ooo I am in the middle class.....lower left corner.

I'm in the basement of middle class

I'm in the remedial class, according to @Bob Lai. ;)

60k a year. I'm at the low end of lower middle class as defined by 1990's standards.

ooo a rich person....depending on whereto live....60K here is milk and honey...in Calif not so much

Reality is that the 's' curve for middle class is so compressed that it mostly fits in the 90k-110k a year bracket.

to me that bracket is the rich people that is a lot of money!

Hahaha. Yea. I'm totally rich. I live in a rented basement. I don't do debt so I buy outright whenever possible. I eat 1-2 meals a day, keep the heat at 55-60 deg F. and wear a heavy flannel shirt and knitted hat indoors. Everything else goes to retirement and the wealthiest fraction of a percent of my fellow Americans in the form of insurance, rent, and labor.

If I get sick, I'm better off committing suicide before the bills eat up my kid's inheritance.

You can look it up by US region here, because Nora is right that it very much matters where you live.

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/07/23/are-you-in-the-american-middle-class/

same here....my student debt was with credit cards

I'm rich in friends. I'll take that!

Dad's dementia burned through everything.

@Jess Nut Oh. Okay. So middle class in my part of the world is juuuust this side of poor trash.

"Income data released by the U.S. Census Bureau shows that the 2021 median household income was the highest on record at just around $65,000. Pew defines the middle class as those earning from two-thirds to double the median household income. This Pew classification means that the category of middle income is made up of people making somewhere between $43,350 and $130,000."

Obviously that varies based on the median income where you live, but I think more people think of middle class as starting higher than average, when in fact it starts below that.

Also that's per household, not per person. So a couple making minimum wage and living together qualifies as middle class or just on the cusp. Which again, most people probably wouldn't agree with.

To add to Jess' note.. That is per household... having kids really cuts into your income regardless of what strata you happen to be in when it comes to region.

Yeah I don't think a couple with $50k a year and 3 kids would consider themselves middle class. Seems like a pretty terrible metric in general.

$50K a year is well within poverty now!

@Jess Nut IMO the metrics you're referencing support my grievance.

This is a shrinking candy bar. Yesterday it was 5oz, today it's 3.2oz and the price went up. IMO the definition of American middle class has been shifted down to poorsville and been squeezed into a very narrow range of salaries. I base this opinion on my experience living on various means over the decades and, since I'll never be wealthy, observing and learning about the wealthy lifestyle from people who are actually there.

This is like when HR says "this job is worth ${JOKEWAGE} based on industry averages skewed by authorities whose vested interest is in depressing the value of labor well below free market rates."

At the end of the day, I'm living a worse life than my father did at my age on ~20k more a year. The candy bar is a lie.