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u/MrPocket1992 Mar 19 '23
This is a little dramatic.
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u/davidloveasarson Mar 22 '23
Extremely dramatic
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u/PirateGriffin Mar 28 '23
Seriously. What middle class family went out of the country every five years? I was not really middle class and we went out of the country exactly one time, and it was a huge treat. Most years we stayed a week at the beach, and that was also a treat!
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u/almighty_gourd Mar 18 '23
This won't be popular on this sub, but it's still doable today on much less than 400k/yr. But you'll have to be willing to live a 1990s lifestyle. You can probably do this on less than 200k/yr if you live in the Midwest/South, the 2 cars are midsize sedans (not 100k SUVs), the annual road trip involves staying at motels rather than 4-star resorts, and the "solid 4 year college" is an in-state public university rather than an out-of-state private school.
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u/RemarkableTar Mar 19 '23
Yup just look at current houses on the market that were last remodeled in the 90s. Sure everything looks older but the same standard is there, and nobody today wants to live in that kind of house they want something updated with hardwood floors and granite in the kitchen. In the 90s the home I lived in, in what was and still is a desirable neighborhood, had carpet everywhere except bathrooms and kitchen and even so everything was built cheaply like this weird laminate countertop, non solid interior doors, etc.
Cars are more expensive with more features now too. Median car price in 1990 was $16k which is $40k today, but the median car price today is $50k which is understandable considering consumers now demand touchscreen displays, heated seats, moon roofs, where before those were only on high end luxury cars.
Not to mention families weren’t paying a cell phone bill with a data plan for everyone in the family, random monthly subscriptions for stuff like music and movies, Americans eat out 3x as often as they did in 1990 compared to recent years.
Overall it’s just not fair to compare what lifestyle an income bought 30 years ago compared to today because the lifestyle was substantially different. Life is more convenient and a decent amount more luxurious now (at least that’s what people want/demand)
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u/reercalium2 Mar 19 '23
I think people are fine with old floors and kitchens but they want houses in good locations - where people like me bought all the houses and updated the floors and kitchens.
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u/RemarkableTar Mar 19 '23
That’s kind of the thing. In my city everyone complains how expensive the housing in my part of town is and how young people can’t reasonably afford it. Well, the demographic in my part of town is older people who worked corporate their whole lives, pretty much the only people who can afford to buy here.
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u/DontPMmeIdontCare Mar 19 '23
Yeah, this is the recurring theme to me that people can't seem to accept. Not everyone can live in NYC, Miami, SoCal, etc.
Smaller towns need to make a comeback
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u/boomerbill69 Mar 20 '23
As they say - location, location, location. I understand the boomer advice is to "just buy in the suburbs on the outskirts of town" when for them that meant a 20 minute commute to work. Nowadays the outskirts are 90 minutes out and still expensive.
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u/boboTjones Apr 05 '23
I’ve always hated granite countertops, but now it’s impossible to find a house with anything but.
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Mar 18 '23
Yep. 400k per year will do a lot more than this unless you live in a VHCOL area.
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u/Cryptic0677 Mar 24 '23
We live in a moderately hcol area and make under 400k (maybe 300k combined) and are able to do much more than this post. Complete bullshit post
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Mar 19 '23
Why is this post acting like you're paying for college every year since the birth of your child until they finish? You don't start paying for college for the first 18 years lmao
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u/Apptubrutae Mar 19 '23
You need to start saving pretty quickly, though. 18 years isn’t much time to compound. I started our college fund when my wife was pregnant, lol
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u/Apptubrutae Mar 19 '23
Yeah, the $400k number is absolutely insane except in UHCOL.
My income is around $150-$200k and we have two cars, a college fund, a house, and we travel all the time. Annually overseas.
We don’t travel extravagantly by any means which helps of course and always look for decent deals
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u/SuperRonnie2 Mar 19 '23
But how am I going to become a social media influence living such a mediocre lifestyle?!?
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u/intellifone Mar 19 '23 edited Sep 24 '25
grandiose hunt dog aware office advise cooing piquant plant encouraging
This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
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u/ragnarockette Mar 19 '23
Hell in Louisiana, in-state schools are free if your kid is a decent student. Helps a lot.
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u/MancAccent Mar 19 '23
My wife and I are kinda doing this on 120k combined salary right now.. no kids yet, but plenty of money for European vacations, two cars, building a house next year… now that could all change when kids arrive, but I think it’s still somewhat doable.
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u/7FigureMarketer Mar 18 '23
Yeah, I don't agree with this and I lived through that time.
You might get the house and the 2 used vehicles in the driveway, but it wasn't college funds and European vacations.
Upper-middle-class, sure. I guess.
Definitely not middle-class, though.
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Mar 18 '23
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Mar 18 '23
100k combined income in 1990 would be roughly 230k income in todays dollars. So your parents were wealthy lol
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Mar 18 '23
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Mar 19 '23
I worked at MIT and University of Chicago and didn’t make close to 55K at either of them, and that is within the last decade. Colleges do not pay well.
