Wikipedia definition for American middle class defines middle class as anywhere from $25,000 a year to $100,000 a year, but that would depend on where in the country you live. Someone making $100,000 a year in San Francisco or New York City is a lot different than someone making $100,000 a year in Ohio or Oklahoma.

I just looked up OK real estate and you can buy a 4 bedroom home on 5 acres for $199,900!  In CT you can't buy a shack for that price.  

I don't think $$ amount works. In many areas of the country, $100,000 a year would make you quite well off - able to buy a house on one year's salary, for example.

In other areas, (San Francisco comes to mind), you'd be hard pressed to cover basic annual expenses: a median home, health insurance, food, property taxes and property insurance, transportation and auto insurance. Never mind any kind of emergency.

So I think it comes down to this: you're middle class if you depend on your labor to pay your bills.

If you can take a year off of work and still pay for it all, you're upper class. If you don't have to work, at all, you're upper class.

Someone who makes $50k a year off of investment income and who does not have to work, is upper class. Someone who makes $100k a year from labor and who will be out of savings after 6 months of expenses is middle class.

$2750 is nearly 20% of her monthly income?

That would put her at around $14,000/month, or $168,000/year. Forgive me if I find it hard to shed a tear for her woeful childcare bills.

Yes, I know the cost of living in San Francisco is higher than it is here in Dallas where I live. But I don't care where you live... $168,000/year is NOT middle class.

I think to live well in a city you have to be super rich.

Although not everyone who lives in a city is rich, but they don't live that well.

Everyone I know from career supermarket cashiers in New Hampshire to people living in $700,000 homes in the Bay Area consider themselves "middle class

$700,000 in the Bay Area buys you what, a 3 bedroom, 1.5 bath, 1500sq ft home with a pocket yard, right?  Don't get me wrong, you're lucky if you can afford this.  But it's not exactly "lifestyles of the rich and famous", is it?  

I don't even like saying what DH makes, because for a lot of people, it makes them hard to imagine why we ever struggle.  But it's not the amount; it's what you can do with it, and that includes purchasing power & other things.  We're in a lot of debt because of trying to live before DH had that salary.  It wasn't fancy clothes & lavish trips.  It was medical bills when we didn't have insurance, and school loans that I, for one, really believed would make a difference in my earning power, and cars which you need where we live.

It's definitely also geographic.  We paid $100,000 more for a 20-year-old house that needs a lot of updating on the outskirts of the Twin Cities than my brother did for a bigger, brand-new house on the outskirts of Indianapolis.  And my brother may be middle class now, but his wife will get access to up to three trust funds as she approaches her 40s, while we will probably struggle to put our child through college.

I'm a native of North Dakota, and the poor state is constantly sending materials out to us expats trying to get us to move back.  One thing they like to extol is the fact that you can get a large house for $150,000.  That's true, but what they haven't been able to address yet is the fact that we'd be lucky if we got jobs that together paid $50,000, and probably not in our fields.  Our school loans, debt, and vehicle costs would remain the same.  So moving to a supposedly cheaper area wouldn't really help either.  

... that he didn't ever make over 30K a year -- until 2 years ago.  (And no, he isn't uneducated -- he has a PhD in science.)  Yes, he has a wife, but she is a public school teacher.  And they have 3 children.

But -- he also owns 4 houses.  (And neither of us got money from relatives.) If you take both his and his wife's incomes, together -- they probably equal about $70K.  Is that enough where YOU live to buy four houses?

They live in Indiana.  Every time he boasts about how well he manages his money, I remind him that my making $80K a year in CA was less than he made at 30K in IN.

Long story to reiterate a point already made -- it DOES depend where you live.

Working on the 25k to 100k definition of middle class, DH and I are WELL into upper class.  But.

We can't afford a vacation every year.  We can't afford to buy a new car every other year.  I can't afford to redo my kitchen.  We can't afford to send DD to the fabulous private school down the street.  We can't afford a nanny (or, as I would prefer, a Mandarin-speaking au pair.)  We can't afford a house with more than three bedrooms.

