The middle class is the best class in the world. It is the largest class, which means it’s the most important class. Politicians pander to us by saying nice things and giving us all sorts of random benefits, like the child tax credit or stimulus checks if you make a middle-class income.
But once you get to the upper middle class, or the mass affluent class, those government benefits start going away. You make more than the middle class, but not enough more to avoid the sting of higher taxes and optional lifestyle choices, like paying for private school. And because you make more than the middle class, you are sometimes vilified.
Never Underestimate The Middle Class
If you need proof of the middle class’s power, look no further than this week’s midterms. Democrats just won both the House and the Senate.
I’m not here to tell you which party is right. I’m here to tell you the middle class is fed up. Fed up with extremely wealth politicians. Fed up with politicians who pander to billionaires. Fed up with 28-year-old AI researchers buying $8 million homes in cash. Fed up with high gas prices, high mortgage rates, a never-ending war, and a grocery bill that looks like a car payment.
When the largest class in America gets angry, it doesn’t write a strongly worded email. It votes. And it flips Congress.
The lesson is clear. If you want politicians to care about you, be middle class. If you want them to tax you, be rich. And if you want to be ignored and vilified at the same time, be upper middle class.
This is where we find ourselves with today’s post on how to be middle class and stay middle class, so you can feel safe, loved, and accepted. Because based on the feedback from 3.5 million views and 1,400+ comments on X for my $408,000 budget post, I now clearly understand what is and isn’t allowed if you want to keep your middle class membership card.
The Middle Class Take Two Weeks Of Vacation Or Less
One of the biggest surprises from all the feedback on the $408,000 budget was that three weeks of vacation a year, two destination trips and one staycation, is considered an absurd luxury. The vast majority of commenters called it out of touch, ludicrous, or worse.
There was even a writer with 1.5 million Twitter followers who said he’s never taken more than two weeks off in his life. He later explained it’s because he doesn’t make enough to take three weeks off. So if you needed more proof that writing doesn’t pay, there it is.
Since 1999, I’ve considered three weeks of vacation a year the standard for anyone with a decade-plus of experience. This is a household making $408,000 with two kids. These aren’t people fresh out of college. Taking 0-1 weeks in your first year or three, sure, that tracks. But after 10+ years in the workforce, three weeks off is not some wild ask.
Apparently it is. So the rule stands corrected: if you want to be middle class, cap your vacation at two weeks a year. Take a third week and you’ve officially graduated to out-of-touch elite. Congratulations, or condolences.
The Middle Class Spend Generously On Cars
Not one of the 1,400 commenters gave this household credit for driving a paid-off Honda CR-V. A brand new, nicely equipped CR-V runs about $38,000, compared to roughly $50,000 for the average new car in America today.
So the verdict is in: the middle class are free, encouraged even, to spend more than they should on a car. This household is decidedly not following my 1/10th rule for car buying, the way personal finance nerds, the mass affluent, the rich, or the poor do.
Ironically, the nicer the car someone drives, up to a point, the more middle class they appear. It’s understood that the middle class take on debt, or at least stretch, for a car nicer than their income comfortably supports. That’s the badge. Wear it proudly, on 72-month financing.
The Middle Class Live In Modest-Sized Homes
There was a genuine uproar about this household paying $5,000/month for their mortgage. If you live in an expensive coastal city, $5,000 is reasonable, maybe even cheap, for a single-family home. But the feedback was clear: $5,000 is too much, and so is 2,100 square feet.
Three bedrooms and two bathrooms still reads as the quintessential middle class home to me, and I’ll defend that. What’s apparently not middle class is the 2,100 square feet of interior space. Plenty of commenters flagged that as immodest and far too big.
So if you want to keep your middle class card, buy or rent something under 2,000 square feet. Ideally something starting with a 1: 1,600, 1,800, even 1,990 sqft works. Just don’t let that second digit round up to a 2.
With a modest home and an expensive car, this household also isn’t following my House-To-Car Ratio guide either. The typical American runs a ratio of about 9 to 15. I recommend readers aim for at least 50, ideally 100+, so you’re minimizing a depreciating liability while maximizing an appreciating asset. The middle class, evidently, prefer it the other way around.
The Middle Class Only Send Their Kids To Public School
Since a huge amount of education is now available for free online, paying for grade school is an unnecessary luxury the middle class shouldn’t indulge in. Same logic applies to paying full freight for private or public university.
A smart, motivated kid with engaged parents will likely do fine in almost any academic setting. So dropping serious money on private grade school tuition is, by this logic, mostly a waste. Save and then invest it so the tuition money grows to over $1 million by the time they graduate college.