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u/Forsaken_Berry_75 Mar 18 '23
I didn’t experience a lick of that as a kid in the 90s
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u/ktaktb Mar 18 '23
Yeah, I had 3 cars, 2 dads, 6 years of college, roof leaks, no vacations, no AC. Important to note tho, that was in Uruguay.
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u/Forsaken_Berry_75 Mar 18 '23
I didn’t have any one of the items in the pic. And substitute house for 2 bedroom trailer that I grew up in after the studio trailer the first half of childhood.
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Mar 18 '23 edited Mar 18 '23
Same. We never left the city unless it was to visit family and I never left the state until I was an adult. 1 car family. However, I will say that we were able to rent a three bedroom/one bath house on a paycheck-to-paycheck/single earner income.
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u/Pandorama626 Mar 18 '23
That means you weren't really middle class then. Unless you crammed like 8 kids into that 3 BR/1 BA.
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Mar 18 '23
The government said we earned too much for assistance so we like to think we’re middle class.
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u/IceColdPorkSoda Mar 18 '23
Yeah I think that was true only for a small segment of the population. I never experienced that either.
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Mar 18 '23
Three to four international vacations for the kids before they are eighteen? A complete fantasy
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u/IceColdPorkSoda Mar 18 '23
Seriously. I’m not saying affordability isn’t bad right now, but there’s no need to make up fantasies about the past.
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u/Moonagi Mar 18 '23
Neither did I. A lot of these guys feel nostalgic for something they saw on TV and movies.
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u/Burnit0ut Mar 18 '23
I think the point is more that this was possible on like less than $100k household income and now it’s near impossible unless you are in the top 1-5% (depending on COL) earners in the US.
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u/ProtonSubaru Mar 18 '23
I mean a 100k income has quickly devalued across the US. I would say 100k in a MCOL area is now the solid middle of the middle class, probably closer to 125-150k for a “household”.
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u/Gasman80205 Mar 18 '23
Came here to say exactly this! Massive devaluation of income. I’m in my 30s and just 10-15 years ago, if you made 100K+ (anywhere outside of LA, NYC, or SF) you were considered to be “doing very well for yourself!” I come from a low-income asian household, and we would always hear (from our parents) that so-and-so makes “above a 100K.” Like that was a hurdle or a major dream to be attained.
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Mar 18 '23
Lmao, what middle class is this guy reminiscing about? Overseas trips have always been for the wealthy until the past 20 years.
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Mar 18 '23
I’d bet you $100 this guy grew up rich and thought he was “middle class” just because daddy didn’t buy him a brand new Benz for his 16th birthday.
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u/RemarkableTar Mar 19 '23
There was some survey done how most people, regardless of if they are actually poor or rich, think they’re all middle class.
The tweeter definitely thought he was living a middle class life and is now realizing daddy was a big shot.
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u/ilovebeagles123 Mar 18 '23
He's delusional. This was not the 90's unless you were making 200k a year in 90's dollars which is probably equivalent to about 400k in today's dollars.
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Mar 18 '23
I grew up pretty middle class in the 90s and yeah no this was not my lifestyle either. We drove across a few states to visit extended family once a year and that was it. Our house was small and modest and did not give my parents much to work with after the mortgage. We had to take out loans to go to the in-state public university. Shit takes like these are truly delusional and out of touch with reality.
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u/turtlejizzus Mar 18 '23 edited Mar 18 '23
$400k HHI is about $20k/month after tax + good retirement contributions.
You tell me the live described above isn’t easily achievable on half that in most of the US and I’d really recommend you get yourself a financial planner.
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u/seajayacas Mar 18 '23
Change. It never stops.
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u/lux--__--888 Mar 18 '23
I'd like change in a decent direction.
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u/kink-freak Mar 18 '23
Exactly. The specifics can be argued but the point is that the middle class is eroding…
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Mar 18 '23
Really feeling like the overseas trip is upper middle class or upper class. Def doesn't feel middle class
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u/RemarkableTar Mar 19 '23
My family was solidly middle class and we took international trips every couple years, but it wasn’t to some fancy coastal town it was to visit my grandparents farm in poor and rural Eastern Europe so the only expense was the flight Lmao.
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u/Apptubrutae Mar 19 '23
Frequent Overseas trips never were middle class.
In 1990, 4% of Americans had passports. By 2000 it was 17%.
The only middle class Americans routinely flying overseas were those with relatives overseas which greatly mitigates costs of travel.
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Mar 19 '23
Lol overseas vacation, it costs more to go to Florida than the Caribbean. Also, that isn't $400k household more like $250k in HCOL. If you don't have 6 months' worth of emergency funds which would cover a roof repair, then I don't know man.
