SF or NYC.<p>(I still have criticisms of the piece, but it&#x27;s at least kiiinda understandable when talking about those two cities.)

&gt; Yes, their total tax bill is ~$17,000 more a year than today’s median household income...<p>Glad to see the author pointed this out. Regardless of what you think of his budget, this basic taxation fact remains true.

My idea of middle-class existence is a thrifty but relatively happy family life with an emphasis on education. The budget could vary enormously depending on how this is implemented.

I found it surprising that the budget does not include emergency fund, gifts to charity. It does say at the end it is missing those things like that.

Middle-class is such a meaningless term now. US median household income is about $60K, that is the middle of the income distribution.

I’m not middle class but if you are thrifty and can prioritize freedom over needless expenses ie $5 cup of coffee it isn’t hard to live very comfortably in many parts of the usa. I understand owning property at all can be much more challenging in europe than it is in much of the usa mainland.<p>Coastland and island living is going to be more expensive for various reasons.

Ah yes. Starts off with BART salaries. Just revealed his right-wing intentions.