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We look a lot more well off on paper than it feels in the day-to-day. Daycare is more than our monthly mortgage, and I'm still kicking myself for not socking away that money before we got pregnant.
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Top 5% for US and Top 16% for our metropolitan area. We're currently in a comfortable position (I can have two kids in daycare, we actually have a house) but I don't feel like I'm Top 5% - that's rich people- not me with my 15 year old car with 200k miles on it and a house co-owned by my parents. Pretty eye opening.
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I would say we're "middle class" because I know we're not 'poor', but I definitely don't consider us rich either, though the ranking seems to say otherwise. Rich to me means no money worries, kids college can be completely funded, retirement accounts are healthy, etc. While we do make saving and retirement a priority now, I don't know that we'll have 100k+ to fund each kids college tuition too, on top of all their other expenses AND maintain my retirement funding. We still shop sales and save where ever we can. I don't feel like we live a 'wealthy' lifestyle. Maybe I watched Cribs a little too much.
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@.twist.: Where did you do the Canada one?
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Hmm, we are top 10% for NYC and top 5% for the US, but oh boy, it sure does not even come close to feeling like it. We are both govt workers, so the salaries are not great, but really all I can think is just how terribly difficult life must be for people in New York City in the bottom half. Half a gallon of milk cost $6 here, how does people even survive? Whenever we are struggling with no money to pay for daycare for number 2, I need to remember to be grateful that we can pay for food.
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@.twist.: thanks for posting that link.
I'm in the bottom 20% for Canada.
However, when I entered our household income on the American one (original link posted), it put me in the top 33% -
@Willow: Did you adjust your salary for the currency difference? I'm surprised to hear there is that large of a difference.
@.twist.: That's not really comparing apples to apples. Just because income and net worth are not always correlated. I work primarily with doctors (financial planner) and can attest to this
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@LBee: I know, I just wanted to join in the fun and couldn't with the american link provided.
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@plantains: wait. there's a number 2 coming?
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@.twist.: Makes sense!
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@LBee: I would totally use a more accurate calculator if I had one, my google skillz are limited. lol
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@.twist.: I tried googling to no avail. I found an article that does it but it says "service unavailable" for the calculator. Boooo.
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Top half over here! My husband makes about 50,000 a year and that's our only income. He has great benefits which helps especially next year when I join his work insurance. I've always considered us lower middle class so this seems to correlate. I think where you live does make a difference because some cities are so expensive but I also think a lot of people would just never be able to afford to live in those cities. It's tricky. I've noticed HB in general seems to be on the wealthier side as a whole.
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Wow! That's very enlightening and really put things in perspective for me. Definitely feeling grateful despite feeling like we need more than we have.
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@LBee: No, I totally forgot about the dollar difference, haha. Just converted, and it drops me 10% on the American one
I also realize they're not comparing equal things, but I thought it was interesting to see the difference in results.
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We look good on paper. But my husband just started private practice and we live in an expensive area.
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@.twist.: I LOVE that calculator. It is much more accurate, I think, since it calculates your overall assets rather than salary. And I love that you have to input all your debt!
I felt like it was much more accurate. It says we are mid-middle class or people with a family of more than two (accurate!) and the US salary calculator says we are top 3% in the US....pshww...no way.
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@Anagram: Sweet! Yea, taking assets/debts into account makes a huge difference.
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@MrsMccarthy: I would agree that as a whole, HB is made up of people who are on the higher end. But it makes sense too. We're sitting around "wasting" a LOT of time on here, and I would think having more money would frequently equate to more free time.
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@.twist.: I must be blind, where's the one for the US like this Canadian one?
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@mrsjazz: yes, surprise hahaha! 100% an oops situation, we were not TTC at all, I have no clue how this happened! Super early on though I'm only about 5 weeks or so.
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@Mrs. Lemon-Lime: I don't know? haha I just posted the Canadian link. ETA: I think the only US one is in the original post?
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@plantains: congratulations!
@.twist.: boo, lol. The Canadian one accounts for so much more.
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@Mrs. Lemon-Lime: Thanks!
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@Torchwood: well I don't know about that haha I feel lucky to be where I am and don't begrudge anyone who has more. It can be tricky.
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We're top quarter for the country, but when I look up our city we are well below the median income. We certainly don't feel rich or even upper middle class, but that's because it's an expensive area and most people around us have higher incomes. If we were somewhere else with the same income I'm sure we'd fee differently (and we likely would be paid the same amount or more elsewhere- we both are paid well below our market value because we love our jobs.)
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I thought it was interesting that the calculator doesn't address household size at all. The same money made by a single individual vs a couple vs being used to support a kid/s translates to a really different standard of living for the same amount of money.
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@lilyofthewest: So true. Our income isn't going to increase at all when we have a baby (if anything, it might go down as my husband is paid hourly and may cut back his time), but we're certainly going to have a lot more expenses.
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After having "slept on" this topic last night, my general feeling is that yes, this board does seem to have a higher concentration of high income earners. But I would go out on a limb here and say very few of us are sitting on an inheritance that makes it so that we do not have to work. To be truly wealthy, in my experience, your bank is a family office or private client bank, where your financial instruments are set up in a way to provide you income. These are the people that are sitting on huge amounts of single stock positions, that have hospital wings and buildings on college campuses named after them. They belong to the exclusive clubs that most of us have never heard of. That's wealth.
Me? Not wealthy. Not upper class. But I am totally okay with that. Even if I managed to earn a $100 million, I still wouldn't be able to just walk into the upper class. It doesn't work that way in this country.
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Bottom 25, and I'm surprised it's that high!
It's a struggle. We do expect to double our income in august when DH and I swap places (at the moment I'm in grad school, he's working. Come august we will be swapping. Right now I have better earning potential).
I still consider us to have a lot of privilege compared with a lot of people in our circumstances because we "fell" here. We had better jobs and therefore reasonable savings, so have been able to pay any out of the blue things - that makes a huge difference.
We live with family for reduced rent, so we live in a nice house and eat well.
We have car people in our family, so never pay a mechanic. Ditto computer people. That's two major expenses out. Because of my father's work, he always gets the newest computers and gadgets. There is a hand me down chain (step mother -> grandparents -> me plus siblings) whenever he upgrades. This means decent phones etc that would otherwise be out of my price range. Because we weren't always in this position, we can present ourselves well - high quality work clothes etc.
All of these things add up to make it doable. It really gets me thinking just how many don't have the support we do.
I find the class question interesting. No way we are financially middle class, not by a long shot, but we hold middle class values. Because we both have strong educational backgrounds, our friends are almost all on much higher incomes (or fellow grad student families).
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We're top half across the county, but the top 34 in our home city.
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Also - this doesn't account for any debt. DH and I pay nearly half of our income to debt (we have over $200k in student loans thanks to law school). Our families were both lower middle class, and we had to take out the debt in order to raise ourselves higher. I have no regrets about that debt though. Once it's gone, we'll be able to create a better future for our kids.
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If all of you go back and take that Canadian calculator Twist posted, it's so much better at actually calculating your wealth, rather than your savings. Even though it's for Canada, I think it's probably pretty similar to US numbers, so it's interesting to see how it compares--I found it to be much more accurate.
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