Agreeing with a few others here. If you make a household income of $250K – statistically, even in expensive CA, you are wealthy. You aren’t just middle class, you are upper-upper-middle, or wealthy.
People make choices about how to spend that money. Having 2 car payments, vs buying older cars with no loans. Living in more expensive areas. These are choices. You make them and pay the price for them.
My husband and I have a combined income of about $150k – which lets us make our mortgage, keep the kids in daycare/after school programs. And we save. We don’t have car payments. My husbands car is 14 years old! We buy the kids clothes at target rather than Gymboree. We don’t have granite counter tops and designer furniture. But we have a comfortable life. We are not wanting. We consider ourselves VERY fortunate. When we save for the kids college and for retirement, we know it means we won’t have the nicest vacation. We don’t have lawn services or a housecleaning service… we do it ourselves. But we are FAR better off than non-professionals and don’t try to kid ourselves that we aren’t upper middle class. It’s a joke to think that someone making $250K is “middle class”. Middle class by definition is the middle of the income spectrum. It’s people like a police officer married to a teacher. Or an insurance agent married to a middle manager. It’s not folks with a combined income of $250K plus.
Another point – people are talking about 28% and 35% tax brackets as if that rate applies to their entire income- that’s a little misleading. We are ALL in the 10% bracket for the first $8k, then 15% bracket for the next 24K, and 25% bracket for the next 46K, etc… You don’t pay 33% on the ENTIRE income… only the income above $165k. (Above assumes filing single, filing jointly is similar except higher limits.)