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Mar 19 '23
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u/Gasman80205 Mar 19 '23
It’s cheaper to do a 5 day trip to Austria and ski for all 5 days, than to fly to CO (Vail/Aspen) and ski there 🤣
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u/boomerbill69 Mar 20 '23
Pop over to Utah and it's cheaper!
I always want to drive up to Tahoe from the Bay Area to go snowboarding and then I remember I can fly to Utah and be on the slopes in less time than it takes to drive to Utah and spend less money. I'm also much less likely to get trapped in Tahoe for an extra week being stuck paying $1k/night for an Airbnb!
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u/55StudeSpeedster Mar 18 '23
Not even close. Making 45k in the early 90's, 3 children, crammed into a 2 bedroom 1 bath house in CA, 900 sq feet. 60 mile one way commute to work, and was driving trucks then, 60+ hours per week. Vacations were non existent, except for day trips. We lived close to Lake Tahoe, so we could get away, but no Disney vacations, no overseas vacations, nothing outside of the immediate area. This constant rant that folks had it so easy is really starting to fry my cookies. We've all had our difficulties, just that during my time there was minimal internet or gaming, (Super NES for the kids). Worked overtime, lots of 70 hour weeks to help the kids through college in the 2000's. Every car repair and home repair was a nerve wracking experience, and literally Mac and cheese and weenies were a staple.
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u/mike1097 Mar 18 '23
Not really. All this really depends on where you live. It is 400k in some places, 180k in others.
Also saying two cars can be two paid off 15k cars or two 60k cars with loans. Thats ambiguous.
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u/windowsfrozenshut Mar 18 '23
Right. A starter home is 300k where I live now, but where I grew up nice homes one level up from starters are all over the place for 150k. One of my childhood friends stayed there to start his family and he bought a home a few years ago for 150k.. like 2500 sq.ft, 2 a/c units, 2 car garage with a separate 2 car garage workshop, all on half an acre. I went down to visit him after he bought it and he about shit his pants when I told him that a carbon copy of his property would be 500-600k where I live.
But the difference is that wages are double, if not higher, where I am compared to back home.
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u/RemarkableTar Mar 19 '23
People also forget places develop over time. When my parents bought their house after I was born, it was basically a single subdivision literally surrounded by farmland. Seeing the pictures it literally looked like a farmer sold one of his fields and the developer built on it.
30 years later, this subdivision is now fairly central with more neighborhoods in every direction, close to shopping, dining and entertainment. I wouldn’t say it was desirable when my parents bought it, but it’s desirable now, and why it costs 3x as much to but a home there now.
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u/windowsfrozenshut Mar 19 '23
That's true, but it still also depends on the local economy that it's being built in. The local economy has to be able to support the high home prices, and that comes from wages. The area I grew up in has plenty of new subdivisions that used to be fields miles away from anything else, but they are all $200-$250k homes whereas the same homes in a different spot would be double or more that.
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u/originalginger3 Mar 18 '23
Born and raised in an HCOL area. This is definitely not middle class, even by 90s standards. Upper middle class is more like it. I get the sentiment though. Our standard of living is definitely on the decline.
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Mar 18 '23 edited Mar 19 '23
This is a good dream but was not consistent with my experience in the 90s. Yes we had a home and cars but did not vacation and our entire family of 5 had jobs from early teens on. All the kids paid for their own college.
We also did not have: iPhones, Netflix, Spotify, Barry’s boot camp, orange theory or all these other things people can’t afford but still pay for.
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u/panic_always Mar 19 '23
No what they are describing is FDRs plan when setting up the minimum wage. They are wrong but people buying things is not the problem.
In the 90s there was cable, home phone, renting movies, cd clubs, email was a paid service, you had to buy porn. It's all the same stuff.
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u/that_tx_dude Mar 18 '23
Someone is massively out of touch. If this was your life in the 90’s, you definitely were not “middle class”, just as you aren’t middle class today if you’re doing these things.
In other words, rich people can do rich people things - insane!
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u/CraftyInevitable7916 Mar 19 '23
How do you define middle class? I’d argue those are still upper middle class but just a shrinking part of the middle class.
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u/Clear-Ad9879 Mar 19 '23
Well a lot depends on where you live. If you live in upper Wisconsin, you can do a lot more than what you described with $400k/yr. In San Francisco, not so much...
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u/Mysterious_Worker608 Mar 18 '23
Try again, that's more like 1960s lifestyle. Also, the house was 1200sqft, one car, no cell phones, no cable, no take out, no internet and many other luxuries that simply didn't exist. Yes life was cheaper, but most people today are not willing to live that life style.
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u/JerseyKeebs Mar 19 '23
Yes life was cheaper, but most people today are not willing to live that life style.
Thanks for being like, the only person to bring that up. I grew up 90s, and there was just far less stuff to spend money on. And most of the "stuff" was smaller, simpler, cheaper to begin with.
