Interesting Post…So how about a Twist in the Logic..}:~D

It all comes down to Defining what is “Middle Class”.

Today “Middle Class” means 2600 square feet of House, Two Cars, and a whole bunch of other things like Cable, Internet, etc.

However if you are old enough to remember growing up in the 60’s and 70’s a home that size and all the other things were the perogative of the Upper Class.

When you talk of living “Below Your Means” you are referring to what would have been during MY childhood Solid Middle Class in a 1500 Sq Ft House and (usually) only 1 car for the Family and Rabbit Ears (but if you were lucky some form of Basic Cable) on top of the TV.

So when people complain they earn more than their Parents did but aren’t moving into the Middle Class its because they keep “Moving the Cheese”

If you live like your parents did 30 years ago you can still Legitimaely claim you are Middle Class.

~ Roland

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instead of using the median income, if they used the average, it would skew it upwards (coz wealth is trickling upwards) and thus show that we’re not really middle class, but infact lower middle classs.

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Not saving anything is a HUGE problem. One thing you can do is to save the spikes in income, like bonuses, the delta money you get from raises every year (if you get them), etc. Also, even I have scaled down eating out in favor of learning to cook more. I couldn’t believe how much we were throwing away on meals out.

Also, a $3000 vacation every year is not something I would have expected to see in your budget. I love to travel and wouldn’t think about spending that much every year. You can travel cheap and exotic if you do your homework. Either way, you might think about scaling that down. …or if that is your guilty pleasure, scale down on other things to make it happen. The point is, you have to make some hard tradeoffs.

All of that said, the point of your post is whether or not you are living within your “class”… and unfortunately, you may not be.

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I really appreciate this post. I fully agree with you that “maybe earning the “median” income isn’t middle class”. To me, this implies that what we hold to be “middle class” in the popular imagination (though there are many imaginations as well) best culled from TV, magazines, ads, the movies, etc. is subjective. What we feel are middle class needs are not Platonic forms but cultivated stories we reproduce through our practices. I personally don’t think a vacation a year is a “need”–just to show you what I mean.

The impulse to save is not a bad one and, politically, can do some good if it forces companies to rely less on personal consumption for their revenue. That said, I worry that the discourse on saving also can leave government off the hook. Part of the reason Americans feel financially insecure is because the welfare state and the safety net have been progressively dismantled since the 1980s.

Religious organizations assumed much of the responsibility for responding to what happened in New Orleans and this was good, of course, but also demonstrated the inadequacy of the state infrastructure (and will). To draw an analogy, if private citizens take up the slack to fill in gaps once provided for by decent pensions and social security, something that is in one sense positive can also be, from another point of view, contributing to the widespread privatization of life. Make sense? Let’s save AND demand that society provide for its vulnerable (like the elderly and the poor).

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