What is an upper middle class lifestyle

In My Humble Opinion
1

If you assume there is a lower middle class, middle class and upper middle class, what would an upper middle class lifestyle entail?

To me lower middle class is like the Connors on Roseanne. They own a house and cars, but they have almost nothing left over and are barely making ends meet.

Middle class means you have it better. But you still have to worry about a big medical bill or a major home remodel. You drive fairly new middle class sedans (Toyotas, Honda, Nissan, Hyundai, etc)

But I guess what is upper middle class? To me its around 120-200k household income in a low cost of living area, probably closer to 250-400k household income in a high cost of living area.

To me if you can afford a 5 bedroom home*, 2-3 nice cars, expensive vacations, etc. you are upper middle class.

*even 400k in income probably isn’t enough to afford that in a high cost of living area like SF or NYC obviously.

2

I think it’s living in a house you like, going on vacations you want to go on, buying the food and clothing you want, and rarely worrying if you can afford to see the doctor, or to fix/replace the car when it dies.

3

Generally I agree. I do think that your income range for upper MC is a bit low. I think it should be 150-250K. 120K still means that a major remodel or a nice new car would be a stretch. Fixing things and a mid-level car is easy at 100-120K.
In the DC area, $175K is solidly in the middle class. But you drive older cars and can’t really afford to buy a house. Upper it certainly is not.

4

Yes, but this could all apply just as well to less-than-upper middle class, if their wants are modest enough.

As the OP notes, the problem with defining it according to income ranges, is that it matters quite a bit how big a family you have to support on that income, and where you’re living: the same income is going to afford a very different lifestyle in Peoria, Illinois than in New York City or San Francisco.

5

For me upper middle class means you have plenty of money to do almost anything you want. It does vary by area but age also plays a part. Where I live - major metropolitan and expensive - $75 - 80k per year is not that big a deal. But if you are only 23 years old - as one woman I know is - and still living with your parents it puts you straight in the middle class right away. (she was a “favorite” of one of the directors. The director just retired and she is now too expensive to bid on any real work as her salary fits with a 8-10 year veteran not a newby) She essentially spends most of her time attending our reviews taking notes.
Most of my project managers make close to $150 - 180k per year and are under 45 years old. To me that puts them squarely in the upper middle class even in this area.

6

Since cost of living can vary very much from one location to another, I’d take this at the other end; By the type of occupations we typically associate with “upper middle class” and then look at what they can afford in various locations.

For upper middle class, I’d look at engineers, lawyers, doctors. I’m not sure what you would call the upper end of that like senior electrical engineer, partner at a big law firm or surgeon; “Lower upper class” is clunky but I’d hesitate to call them solidly upper class.

7

Doctors are kind of a weird field, as they can make more money in a low cost of living area (since demand for physicians there is higher). So a physician may make 300k in boston or the bay area but make 500k in a small town in the middle of the midwest.

But if you’re making 500k in a low cost of living area, that’s kind of beyond upper middle class in my view. I’m not sure what the term is, but you can buy a Mcmansion for 400k in a lot of the midwest and the south. Thats almost nouveau rich by low cost of living standards.

As for lifestyle by vocation, that changes too. In a low cost of living area a pair of engineers can afford a 5000 sq ft home. In a high cost of living area they can afford a 1000 sq ft condo even with the higher salary.

8

You can look up income %-tiles by place, though I don’t know of a source doing it by both place and household size.

Here’s ‘New York area’. You can also look up the City or boroughs or neighborhoods within it. Data seems to be a few years old

https://statisticalatlas.com/metro-area/New-York/New-York/Household-Income
The mean income of the top 5% is $509k, mean of the top quintile 274, mean of the fourth quintile 114k, the median 69k

https://statisticalatlas.com/United-States/Household-Income
In the US as a whole those numbers are 359k, 200k and 89k, median 55k

People sometimes overestimate how much higher NY incomes are to compensate high living costs particularly high real estate prices. But a lot of even well off people bought homes long ago and aren’t paying mortgages or rent commensurate with current marginal prices. And further down the spectrum a lot people in NY (the city) live in below market Rent Stabilized or public housing.