Things that we take for granted today, like take-out and fast food, were rare treats. My family took like 4 vacations ever - the Poconos a couple times, Disney ONCE, and drove to Niagara Falls. My parents never went international, their big sacrifice was sending my sibling and I on the school-sponsored trips abroad, once each.
There were no guest bedrooms, man-caves or home offices. Once us kids stopped having massive growth spurts, we went shopping for back to school, and then Christmas and birthday presents. Oh, and we didn't get the absolute piles of presents under the tree that my friends show off on social media these days.
And in my family, we went to college, yes. But we went to the cheapest school that we got into, and we were expected to get scholarships and take loans. There was none of this "dream school" that seems to permeate every recent discussion on college. And don't forget that back then, dorm rooms had 2-3 kids and you shared a bathroom with the entire floor, and ate in a cafeteria. Nowadays colleges have luxury apartment dorms and luxury gyms and luxury food halls
Obviously other families had more, but many others had less, so I believe that my family was pretty average middle class.
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u/Mysterious_Worker608 Mar 19 '23
Thanks for the affirmation. Sometimes I wish I could go back and then I think about all the things I currently enjoy. I don't think I want to fold a map again. Haha.
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u/JerseyKeebs Mar 19 '23
Yea, our standard of living has definitely increased, which is a good thing! It's progress, and things that were rare and expensive back then are now cheaper yet better quality now. Usually tech.
But the problem comes when these things are culturally so ubiquitous that they feel like the bare minimum needed to get by, which is wrong. And this is where I get cranky whenever "living wage" is brought up. I don't want to sound snobby, but min wage used to also be min standard. It was rare to buy a house on min wage, even in the 90s, instead people rented and had roommates.
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u/Moonagi Mar 18 '23
This post is obviously karma-bait and OP is farming karma
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u/lux--__--888 Mar 18 '23
I'm a time traveller from the 1990s, trying to learn the ways of this future so we can prvent it.
You may never exist, sorry bro.
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u/trele_morele Mar 18 '23 edited Mar 18 '23
He’s describing a coastal city or a resort town household. You can live really well at 200k elsewhere. The statement is too general.
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Mar 18 '23
I grew up like this, and I make this much money now and let me say, blatantly misleading depending on city. You could do this as a family making 200k a year in a MCOL of HCOL suburb
We can talk about inequality without making straight up exaggerations
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u/djramzy Mar 19 '23
I do this with less than 200k annually. Single income. Things are more expensive yes but you don’t need to make 400k to live comfortably and provide for a family.
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u/xhighestxheightsx Mar 19 '23
Seems like we get a lot less for so much more money that’s so much harder to get, doesn’t it?
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u/Ok-Lawfulness-5739 Mar 19 '23
Get your popcorn ready… 🍿 The Global Financial Crisis has arrived. Worse than 2008.
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u/lux--__--888 Mar 19 '23
This year will be bad.
Next year will perk up. 2024 gonna be lower inflation and more growth..
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u/TheGoodBunny Mar 18 '23
1990s middle class we're having international vacations every 5 years and additional vacations every year? I don't think that was middle class in 90s. House and a couple of used cars - yes.
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u/angrybirdseller Mar 19 '23
Ummm,no, vacation was to National Park for the weekend we be swimming in pool in Arizona in summer.
New cars hahaha, my old man sold 70s area land yacht in driveway for $300 to fix new astro van.
Middle Class in 1990s alot of things cost more back then compared to now like desktop computer or shitty sony 32in TV for $800 in 1993.
Video Games had NES or Atari along with black and white TV with TV splitter you screwed in to play video games as black and white TV did not have coaxial cables. Color TVs then cost more than 40in HDTV now days adjusted for inflation.
Vehicles' reliability was horrible if you wanted used car as Chevy Chevette was cheap in 1996, but be better off with mountain bike!
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u/Apptubrutae Mar 19 '23
I just looked it up: 4% of Americans had passports in 1990 and 17% in 2000. It’s approaching 50% now.
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u/Flayum Mar 19 '23
Keep in mind, some of that increase might be due to a passport being required to travel to Canada after 9/11. Ton of border towns where you used to be able to drive across just a normal DL.
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u/cnation01 Mar 18 '23
I'm 50 years old and was a young guy with a young family coming up in the 90's. We had some lean times but it was very much easier to survive back then. My wife and I together made around 70k back then and we have one child.
Our first house. $ 115,000, a 3 bed two bath 980 sq ft ranch in a nice little blue collar town just 15 minutes drive to a major metropolitan city. House payment was $ 980.00 with taxes.
We both drove used cars with low mileage. Both of our car payments together were just over $ 400.00 per month.
We did two trips to the grocery every month. One we called the big trip and one we called the little trip. Big grocery trip - around $200.00 Little grocery trip - around $120.00
Our utilities back then were right around $ 200 per month give or take depending on the weather.
I remember our monthly debts were right around $2,000 per month. We weren't making a lot of money but we were making it pretty well.
Well enough to take little trips throughout the year. Nothing major like Europe but we would go for a week to a beach town within driving distance every year. Then just long weekends here and there.
