<p>“On the other hand, I am a cheapskate. I have spent around $100,000 on my D’s undergrad education/“college experience”. Hopefully she’ll get a job and take care of herself from now on, so I can retire someday.”</p>
<p>Ha! There is NOTHING cheap about that number. Your daughter has it made.</p>
<p>It would be interesting to see what is the number of students paying full price in private colleges. Unless a college has a huge endowment (most of these would be super selective) I would venture to say that in most private colleges a good percentage of kids pay full price. I am continuously amazed at some of the wealth in these families.
Interestingly, at my son’s university they recently increased tuition for next year by 3% for students that came in last year and 4% for incoming students. BTW, the letter adds that the reason for the hike is inflation and also to be able to offer financial aid to needy students. So, yes, the college does pass on the cost of financially needy students to families who by their methodology can afford the $60,000 price tag. Yours truly is included in this scenario. Came into it eyes wide open but we are not a family who lives extravagantly and actually have always lived way below our means. And I went back to work full time to pay my son’s tuition so as to not incur debt. I think things are not going to be fair but we do the best we can and have to move on. I benefited from Pell grants as an undergraduate as I was a very needy student and then paid my way through graduate school. Happy to be able to send my kids to college.</p>
<p>SteveMA said:
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<p>In our “middle class lifestyle” family, $27k IS a big deal. S1 graduated this past spring and has $22k in Staffords. Payments are $261/mo. Even with a great job, I don’t see him paying it off in five years. Our kids have to pay their Staffords with THEIR means, not ours! OTOH, said S had plenty of skin in the game. His efforts contributed $110,000 towards his education. </p>
<p>Two incomes is the difference between us having to borrow against our home equity or paying tuition from current income. We really miss my paycheck (part-time, fractional % of DH’s income, 100% of which went to EFC) when tuition comes due.</p>
<p>A “middle class lifestyle” is a fantasy for a whole lot of folks making “middle class” income. My middle class sibs are barely scraping by. Retirement? Vacation? Two functioning cars? Dream on! They are thrilled when they can pay all their bills that month.</p>
<p>There are very very many families living paycheck to paycheck. There are also many families who do not fully contemplate what their family can realistically pay for college for each of their kids, even assuming each only takes four years to graduate. </p>
<p>I cringe when I read about kids and families who take out loans to send the first of their kids to school and just HOPE it will all work out so kiddo will somehow get the needed funds with the family and somehow get a fab job and pay everything off. Hope is NOT a financial an!</p>
<p>The definition of middle class is shady. According to wiki ([American</a> middle class - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_middle_class]American”>American middle class - Wikipedia)) the middle class in America can be anywhere from 25% to 66% of households. I’d say that a pretty large deviation. </p>
<p>The definition I could find was:</p>
<p>“Middle-class persons commonly have a comfortable standard of living, significant economic security, considerable work autonomy and rely on their expertise to sustain themselves”</p>
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<p>Derived from [CollegeData:</a> College Search, Financial Aid, College Application, College Scholarship, Student Loan, FAFSA Info, Common Application](<a href=“http://www.collegedata.com%5DCollegeData:”>http://www.collegedata.com) , full pay freshman percentage:</p>
<p>MIT: 36.2%
Harvard: 39.5%
Yale: 40.2%
Princeton: 40.7%
Swarthmore: 40.8%
CMU: 41.5%
Amherst: 41.7%
Caltech: 43.8%
Pomona: 45.4%
Williams: 46.9%
Columbia: 48.6%
Vanderbilt: 49.2%
Stanford: 50.5%
Northwestern: 50.7%
JHU: 51.6%
Duke: 51.9%
Harvey Mudd: 53.1%
Chicago: 55.7%
Dartmouth: 56.3%
WUStL: 61.1%
USC: 61.8%
Middlebury: 63.6%
Colgate: 65.2%
NYU: 66.3%</p>
<p>Here’s a calculator on income percentiles. $500,000 is top 1 or 2 percent nationally. Not middle class.</p>
<p><a href=“What Percent Are You? - Interactive Feature - NYTimes.com”>What Percent Are You? - Interactive Feature - NYTimes.com;
<p>Out of that list 9 schools, do give some merit/athletic money, reducing the full pay numbers by even more. Then, you have commuters who can knock some money off the cost, and those with employee tuition benefits. Really, not that many kids percentage wise have families who are full pay at schools in the $50-60 price range.</p>
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<p>I think that the following are more realistic:</p>
<p>Has stagnant or declining income
Requires two or three jobs in the household
Drives cars that are older and need maintenance
Struggles with price increases (taxes, inflation, energy, etc.)