Then again, having over $1 million to give your 23-year-old college graduate because you saved and invested the difference disqualifies you from being middle class. So instead of saving and investing the difference, feel free to spend it on whatever your heart desires. YOLO!
The Middle Class Live For A W2 Job
Of course this household earns their $408,000 the hardest way possible: two W2 salaries, taxed at near the top of the marginal bracket before a single dollar hits their checking account. Federal, state, FICA, all of it withheld before they ever see it.
Nobody in the comments seemed bothered by this part. And that’s the tell. The middle class don’t just tolerate a W2 job, they build an identity around it. Steady paycheck, steady withholding, steady sense that this is simply how adults earn money.
Ask them about starting something of their own, a side business, a rental, an app, anything with equity attached, and the answer is almost always the same: too risky. Better to let somebody else take the risk, and the upside, while you collect a salary and help build their dream instead of your own.
I get it. Entrepreneurship isn’t guaranteed. But neither is a W2 job in a layoff cycle, and at least when you own the thing, the appreciation and the tax breaks flow to you instead of a shareholder you’ll never meet. The middle class, evidently, would rather have the certainty of somebody else’s risk than the upside of their own.
The Working Middle Class Have Two Children Or Less
Here’s the part nobody wants to say out loud. If you’re a working middle class professional, the going rate is two kids, maybe. Every additional kid means more daycare, more food, more square footage you’re apparently not supposed to have, and no extra help from the government to offset any of it.
But stop working, or work little enough to qualify for subsidies, and suddenly more children becomes affordable again. Medicaid, subsidized childcare, food assistance, the EITC, all of it scales with need, not with effort. The system isn’t rewarding family size. It’s rewarding low reported income, and if you’re grinding away at a W2 job trying to move up, you’re the one least likely to qualify for help raising the family you’re working so hard to support.
So the rule holds. Two working parents, two kids, tops. Three kids are more puts you in the rich category, and we can’t have that.
The Middle Class Don’t Save For College
Curiously, there was a lot of pushback about the $408,000 household saving $16,000 a year for their two children’s college tuition. Commenters asked why they’d bother saving for college when they’re already paying $45,000 a year for private grade school per kid.
My initial response was that college can be far more expensive than $45,000 a year. Some universities now cost $100,000 to $120,000 a year, all-in. So setting aside additional money for college isn’t a bad idea. But critics said the parents should just pay for college out of their day job income when the time comes.
Therefore, the middle class do not proactively save and invest for college in tax-advantaged 529 plans. And given many top private universities now charge $0 tuition for households earning under $200,000 a year, the belief that saving for college is unnecessary is, in fairness, somewhat logical.
What’s illogical is assuming your kid has a real shot at one of these schools with a sub-7% acceptance rate. But the middle class are hopeful their children will defy the odds.
The Middle Class Don’t Build Passive Income Because They’re OK Working Forever
As an older parent, it never occurred to me not to save for college, because I don’t plan on working to pay for it when the time comes. When my youngest goes to college, I’ll be 61. There’s no way in heck I want to be grinding from 61 to 64, paying tuition, as someone who left the workforce at 34. So the only way for me to pay for college is to save and build passive income.
Therefore, it’s clear the middle class don’t focus on building passive income through a taxable brokerage account, a rental property portfolio, or other taxable investments. The middle class are solely focused on contributing to tax-advantaged retirement accounts like the 401(k), IRA, and Roth IRA, which is great, until you actually want to stop working before 59 and a half.
Having the grit to work forever, whether you want to or not, is truly a wonderful trait of the middle class. I could not hack it.
Long Live The Middle Class
If any of this sounds absurd, that’s the point. We judge other people’s money and choices against our own experience, then call the mismatch a moral failing.
Personally, I love being part of the middle class, because nobody bothers you if you’re like most people. But this exercise made me realize I’ve been too frugal, fixing my 11-year-old car instead of just buying a new one. I also need to build more grit by mentally preparing to work longer while spending more as a reward. So I’ll do those things to retain my middle class membership card.
The $408,000 family isn’t doing anything wrong. They’re just the latest Rorschach test for what the internet has decided “middle class” is allowed to look like.
And if working until 70 because you never built passive income is the price of admission, congratulations, you’ve made it. Welcome to the club. Now get back to work because falling into the permanent underclass would be terrible.
Readers, do you agree with my conditions and descriptions of what makes someone middle class? What are some other conditions you might add?
If you want an actual framework for these decisions, car versus house, rent versus buy, private school versus public, W2 versus building your own thing, instead of a crowdsourced vibe check, that’s what I wrote Buy This Not That for. It walks through the exact tradeoffs above (the 1/10th car rule, the House-To-Car Ratio) without the 1,400 comments telling you you’re doing it wrong either way.
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