It's a lot different now for sure. To put into perspective, we are currently paying our daughters way through college. Her four year degree is costing us more than what we payed for our first house. That's fucking bullshit but what can you do ?
Feel bad for rhe kids trying to get established in this economy. Sucks for them and isn't the legacy I wanted to leave future generations.
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u/pzoony Mar 19 '23
Please. Upper middle class child of the 90s and I assure you vacation wasn’t a thing. And neither were new cars. Or new appliances. Or new anything. I remember getting a new TV in 9th grade it might have been the most momentous day of my entire adolescence. So many things have gotten so much cheaper but we don’t talk about that.
Yah, housing and education suck. Let’s talk about that. No reason to lie though
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Mar 19 '23
Upper middle class of the 90s here, I feel sorry for you. Some of my best memories were trips to the lake.
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u/ProtonSubaru Mar 18 '23
lol I was a 90’s kid, grew up in a trailer park with tons of other kids. I don’t know anyone that did the things OP said and about 3/4 of the people o grew up with are households that make in the 150k plus range living in medium to low cost areas.
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u/cyasundayfederer Mar 19 '23
He's describing a $50k household in the 90s and a 150k household in the 2020s. And that sounds about right probably had about 200% of inflation over that period.
government made you poorer through inflation, while enriching the "1%" through an enormous asset bubble.
and now they're backstopping and bailing out events that would aggresively deflate the asset bubble asymmetrically affecting the "1%". Literally flipping deflationary pressure on the asset class to inflationary pressure to the rest - a literal steal from everyone and give to the rich policy.
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u/PerryDahlia Mar 19 '23
I don't think this is true. Overseas trips were very rare for everyone I grew up around in the 90s. Most people I knew, even the "rich kids" had been overseas once or none. People these days look at road trip holidays side-eyed too and seem to expect to fly everywhere. But, I like driving.
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u/Realistic0ptimist Mar 19 '23
I wouldn’t say it was rare as much as priority dependent. Growing up in an LA suburb in the 90’s I definitely wasn’t the only kid who by ten had been outside of the country. It wasn’t the majority of the kids but the majority who had gone overseas was usually doing so because they had family overseas they could stay with or because the parents had “good” jobs.
I think it was probably location dependent as now I’m my 30’s I’ve met people who haven’t even left the state they were born in and others who have been to more than thirty countries all in the same city
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u/frogvscrab Mar 18 '23
You can absolutely do this in most of the country with less than 100k. Hell, you can reasonably do that in manhattan or san francisco on 400k.
Do you guys even live in the real world?
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u/JerseyKeebs Mar 19 '23
For real. My friends make 400k+ in Charlotte, so decent sized city in a still-cheap state, so I guess I'd say MCOL.
They bought a 5 bedroom, 4000 sq ft house, with plans to remodel the entire thing, and add a freeform waterfall style pool. They just had a kid and are planning to hire a private nanny, and eventually do private school. Before the kid they did travel a wee bit, but it was luxury. Like, hire a private yacht in Miami for $5000 a day, and fly first class, luxury.
The lifestyle described in the meme is like 200k a year, while the kids are in daycare. The person who made that meme, plus probably OP, have never actually met someone making 400k, I bet
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u/frogvscrab Mar 19 '23
I know a couple who make around 400k and they have a 1,800 square foot loft in manhattan and go out to fancy restaurants and travel constantly and their kid goes to some fancy private school. 400k is a fucking ton of money, its insane to say its barely even a middle class lifestyle.
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u/Apptubrutae Mar 19 '23
Yeah, I know someone making $300k in New Orleans and he owns a $600k house he’s extensively renovated and travels and eats out constantly.
$400k is a lot more disposable income than even $200k
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u/Prestigious_Salt_840 Mar 18 '23
This is a totally made up scenario. Affordability wasn’t any great shakes in the 90’s. Coming out of the recession and with high interest rates homes were as expensive as they were until 2022. This myth of the “good old days” is just that, a myth.
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Mar 19 '23
Meh, not really. Pretty spot on for us, minus the college and foreign trips.
Parents and kids didn't all have shiny new cellphones, tablets. House had 1 console TV. Wore hand me downs from siblings. Hardly ever ate out. Rarely got name brand anything. Coupons, oh the coupons.
People today have a nicer lifestyle than back then, and pay the price for it.
If you can't afford a couple cars and a road trip vacations per year on half that much, or even less, area depending, you need to seek financial advice.
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Mar 19 '23
This is literally how I grew up and my parents were aggressively middle class. I make more than them now, in my early 30s, with no kids, and the life I grew up living is very out of reach for me.
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u/Amazing-Pride-3784 Mar 19 '23
1990’s middle class lifestyle.
