Recently posted a thread to ask this sub’s users who grew up middle class what their experiences were like. Great participation, 250+ (not 280, apologies for title) comments. Link below
95% of comments believe the middle class experience is much less affluent than what the more controversial threads on Reddit seem to think. International travel especially is not considered to be middle class. Most people referred to RV, camping, driving to the beach and one Disney trip as what they considered travel growing up.
House ownership also seems to be widely spread (80+% of comments related to housing indicated house ownership).
Frugality was referred to directly or indirectly in 70+% of comments.
Almost never eating out was referred to in 40+% of comments.
Around 4% of comments either said the middle class doesn’t exist, people were actually working poor or the lifestyle reflected in many comments was too low
Based on users specifying what decade they were born or grew up in, here is some anecdotal marks of middle class based on decade.
1960s: small apartments or houses, but sometimes kids had their own bikes and got to roam around when school was out. Everyone was expected to work in the household and pitch in
1970s: the mark between middle class and rich was: central a/c and you could afford the electricity to run it all summer
1980s: a computer OR a color TV. Not both. Both meant you were upper middle class or rich. Commodore & McIntosh seem to be the two models referenced in thread.
1990s: going to sleep away camp (upper middle class or rich) instead of the swimming pool (lower middle class) in the summer or a church camp (middle class)
2000s: being able to get your kids iPods. Disneyland or Mexico once in one’s childhood
I should mention that a few first or second gen Americans mentioned they did travel internationally to go visit family but this was due to Herculean efforts by their parents and extended family.
@sophieseekerofwisdom Interesting read. Seems like the definition of middle class heavily depends on personal experiences and the era one grew up in. The evolution of what's considered a luxury or basic necessity really highlights the changing economic landscape. Makes me question how today's standards will shift in the future. Not surprised about the emphasis on frugality and the varying experiences with travel. It’s a good reminder that financial stability and lifestyle vary widely, even within what we call the middle class.
@david7818 I have found this so interesting as I've gotten older. Late 30's.
Listen I'm not trying to romanticize not growing up with a lot. But to put this into perspective, I was never starving or missing meals or scared of being homeless (though my dad where I spent the weekends lived in government housing, so he was pretty destitute). BUT its very clear to me that I can get by with a lot less than peers who lived a little bit higher. So many things still feel like luxuries to me, but if you're already used to them, of course they aren't luxuries are they?
I think this is one of the things that helps to explain the chasm between people feeling hard done by and others not. It's interesting to me that everyone almost immediately jumps to cost of living as if everyone either lives in the middle of nowhere or San Francisco, but rarely is it - what are your expectations. In my own peer group, with people in the same city and thus facing similar cost of living challenges, it is almost always the people who grew up more well off who seem unhappy that they don't have the lives their parents gave them at the age of 28-32.
@worriedone I grew up what I considered to be middle class. At around 15 or 16 I realised my dad made more money than the average person...we were a 1 income family with a stay at home mom in a great suburb where there was virtually no crime and we could walk t the town centre, school, parks, etc.
I then also had that sinking realization that if I wanted to continue to live that kind of lifestyle on my own that I, too, would need to figure out how to make more money than average and that you are not guaranteed the lifestyle you were raised on.
@morgan11 It usually takes time to reach that lifestyle too. Things are tough and tight in those early and messy middle years. Feels like younger generations expect to start life in the same financial situations that it normally takes 20 years to build
@worriedone And your last point makes so much sense given the trend of a growing overall population AND urbanization. The neighborhoods we grew up in are now extremely high-demand areas. If you grew up in a single-family home anywhere close to a city center, you grew up in the golden age of middle class suburbia, and the population of your city has probably doubled if not quadrupled since then.
I mean of course the big homes 25 minutes away from downtown are worth a fortune today. The city was so much smaller back then, so housing demand was dramatically lower. I find it surprising that people don’t just expect that by default.
@david7818 Agreed. I think the future will have a much smaller middle class and the upper middle class will keep pulling away from the rest of the middle class
@david7818 It’s also skewed by opinion. Everyone believes they’re middle class, but statistically most of the people that replied were from working class families. The middle class are people that have income from both work and the work of others, which in modern times is either enough income to invest and grow their wealth until they can retire if they’re prudent, or business ownership in a business where they work. Working class people are stratified into whether or not they can afford certain items and luxuries (like vacations), that is, they’re stratified by consumption alone, which is what the OP’s list is dominated by.
@kirradog There is a logical fallacy in your statement. You can’t be both. Someone else made a great observation that really resonated: “This sub is a circle jerk of people trying to convince themselves they aren’t working class.”
@searchingforsomething That's trying to redefine the class structure here. I think you'd have to go considerably far back, beyond anyone alive, to find the definition of middle class required sole proprietorship or higher. You can certainly make wages above middle class income today yet you are still working class.
The commonly accepted income range is $75 to $200k per family plus some regional adjustment. OP gathered data for opinions of activities that the middle class engage in. The range of what someone can afford between those two figures is vast and does represent a lagging adjustment since $100k is considered the minimum income for most to obtain home ownership now.
@searchingforsomething Or a sub of people trying to talk themselves into being middle class than admitting they are upper class but can’t manage their finances appropriately
I think an indicator of middle class status is "the tradeoff." You can have A or B but not A AND B. So yes, maybe you went to camp OR you had a nicer family vacation, but you didn't get both growing up. Maybe your parents bought you a car or had a generous college fund for you, but if you had both...rich (or at least upper middle).
@chris239 What if vacation was a week at grampa and gramma's house in the summer, I went to summer church camp, and had no college money so i took out loans for community college and worked two jobs, but a friend gave me their '89 corolla (in 2006)?
Was I middle class, or have I been mistaken my whole life and was actually lower middle?
@colada My dad worked for the government as an intelligence analyst while mom was staying at home to raise us. After we went to college she worked as a nurse. Working class implies blue collar, and we weren't really that. But we didn't have much of anything.
