| HN Mirror

In a minor metro, middle class generally means comfortably paying the mortgage on a middling single family house in a good school district with a sub-25-minute car commute.

In some major metros, $120k is struggling to pay the rent on an okayish family-sized apartment in a below-average school district with an hour-plus public transit commute, with homeownership maybe creeping into the realm of possibility by making extreme sacrifices to save for 15-20 years for a down payment.

So yes, barely middle class.

I don't understand this mentality. If you're paying $3600+ in rent and are struggling, then you need to find a cheaper place to live or find a roommate, because you simply cannot afford it.

Oh, I have plenty of discretionary income for my situation. Maybe a teensy bit more than I would in a place with low housing costs but also low salaries.

But even a sacrifice of 100% of my discretionary income wouldn't put homeownership or childrearing (extra bedroom + good school district or private tuition) within reach. Certainly not both. Maybe I'll get to pick one on this salary if I ever see liquidity on my equity, but really I'm holding out for making a much higher salary in 10-20 years.

It's a fun thing to do with my early 20s. But I understand the presumption that a middle-aged man would not take this salary, as it'd be pretty damn difficult to rent more than a studio. Even the studio is extravagant: several of my peers of similar age have roommates. A family is certainly below middle class if it has to share an apartment with other families.

> I have plenty of discretionary income for my situation.

Then it sounds like your salary is great.

> But even a sacrifice of 100% of my discretionary income wouldn't put homeownership or childrearing (extra bedroom + good school district or private tuition) within reach.

Middle class doesn't mean you get all that without effort. You have to budget, you have to shop around for the right neighborhood, you may not have the option of spending money on a whim, your partner may need to find a job, but $120,000 is more than enough to buy a great home in a good neighborhood, it just won't be one in the heart of the city.

> Even the studio is extravagant: several of my peers of similar age have roommates

Right ... you're living in an expensive studio apartment in the city, you have to move when you want to start a family unless you're making much more money than a typical senior level engineer.

>$120,000 is more than enough to buy a great home in a good neighborhood

What? Let's suppose I could save $1,000/mo over 10 years, giving me a $120k down payment. (After retirement savings and $3k rent, this would leave me about $1000/mo in discretionary spending, including groceries).

The figure that maxes out a debt-to-income of .36 is $3526/mo, corresponding to a home value of around $640k.

For two bedrooms, that's a fixer-upper far from transit in a bad part of any East Bay BART stop town. And that's today: run the last 10 years of increases out another 10 years.

A $640k house is an amazing home almost everywhere in the country. The problem you're describing here is that the region you're living in has insanely high real-estate prices compared to the rest of the country and you cannot afford to live there.

nikanj 3277 days ago

Are you familiar with the "Old economy Steve"-memes? Not all places have those magical cheap homes readily available. The US (and Canada/EU) in 2017 are made of two kinds of places: 1) Incredibly expensive housing 2) No jobs.

Not if you're making a $120,000 salary.

You don't start with a salary and then choose a city. The city determines the salary. If you can find a salary at all, it's likely to be in a high COL city.

Of course I'd love to make $120k from somewhere that buys a nice house. That is, far as I can tell, not an option. I can save while living in a high COL city and then buy a house for cash in a low COL city, but I'd still need a job to pay property taxes/groceries/transportation. In cheap areas, the pickings are slim.

zebraflask 3277 days ago

Consider the price of bread and milk in NYC or SF, or, you know, housing. Like I said, barely middle class.

vacri 3277 days ago

The median household income in the US is ~$52k. Unless your definition of 'middle class' is 'top quintile', $120k is not 'barely middle class'.

NYC and SF are also notable outliers, and aren't representative of 'any major metropolitan areas'.

zebraflask 3277 days ago

I'm detecting some cognitive dissonance on the definition of a major metropolitan area.

[1]https://project.wnyc.org/median-income-nabes/

vacri 3277 days ago

How either of us defines major metro areas doesn't matter anyway, because the median household income in NYC is in line with the rest of the country, in the low 50s[1]. San Francisco's is around 65k[2]. If you're earning $120k, you're not "barely middle class", you're "doing well".

[2]http://citylab.news21.com/data/types/19/