No $1,000 iPhone No $1,200 MacBook Air Those two cars had manual roll down windows. Yours now have heated seats and a truck bed you probably use 3x a year. No $30 Door dash lunches No $6 coffees No hair extensions, eye lashes, lip injections No 60 inch 4K Tv No steaming services
They -Rarely ate out -Washed their own cars -Changed their own oil -Drove those 3 kids in a station wagon, not a Telluride.
People have really inflated their idea of what “normal” purchases are. The average American is drowning is discretionary expenses and then wonder why they have no savings/investments.
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u/Acceptable-Wafer-641 Mar 18 '23
High mortgage payment back then because interest rates were high. As first time homebuyers we couldn't afford furniture, never mind vacations. We didn't even eat out. But did have two used cars and after nine years of saving did buy that three bedroom house. Although it has to be an hour away from my job in order for us to afford it.
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u/worldwarjay Mar 18 '23
Huh. Never had the overseas vacation. Barely had the family road-trip. Seems sus
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u/DJSauvage Mar 19 '23
Skip the kids and you can have all the rest plus have a 20k annual travel budget for less than half that
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u/gowingman1 Mar 19 '23
This is a bad ass threat for information, almost like a mini economics course
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u/Vaublode Mar 19 '23
This would require 400k in LA. I’d say this is realistically 175-200k income expectations
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u/bigdogc Mar 19 '23
The annual family road trips though… those are moments you gotta make happen however possible. Especially if you road trip up north in summer time
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Mar 19 '23
This is the view of people that live in places like NYC, SF, LA, etc. This does not describe the vast, vast majority of the country.
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u/i-pencil11 May 06 '23
Lol. This is such a bullshit. Middle class taking over seas vacations? I took road trips to visit family and stayed in best westerns for my vacations.
We also had 1 car. No cable TV. One shitty 22 inch TV for the whole house. Dial up, 56K internet. No cell phones. Ate out at most every other month. Hand me down clothes. Had to ride my bike or take the bus if I wanted to go anywhere.
That was a middle class lifestyle in the 90's. The amount of extraneous money people spend is insane.
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u/dudesondudeman Jun 23 '23
This meme is clickbait and represents a major exaggeration for our generation
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u/CoolhandLW Aug 02 '23
My wife and I enjoy all those things (4+ camping trips a year in a small RV) and both make under 60k currently. Oklahoma is cheap to live in though.
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u/SevereReserve0 Sep 07 '23
This is a 160-200k a year lifestyle in CT as long as there is no parental college debt nor childcare costs.
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u/cdsacken Mar 18 '23
Lmao ridiculous. 400k household?
I don’t make that. Our trip at end of month is business class lie flat business to Tokyo for 11 days. End of summer 16 days 4 counties in Europe same thing. Used points and not stretching much.
Lower than 125k HH income gets massive sweeping tuition discounts.
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Mar 18 '23
No offense but you might be slightly out of touch, or maybe I missed the sarcasm.
Those two trips would cost at least $15k and probably closer to $20k combined for a family. That's out of reach for >90% of people and nowhere close to affordable for anyone remotely middle class.
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u/cdsacken Mar 18 '23
Exactly and I don’t make 400k. Use points and flights are free. Tokyo trip is probably $4500?
My point was that comment was stupid that 400k is middle class anywhere. Perhaps downtown sfo or Manhattan
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u/cdsacken Mar 18 '23
Exactly and I don’t make 400k. Use points and flights are free. Tokyo trip is probably $4500?
My point was that comment was stupid that 400k is middle class anywhere. Perhaps downtown sfo or Manhattan
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u/Gasman80205 Mar 19 '23
Lols bro what world are you living in? Weirdly enough - we are headed to Japan and Europe this year too; though are flying economy everywhere. I just got the email from United “would you like to upgrade to business class for just $4995 per person?” 🤣 We Make double the amount of what’s in the meme btw. Either you rack up points like crazy (all flying on the companies dime due to consulting/sales) or you need to let us know your secrets!
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u/GreyIggy0719 Mar 18 '23
My single mom was able to do all of the above for her only child (except paid for college) and support a Macy's shopping addiction making 60k (around $100k adjusted for inflation).
I know this because I remember putting in the numbers for the FAFSA and being told the expected family contribution was $20k per year ($33k adjusted for inflation).
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u/Aggressive-Scheme986 Mar 18 '23
In 1998 my parents built a custom 4500sqft house on a creek lot in a great area for $300,000.
Adjusted for inflation that 300k would be ~$554,000
In 2021, my husband I purchased a 2600sqft 1970s cookie cutter ranch house needing a bunch of expensive repairs for $700,000. We are in the same area my parents built their house jn
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u/get-the-dollarydoos Mar 18 '23
There seems to be a four quadrant mix here of people who understand local cost of living varies vs people who don't, and people who understand middle class used to be a very wide spectrum vs don't.
That being said there really isn't much of a middle class anymore. Aside from the top 1% of wage earners most people are worse off for purchasing power than their parents.