College for the kids is a major challenge
Is worried about the price of healthcare
Is worried about job security</p>
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<p>My earned income is well below half the tax definition of middle-class currently used (under $250K for household) but I wouldn’t consider us in the middle-class. I guess that you could use the terms middle-income and middle-class to mean different things but middle-class applying to the top ten percent of income seems like a strange definition.</p>
<p>^^–that is why you confuse the two terms. Again, it’s a LIFESTYLE not an income level. People also blur the lines when they talk about upper middle class, etc. You have low, middle, high or lower, middle, upper classes. Lower class is more like what you described and worse, upper class are the wealthy and very rich. Middle class is pretty much everyone in between that.</p>
<p>Look back to feudal times-the upper class were the castle/land owners, a handful of them, the middle class were the bulk of the population that worked the land, had their own house, etc, but certainly were not rich, the lower class were the beggars, etc. </p>
<p>CountingDown–$260/month for a college grad earning an average salary for a college grad, which is north of 40K, should have NO problems paying off those loans early. What happens, however, is that they rent an expensive apartment, buy a new car, fill out an expensive wardrobe and wow, their money is gone. If they were more frugal until those loans are paid off, get a couple roommates, take the bus or drive an older car, etc. those loans would not be much of their budget at all. Having done exactly that on FAR less, it CAN be done easily.</p>
<p>It’s tough living on a budget, and even tougher when you have a job where you have to dress well and do some socializing. My son is really having a tough time. Good salary, but the rents out here are high and juggling a job in Manhattan, a car, a girlfriend, an apartment makes it very, very tight. Most of the young people, (actually all of them) working with him are subsidized by parents. When presented with is bonus, the head of the company outright told DS to spend it on new suits. He is grateful he has no student loans.</p>
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<p>Your terms make no sense.</p>
<p>If you want to denote lifestyle - then that’s an upper-class lifestyle. Not middle-class. If you use that term, you will confuse people.</p>
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<p>No, lower class is lower class. There’s a big difference between $39K household income and $80K household income. Perhaps you haven’t lived in the former or the latter and can’t appreciate the difference. Or the numbers.</p>
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<p>Do you see a lot of people making $40K/year begging?</p>
<p>Are you saying that we live in feudal times? What was the nature of living in feudal times? Rape, pillaging, war, food scarcity, famine? Do you see a lot of that today?</p>
<p>BCEagle91–Try living off 80K in Manhatten and tell me that is a middle class lifestyle…We’ve lived off a LOT less than $39K and did so quite easily actually, but that was when we lived in a low cost area. We had a nice but not huge house, 2 newer cars, took a vacation or two every year, nothing fancy but got away for a couple weeks, didn’t really have to worry about paying bills, etc. That same income here would qualify you for food stamps and some other government programs…If you can’t understand that very simple difference, you will never understand why middle class is a lifestyle, not an income level.</p>
<p>An upper class lifestyle is far more than I said earlier–they have larger houses, more expensive features, drive more expensive cars, take lavish vacations, never worry about money at all, etc.</p>
<p>I prefer to use the term Upper income, Lower income, rather than terms involving “class”. When I compiled stats for educational studies, it was pretty clear that income and academic accomplishment were very much linked. However, there are outliers in that data, and that is where “class” might come not play, depending on how you define it.</p>
<p>I know some folks who are very much lower income. Yes, their kids qualify for free lunches. They live in not so great housing, some in the student ghettos. They do not make much money. Yet, educationally, culturally, they live a rich life. One lives right near a major university and hospital and she has done so all of her life so she is first in line for any freebies for her brood. Her kids have all gone off to college, free, as they were great students with high test scores. The family does not lack in the way of library resources, cultural exposure and the best that the public schools can offer. She knows all of the ins and outs, and does quite well. That she makes or has little money, has nothing to do with her IQ, that she is intrepid and knowledgeable. I also see this a lot in immigrant families who may have come from a culture and setting where education is valued. Maybe mom cleans houses in the US since she speaks no English, and Dad runs a small shop for the same reason, but that doesn’t mean they are educationally deficient and they put high educational priorities on the table for their families. But this group is a small one that does make up a goodly number of those PELL grant kids at top level schools.</p>
<p>My previous employer is HQ’d in Manhattan. I was able to stay in the Midwest. Whenever I visited, I often thought “why!?” when I would see the struggling college grads trying to make ends meet there - or commuting 90 minutes each way on public transportation, just get to a burgh that was affordable. Sad.</p>
<p>You can live like a king/queen as a college grad making 40k/year anywhere between Pittsburgh and Denver.</p>
<p>Steve, you should see where my brother lives. His apartment is in a highly desireable area in Manhattan but it is akin in quality to most student digs. In fact worse. The inhabitants are all protected by rent control so the owner won’t improve the place. He’s in a 5th floor walk up and the rooms are miniscule He and his wife (no kids) spend their money enjoying NYC, eating out and going to a lot of high profile events. They love that life style and the low rent in that nasty apartment permits them to spend in other venues. Not having kids also gives them a very nice cash flow.</p>
<p>I hate living here, but that is where DH gets work. More importantly, when a job goes under there are plenty more available. The pickings are good. Can’t say whether or not we are netting out better after the astronomical housing costs and other high COL expenses.</p>
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<p>I had a former manager do that before. He lived in a place with a bunch of other salespeople. Basically it was a bunch of beds and people came in to sleep and that was about it. Of course there are people that work in the area that make $80k. But you don’t have to live in Manhatten.</p>
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<p>Try it today. In MA. In a big city.</p>
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<p>Your dividing by strata; not population. Middle denotes population.</p>
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<p>That’s what most people do.</p>
<p>DH and DS both work in Manhattan as does one of my brothers. It is tough for those who are transplants to the city. Not as difficult for those who have family that have their back. Important everywhere but in a high cost environment, even more crucial. I have one son who is a not starving (because I live close enough that he mooches off of me) artist and he uses my home as Costco, we often say NOT jokingly.</p>
<p>BCEagle91–THAT IS THE POINT–you can live off 40K easily in some areas and NOT in other’s. That is why you can’t attach an income to the middle class lifestyle. Sharing an apartment with 12 guys is NOT a middle class lifestyle.</p>
<p>“Your dividing by strata”—EXACTLY–that is what a ‘class’ system IS!!!</p>
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<p>He has a car in Manhattan? Even many wealthy people often think that owning a car in Manhattan is more hassle than it is worth.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, some recent college graduates take to living situations that most people here would associate with migrant farm workers and the like:</p>
<p>[Startup</a> dreams meet pop-up rentals - SFGate](<a href=“http://www.sfgate.com/realestate/article/Startup-dreams-meet-pop-up-rentals-4226675.php]Startup”>http://www.sfgate.com/realestate/article/Startup-dreams-meet-pop-up-rentals-4226675.php)</p>