[iamjustin]

Oh, you mean if you live in one of the two highest cost-of-living areas in the country? Give me a break. 100k puts you in the top 5%. If you choose to live somewhere with an astronomical cost of living, that's fine, you might not have much after rent, but you still have the ability to live there. Most of the country couldn't even afford to.

[jack-r-abbit]

Well... they might not be able to afford to on the salary they make in most of the country. But they probably could if they made the higher salary that goes with the higher cost of living places.

  Average Salary:
  San Francisco, CA: $79,000
  Austin, TX: $55,000
  Iowa City, IA: $54,000

  Average House Price:
  San Francisco, CA: $637,100
  Austin, TX: $200,500
  Iowa City, IA: $169,700

(For house prices, I picked CA and a couple other random states and picked the city with the highest average house price for each state listed on http://www.zillow.com. Then found the average salary for each of those places on http://www.indeed.com. I didn't have time to list them all. This is by no means a complete, dead-solid picture... but you might get the idea.)

Also, I don't know if there is a better calculator out there now but I recall this one[1] being passed around back when it was a fairly new trend to hate on the 1%. Currently, $100K puts in at 81% on its scale... or "the top 19%" to use your scale. You would need to make $220K to be in the top 5%.

[1] http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2011/10/19/what-percent-are-y...

[iamjustin]

That's a good point.

It's frustrating that the people making these calculators don't state how many working individuals makes up one household. One of the problems I'm seeing in these comments is that some of us are talking about individual income, and some household/family income.

[jack-r-abbit]

Or for that matter, how many non-working individuals are in the household. A couple making $200K/yr is going to be far better off financially with 0 kids than with 3 kids.

[TheCoelacanth]

Someone making 100k/year in wages likely couldn't afford to stop working for more than a few years unless they already spent decades saving money. That means they aren't upper class. Someone who is upper class could maintain a high standard of living indefinitely without ever working.

[jedmeyers]

You should move to India then, with 30k salary you will be able to afford a couple of servants and a part-time cook. That will definitely feel like an upper-class living. Unfortunately, your 30k salary won't move with you to India.