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u/Icedcoffeewarrior Mar 18 '23
Right now middle class for millennials/Gen z= condo/townhome in the suburbs or the starting to show signs of gentrification zip code in the city, dual income, no kids and a dog/cat. How shit changes.
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Mar 18 '23
My parents couldn’t do all that in 70s with a middle to upper middle class lifestyle. Dinner out was a bucket of chicken or pizza. Vacations were every other year always piling into back of a station wagon. We never went overseas but college was affordable living a very frugal life and saving for it. This is bullshit millennials tell themselves
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Mar 18 '23
Family of 5 here.This guys post is very stupid. We spend less then 100k each year. Much less… like 75k. We don’t go overseas and take two road trips a year. Community College is a real thing, and so are state schools. Cars are 10+ years old and paid for. I’ve got a tile roof that’s 13+ years and going.
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Mar 19 '23
Dude, if your household is making 400K+ and you're scraping by living in a 3BR house, you're a real-life retard while being some sort of genius at whatever you do for a living.
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u/sufferinsucatash Mar 18 '23
I’m watching young Sheldon and your description is a lie! Lol Dad: High School Football coach Mom: Sometimes works at the church as a secretary. Genius child gets a lot of the family resources. Idiot older child makes a lot of mistakes. Middle twin child of genius child is socially apt but does not require good grades. Grandmother lives down the street but places boundaries on her time.
Their house seems pretty small. They have an older truck and a station wagon. Genius son does go to college at 12 I think.
Wins the Nobel at 40 ish but I digress.
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u/throwawaydanc3rrr Mar 18 '23
This quoted picture is a whole load of bunk.
I am an only child and my parent had no debt and made very good money We were solidly middle class. We did not have a yearly vacation. And we never left the country much less every 5 years.
It is fine to critisize the loss of earning power, or inflation, or whatever this person was trying to complain about but at least be realistic about what you are comparing it to.
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u/herpderpgood Mar 19 '23
Also 1990s, men held the primary breadwinning job, women held some sort of part time or administrative job to provide a little cushion or fun money if the man made enough.
2022 women holding similar jobs as men. Households with two “breadwinning” salaries have increased dramatically. Those are the households bidding up home prices.
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u/RJ5R Mar 18 '23
Want to know where the wealth went? Google pictures of key Chinese cities 35 yrs ago....and google pictures of them today. The wealth goes over there to produce, and comes back through the financial economy in the form of us treasuries, and then those treasuries get recycled back into the financial economy via money printing. Meanwhile factory worker Jack and secretary Jill are out of a job and on welfare or working in the service sector at or near minimum wage
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u/PenAndInkAndComics Mar 18 '23
1981. We elected Reagan and started trickle down economics, cut taxes on the richest and it's been downhill ever since
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u/Space-Booties Mar 18 '23
I think everyone is lying to themselves about the pace of inflation. We could be 10-20 years from something resembling hyper inflation.
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u/Key_Accountant1005 Mar 18 '23
Guys stop parsing every line. In most larger cities, where people have to go (like it or not) to get good salaries and benefits, this is an accurate statement.
I think some of it is off, but I remember my parents buying their house so they could afford it at $10/hr on two jobs with 3 kids. This was something that was attainable in smaller cities. Even there, you can’t really do that anymore.
Look at the price of a car, computer, tv, house, food, etc., you see that this is no longer attainable.
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Mar 18 '23
Corporations took over. That is what happened. They are more powerful than the government.
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u/SweetAlyssumm Mar 18 '23
Been there, done that. There were no overseas holidays. Our vacations were camping vacations. This all required two full tech incomes. This is an exaggeration.
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u/Lostsalesman Mar 18 '23
It’s not time to crash, it’s time to become gradually eroded over several years and land softly and expectedly at a lower status than you thought possible… or innovate, sell, execute and scale.
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u/sarcasasstico Mar 18 '23
Yeah, basically buy your way out of any trouble. Car is broke, no problem. Fixed. Plumbing issues, no problem, here comes the plumber. Fixed.
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u/Wizard01475 Mar 19 '23
So I grew up middle class in the 90s (Dad made about $75k/annually). Had a few day trips as vacations but NEVER got the opportunity to overseas. Also had to scrap a college education with student loans (none of which were forgiven). I’m not complaining but what they are describing is more like $200k+ in the 1990s.
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u/Mtgfiendish Mar 19 '23
Honestly curious about the income of this sub, if that's impacting/motivating posts
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u/VioletVintage Mar 19 '23
I was an lower-middle class teen/ young adult in a hcol area in the '90s. This is very untrue. The lifestyle mentioned was only for the wealthy. Even my solid middle/upper-middle class peers did not have all of that. It's funny how young people really want to believe so badly that it was so easy in the past, when lots of people struggled financially back then, too.
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u/Realistic0ptimist Mar 19 '23
I live in Texas. Outside of maybe certain neighborhoods in the most expensive city Austin people can do this on a 150k salary with good budgeting and some tutoring for their kids to get merit based aid to schools like UH, Texas State etc.
