Its all in the taxes out here in California. Add in everything and you are looking at a 50%+ effective tax rate so take that 250K and cut it in half. Then start paying for the increased cost of everything. Also to get at that level of income chances are you have a higher level degree so add in paying that off.
Average cost of a home in a area where you would actually send your children is ~800K-1.7Million. You can find homes like mine in the 600K range but private school is really all that is appropriate in this area. Heck I have a 1500sqf 1950's ranch style house and its valued at 3/4 million dollars.
Also there is Mella Roo's on almost every single new area. Add another 0.9% to your homes value as a tax bases. Not terrible if the home is 100K but at ~750K+ your total home tax load can be in the 20K a year range with state and local bonds added in.
There is absolutely no public transport, gas is sky high compared to the rest of the country, we pay enormous car taxes and ~9% total sales tax on everything we buy.
So yeah its not upper middle class at 250K out here. Minus what it takes to buy a home in a safe area and still invest and provide for you children if you have any.
Talk to anyone in Manhattan and they will tell you exactly the same thing, or how they commute 1.5 hours each way to Jersey.
I am not saying that its not a comfortable life but I sure as heck don't feel upper middle class even at that income level. I don't invest as much as I would like, I have not paid down my house enough to feel comfortable and even without kids my wife and I still have to be careful with our money.
Heck that is why I buy and sell cars on the side and do design work for small companies to supplement my income. And I don't have to pay Mella Roo I have no student loan debt and ) credit card debit, pay for my cars in cash. If I lived in the midwest I would not be complaining.
Otto Maddox wrote:
In reply to Otto Maddox:
And then plug those into a cost of living tool. San Diego is 139% of average, so middle class would be $48,286 - $76,910.
(The tool I looked at says San Diego housing is 224% the national average. Ouch!)
Tell me about it. I would be upper/middle class if I didn't live in SD.
In reply to wearymicrobe:
That is all a choice. I could live in Monaco and bitch that I was lower middle class living on a million a year.
Cone_Junky wrote:
Otto Maddox wrote:
In reply to Otto Maddox:
And then plug those into a cost of living tool. San Diego is 139% of average, so middle class would be $48,286 - $76,910.
(The tool I looked at says San Diego housing is 224% the national average. Ouch!)
Tell me about it. I would be upper/middle class if I didn't live in SD.
Where is this cost of living tool?
Otto Maddox wrote:
In reply to wearymicrobe:
That is all a choice. I could live in Monaco and bitch that I was lower middle class living on a million a year.
Its the hub of my industry, my very specific skill set keeps me tied here.
Also that 224% number for housing in San Diego is a average over the whole area and San Diego is really big.
Take out the outliers and the areas where you are next door to a meth lab and it goes up. Way way up.
I thought living next to a meth lab was a fringe benefit?
In reply to mguar:
Yeah, I hear you can hire a top tax lawyer to prepare your return for $180.
In reply to wearymicrobe:
I understand that. Birmingham housing is cheap, really cheap on average. But if you want to be in a decent school district, the cost skyrockets.
From http://www.zerohedge.com/news/guest-post-debt-serfdom-one-chart
In reply to wearymicrobe:
This is one more reason I don't ever want to move to Cali...
I am increasing convinced that I don't think there are many places better to live then Huntsville. Cause my current starting engineering salary allows me to save fairly comfortable (I have basically saved up a three month emergency plus starting paying off a small student loan and saving 6% towards retirement), rent a decent apartment with a garage and then also rent a 5000sq ft workshop, have a couple cars for fun which would put me in the middle class IMHO.
mguar wrote:
In reply to wearymicrobe:
Taxes;
The subject is filled with complexity. 77,000+ pages in the US tax code plus how many legal precedents? hundreds of thousands? Then we can deal with state tax codes..
For example 60 MINUTES did a piece a while back about a pair of brothers who owned a major winery that avoided paying tens of millions of dollars in taxes by getting a law written to their benefit.. They simply made a major donation to a few influential politicians. A few Hundred thousand if I remember correctly.
The Sugar industry is owned/controlled by 12 families and here in the US we pay 2 times as much as world prices for sugar.. (Sugar is in everything from the food you eat to the pop you drink etc..) Yet that whole deal doesn't fill a 1/2 a page in the tax code.. It's barely a paragraph in the tax code. (hint; look for companies who export a lot of wine)
I've a close friend and we used to each make about the same amount. He paid over 35% of his income in taxes and I paid less than 5% of my income.. (Neither of us would ever cheat)
Taxes are extremely complex.. so please don't assume that because you pay 50% everybody in your income bracket pays the same..
Hey, shiny happy person, go back and read the first post.
Dr. Hess wrote:
From http://www.zerohedge.com/news/guest-post-debt-serfdom-one-chart
If you look at the numbers for 1% and .01% the growth is even larger.
I would say 200-250K is a decent general boundary for upper class in most of the country.
In reply to z31maniac:
Personal attacks are always a good thing.
fritzsch wrote:
In reply to z31maniac:
Personal attacks are always a good thing.
We've all read his thing about wine companies that export 50,000 cases don't pay taxes in numerous other threads.
That's not what I wanted this to be about.
Have a slice of pie!
My name is on my shirt, I am low class, BUT I have a very effluent lifestyle
I always thought "class" had more to do with a person's behavior and attitude than their income.
There's not a person in the US making $250k/year that isn't upper class. Doesn't matter where you live, you're not "middle class" if you make that much.
You live in California, in a fancy area of San Diego, guess what, that neighborhood is fancy and expensive because it's full of rich people like you. Yes you might have to live there to be comfortable, that's because you like living in a rich area. There's no problem with being rich, I'm quite well off myself, just don't pretend not to be. I don't cry about paying an over-$100,000/year property tax bill, I'm thrilled to be there and able to pay it.
JohnInKansas wrote:
I always thought "class" had more to do with a person's behavior and attitude than their income.
QFT. But there's plenty of folks who will drive a high end car or etc to look rich. Or even other stupid stuff: I knew a guy who owned a tow company who carried a 'flash roll', a roll of bills wrapped with a rubber band, you saw a $20 bill on the outside. He'd do it quick, looked like he was carring a big roll of $20 bills but it turned out to be a roll of $1 bills with a $20 on the outside. I know this because he pulled it out one day, the outer bill slid up and you could see the $1 bill below it. It was all I could do to keep a straight face.
Come to Birmingham - property tax on a million dollar home would be around $8K I think. And in a really nice area, that will probably still get you a 4000-5000 sq ft house.
Around here, $1 mil will get you 4-5k sq ft on a deep water lake lot with a dock and you might have enough change to buy a couple of Jags.
http://www.lakemurrayspecialist.com/
KATYB
HalfDork
5/4/12 1:41 p.m.
In reply to JoeyM:
and i will pick on coco women who spend that much money making themselves look a certain way make me sick. u know ill let plastic surgery slide but when its obvious work has been i have issues with it. correcting issues withyourself no problem. even breastaugmentation is ok depending. if ur doing it to get into the avg size range fine. if ur doing it and becomg some hh bimbo no. gross.
Ian F wrote:
Hard to say... I know people with a net worth of over $1m who are definitely "middle class."
My Granny used to say "a million bucks ain't what it used to be" and that was back in the 70s. I haven't made it to that mile stone by a good bit yet, but I'd call my family middle class and I do expect we'll get there in the next 10 or 15 years.