If you assume 400k as ‘upper middle class’ in NY and a much lower number elsewhere then a much a smaller % of people in NY are ‘upper middle class’ than nationally.

Also though when some people say NY (or ‘New York City’) they mean Manhattan or parts of Manhattan. On the Upper East Side 231k there only gets you to the mean of the 4th quintile, closer to the off the cuff idea of the city as a whole.

9

If you’re looking for specific class-based lifestyle characteristics that don’t change whether you’re in Manhattan or a rural area in the Midwest, I don’t think you’re ever going to get a satisfactory answer.

The concept of class is going to have modalities according to specific contexts so an answer to your question will require abstracting beyond the square footage of dwellings or specific income amounts. Think of not just high vs low density but countries or eras, it wouldn’t make any sense to get stuck on square footage or currency unit amounts.

10

An upper middle class person may be frugal, but they don’t go to bed worrying about money.

They have the money to make all the “right” decisions. They take their cars to get serviced even if everything is running smoothly. They keep up with physicals and dental cleanings. They can always afford to get a second (or third) opinion. They always keep a decent emergency fund. Because they can afford to make all the “right” decisions, it is easy for them to see the irresponsibility in everyone else.

The upper middle class have regular “help”. Like, someone who cleans the house once or twice a week, and someone who does the landscaping. They may hire someone to cook all their meals for the week. They have full-time nannies. A comfortable middle class family might have occasional help. But not regular help and not help like this.

11

I know. I was surprised when I first heard that median household income in NYC was around 60k. I couldn’t figure out how people lived in a place where rent is 3k a month on that kind of income.

But like you said I’m sure a lot of it is a mix of people buying homes back when they were cheaper (there was another SD thread about how brownstones used to be under 100k in the 80s) and a lot of rent controlled apartments.

12

Thats a good divider too. Upper middle class families hire a lot of people to help them. People to mow their lawns, watch their kids, clean their homes, etc. At that point you’re more buying time and convenience.

13

If you can apply to send your kids to a relatively selective private school and not double over in pain when you find out what the tuition will be, you’re upper middle class.

14

Depends on when you bought your house. I have a five bedroom Bay Area house, now paid off, but I bought it 23 years ago. Couldn’t afford it now.

I heard from our City Councilman the other day that the cutoff for affordable housing in our city is $82K a year. If you think that’s high, the cutoff in Santa Clara county is more like $130K.

I never came anywhere close to making $400K, by the way.

15

That’s a good explanation, but I’d add one thing. Upper middle class can do one or a few of those things, but can’t do it continually like the 1%-ers. A UMC family can buy an expensive new car, or take a round the world vacation, or buy a new boat. But they can’t do all of them at once. I consider upper class as being able to do all of those things with little regard to the cumulative expense.

jmo.

16

Yes, that sounds right to me.

17

I know, but you bought before housing prices went insane. If you want a house like you have now on todays market you may need 400k in household income to buy it.

https://www.michelleyelen.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/bay-area-home-prices-incomes-demographics.jpg

18

My understanding is that there are a fair number of the upper middle class who live paycheck to paycheck–they like to spend money.

19

If the question is about what the lifestyle is like rather than a definition of what is “upper middle class”, I suppose I am qualified to answer for the NYC area, based on the OP’s definition. Specifically, I can speak for the upper middle class areas of New Jersey’s “Gold Coast” region from Jersey City to Fort Lee. The main point being that that area is dominated by apartments and condos, rather than single family homes and has relatively quick access to Manhattan. People who live further out in the suburbs and commute in have different lifestyles.
Most of the upper middle class types live in relatively new luxury condos or maybe own brownstones or townhouses they bought before the neighborhoods gentrified. Most of the condos are doorman buildings with lots of amenities.