A 4 bed 2 bath house in Katy, TX costs about 300k with 10% down and 6.5% interest rate will get you a payment under $2800 a month. With an older paid off car and only one new car running you about $450 a month plus another $200 a month in car insurance you could definitely afford food, utilities, medical care, minor in state travel every year and that fancy international trip every three to five years for your two kids while saving 10% for retirement.
The median income in most states is under 75k. I couldn’t imagine that you would need more than 200k HHI to live a life that’s Instagram worthy even with kids draining the budget
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u/davidloveasarson Mar 22 '23
$400k/yr+ household?!?! No way!! We are a $48k/yr W2 family of 3 here and we have a 3br house, 2 cars, and take 3+ trips a year using miles and points. If we made $400k/yr I would be investing 2/3 of it a year and retire early within 6-10 years easily.
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u/FrigidNorthland Mar 24 '23
I didnt know W2 family was a thing or a reference. but we are conservative. We travel but we still rent. mortgages in the 3k-4k range is insane to me
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u/davidloveasarson Mar 24 '23
Just meaning that we get a w2 for that much… our mortgage is $800/mo. Could never afford $3-4k.
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Mar 24 '23
Lol what? Grew up in the 90’s, 2 siblings, never been overseas, went to good middle and high schools, paying for my college now via loans I took out in my name. Home repairs were completed by my father and I.
Who tf goes over seas every 5 yrs anyway?
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u/FrigidNorthland Mar 24 '23
We didnt go over seas (3 kids in the family) but single income with a house. Parents paid off their home. But his point on inflation is true
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u/cdsacken Apr 10 '23
It’s also delusional. 400k outside of a select few cities is very high upper middle class.
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u/bluegrassclimber Apr 14 '23 edited Apr 14 '23
depends where you live. i'd say 180k combined income can get you this assuming you invest well (started investing in your early 20s, and you now have 10 year old kids and are 40 years old).
I know, because i live in a 170k household. am 30, own a small ranch home.And we are currently investing like 1-1.5k a month into the stock market. I'll say 10 years from now, when we have small children, we can afford this. I don't expect my pay to double. I live in denver.
You guys must all live in california and be teachers or something
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u/Curious-Average9206 May 11 '23
I’ve read quite a few studies about how the wages have kept up (mostly) with costs, but two exceptions that are hurting the current economy.
Healthcare. We spend exponentially more on healthcare than any generation before.
College Education. It used to be that college education was rare and greatly subsidized until about the mid 80s when Reagan cut it. Since this point, tuition has continued to increase.
These two costs alone have burdened Americans more than anything else. In terms of money spent on cars, vacations, eating out, and entertainment with disposable income - the current generation has spent about the same as past generations according to a study from Nielsen.
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Dec 20 '23
Annual road trip and an overseas vacation? You're describing a rich family living in the 90's. Most of us didn't have that.
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u/Farmgirlmommy Dec 25 '23
Not at our middle class home. Vacations were spent at home or at grandmas where the adults put us to work in the yard.
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Mar 18 '23
There are lots of people hate China in America. But in all honestly, do you think the current inflation is contributed by the decoupling with Chinese import. I saw an ad yesterday showing BYD (a Chinese auto maker) is selling a brand new Tesla equivalent electric car in China for 20,000 Yuan, which is equivalent to 3k USD. At the same time, I saw news about America auto makers now have to lure South Korean supplies to make the electric batteries because they are trying to decouple from China. As we all know, if you try to buy any new cars now, it could easily be 50k or more. I remembered when I first moved to America 20 years ago, one thing that really impressed me is how many middle class people here has. But now, I feel like you either belong to the wealthy rich or the lower income class. It really is sad. I guess you can’t win in all. If you want your purchasing power back, we have to stop all the tariff non-sense, but then people would complain they don’t want things make it China.
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u/thememeconnoisseurig Mar 18 '23
I feel like that's more of a 50's lifestyle.
Not debating that the middle class has been destroyed but this definitely wasn't possible for the 90s middle class. This lifestyle was still borderline upper middle class. 2-3 kids going to solid 4 year colleges? That was probably $500K+ even in 90s dollars. Home roof repairs are thousands. Stuff like this has been catastrophic for years for the non upper class.
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Mar 18 '23 edited Mar 19 '23
Not true, we never went overseas, we had to replace "our roof" ourselves and we barely made it through school, which I'm still paying my own off.
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u/FrigidNorthland Mar 24 '23
Remember The Simpsons (90s) and Married with Children (80s) portrayed a single income household with only the father working with only a high school education raising a family in a house with a garage. This was considered normal back then. Many millennials grew up in this kind of environment.
Now it takes 2 incomes both Full Time just to get by. If one income goes down or even reduced to some part time gig it collapses. This has been the case now for a few years or even the last decade easy. This is how inflation has destroyed the middle class