THESE are the things I associate with upper class.  I feel solidly upper middle class, but I don't feel rich.  It really is a matter of location (we're in DC), perception (how many Lexuses and McMansions do I drive by in a day?), and security.  There are many many people even in DC that think DH and I are very well off.  And in scads of ways we are.  WE don't have huge credit card bills, we have savings, we can afford day care.  So clearly, I need to redefine my perception of upper class.  I have to separate out the Kennedys and Gateses and even the lawyer couples into the uber upper class, and realize I am upper class.

BTW, please find me the town in the country where 25k makes you middle class?  How is that possible?  My brother lives in Bergen Country, NJ, earns around $60k and is literally broke.  No real school loans, no rent because he lives in my parents house.  He does however have killer medical bills, and has to eat expensive food (Read: healthy and not full of processed crap like HFCS) as part of managing his condition.  He doesn't even feel like he's in the middle class!

we lived in claremont california.  my dad was head of finance at the flat iron division of general electric.  he made $60k per year.  we lived in a $35k house and my mother didn't work.  we had 2 cars and my parents were putting my 2 older brothers through college. i think i felt we were not middle class, perhaps upper middle class.  however:

1. we never went to europe or hawaii on vacations.  we went camping or traveled by car to the grand canyon.  towards the end of my high school years, we rented a house in laguna beach for 2 weeks.  that was after my mother started working as a teacher.

2. i didn't get a car of my own at 16.

3.  i got clothes twice a year, birthday and christmas and nothing too fancy.  up until high school my mother made my clothes and taught me how to sew.

4.  my father had a fabulous retirement and health care plan.

5.  i went to a public school and at that time, claremont high school was the highest ranked school in california...all before prop 13. i rec'vd an excellent public school education.

6.  my parents NEVER threw out furniture because it wasn't in style.  our house was loaded with furniture from my grand parents and great aunts.

7. my parents drove their cars till the wheels fell off.  luxury cars were not a part of our lexicon.

i don't know how we can ever define middle class today. so much has been taken away that it boggles my mind. and consumerism as in the great video..Stuff, makes many of us feel as though we must have more to keep up.

is $40,000 before taxes, but I take home under $35K after taxes and insurance. My husband works as a temp when he can get the work. We rent a 1 bedroom for $1100/mo. in Fremont, and everything else is for storage, food, bills and gas. Since there's no way we could ever afford childcare here, my husband will quit working and be a stay-at-home dad come September (my baby is due 7/28). I'm hoping he will use some of his time at home to study to get his GED and maybe start taking community college classes when I get home from work. It's hard as a young family starting out in this economy. I hope we have more success in the future. If things don't improve in this country, we're seriously considering moving to where they have universal healthcare and more public assistance in a foreign land. Sad.

...and I really question whether "middle class" exists anymore.  It seems like there are people who have a little bit of financial security and people who don't and it's becoming increasingly impossible to move up to the former group.

When we lived in the Bay Area, at one point we were renting a house for $3200!  (My brother lived with us and helped out a little, but still.)  My husband made about 120K and we were always utterly cash poor.  We moved out of that situation to buy a condo, hoping it would mean more security (payment of 2400 a month on a two bedroom apt style condo) then when my husband lost his job we had no choice but to move to a more affordable part of the country.

Or I guess, we did have a choice if commuting every day from Oakland to Mountain View so he could go from telecommuting to never seeing his kids, to keep us in our little tiny box home, can really be considered a "choice."

Anyway, we moved to Tacoma.  Ended up short on the sale of the condo and it will be some time before we ever own a home again.  But I feel like we live so much better on 50-60k here where a 3 bedroom home with a yard rents for 1150 a month than we did on 120K in the Bay Area.  Still no savings, no health insurance, (husband is self-employed) no private school (we love our public school) but there's just so much more that we can afford to do.  

I had no idea childcare was that much! I guess I am sheltered -- I homeschool our two, and we have a relative close to babysit on the rare occasions when we go out. Here in Norfolk VA we could be paying $15K per child for private school -- we could maybe afford that, but we'd have to eat bulk pasta all year. :)

I think I always subconsciously think that we're sacrificing money in order to keep me at home, but maybe it's actually cheaper to not pay the before/after care and education costs for a decent school.