There does seem to be a trend in creating buildings as self-contained living environments with their own gym, pool, lounges. I’m not crazy about that, as I like living in a “neighborhood”.

Jobs tend to be based on New York - finance, tech, media, law, etc.

Most families seem to have at least a nanny and maybe a cleaning lady who comes in occasionally. Sometimes the wife stays home and doesn’t work.

I would describe clothing styles as “sharp and put together” but also kind of bland and generic in a Banana Republic sort of way.

We generally have money to do whatever we want, within reason. Mostly because we live well within our means and made good investment decisions. But our whole family can go to Ruths Chris or an equivalent restaurant like once a week and we wouldn’t put a dent in our finances.

I feel like drinking is pretty common. Not excessive, but still very much a part of leisure activities.

During the summer, many of my neighbors tend to “go somewhere” on the weekends. Jersey Shore, the Hamptons, Fire Island, Shelter Island, LBI, the Pocono Mountaints, places like that. We tend to either go to my family’s summer house or my wife’s parents.
It’s kind of odd from a “class” perspective, because I see high school friends with more “middle middle class” jobs like policeman or school teacher who own 4 bedroom homes where as many of my neighbors make a lot more money, but rent 2 bedroom condos.

20

I grew up in the lowest income quintile, and we worked our way up to the top quintile. So I’ve been through all the ‘classes’ of income.

Lifestyle is individually dependent. I know people who live ‘upper middle class’ lifestyles on middle class salaries - they just borrow a lot of money, have no savings, and are constantly in financial trouble. On the other extreme there’s Warren Buffet, who still lives in the small bungalow he lived in when he was poor.

My wife and I would probably be considered upper middle class now, as she is a senior manager and I am a senior engineer. But we have never owned a vehicle more expensive than a Ford Escape, and currently one of our vehicles is 16 years old and the other is 5 years old. We don’t go on fancy vacations because we can’t afford it. We did do a cruise for our 25th anniversary, but other than that it’s almost always a driving vacation to a lake or something. When we travel we stay in Super 8’s or motels of that level. I suspect that is because we both came from poverty and never had expectations or desires for fancy living.

We have a really nice house, but we bought it two decades ago for $265,000. It’s worth more than double that now, and I don’t think we could afford the mortgage payments if we bought it now, and would probably have to live in a smaller place on some crowded street.

It’s funny how when you are making $50K you think about what it would be like to make $150K, but when you actually get there it really doesn’t feel very different. The biggest difference for us is that we actually have some retirement savings, two pensions, and we don’t have to live paycheck to paycheck. But in terms of lifestyle, pretty much nothing has changed. We still do the same things for fun, I still buy my clothes at Mark’s, we still eat at home or at cheap restaurants, etc.

The biggest difference is that the grinding worry about money is gone. If a car breaks down, even expensively, we can pay for it. If the house needs some work I can’t do, we don’t have to take out a loan or load up a credit card to do it. We have no debt other than a small mortgage that will be paid off in a couple more years. That’s a great feeling.

But then I know people who make the same family income and still have all the problems of middle class because they can’t manage their money. They lease $75,000 cars, Wear $1000 suits and $500 shoes, and they are in debt up to their eyeballs and still living paycheck to paycheck. Hell, there are Hollywood stars in deep financial trouble after earning millions of dollars. So a lot of what makes our lifestyle satisfying has more to do with the choices we’ve made and not the income we have or the class we’re in. It’s possible to save money and not live paycheck to paycheck on a much smaller salary if you are careful with your money.

Last thing: “Money can’t buy happiness” is a cliche for a reason. Whether you are happy or not has a lot more to do with the choices you make in areas of your life that have nothing to do with your ‘class’. I’ve been happier and sadder at different points of my life, and it always had more to do with friends, family, career, hobbies, and my own personal development more than whether I had money. And that was true when I was desperately poor and trying to scrape up rent money every month. So don’t let ‘class’ define you - or others.