That begs the question whether you yourself are in the 9.9% group. I’m guessing you are, judging from your screenname But, you’re right that it’s just an impression
Having household income in excess of $150k or so puts you in the top 10%. In terms of net worth, you need about $1.2m to be in the top 10%. So, roughly speaking, those who are full pay are in the top 10%.
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For reference, in the US, 90th percentile
- individual income is about $129k
- household income is about $201k
- net worth without home equity is about $950k
- net worth with home equity is about $1.25 million
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C.C%
If you’ve posted more than 50 times on CC you are likely in the top 10%.
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@circuitrider Don’t own a boat. Bum rides from friends who do. So not sure what my screen name says about anything in terms of income/wealth. And beyond that, whether I am in or out of the 9.9% group doesn’t answer the question about the percentgage of people on this site who are.
@1NJParent You are just begging the question. Do you think most people who post here are full pay? I don’t.
@ucbalumnus There are no doubt a lot of calculators out there and sources for what income/asset levels put you in what percentile. But that doesn’t answer the question of how many people on this site fall into any of those percentiles.
@GKUnion A lot of people here tend to focus on threads about top x schools. I think those threads definitely skew higher incomes. But if you look at other threads here, that is not the case. Time I spent in Class of 20xx threads had many people with more than 50 posts who did not appear to be in the top 10% of incomes (need based scholarships talked about often, decisions made based on aid received, kids not going top choice based on costs (and not like you see with some people here who make choice based on not wanting to pay the costs it was matter of parent wanting to do so but not having the funds).
Tendency here for many is to assume that everyone has the same experience they do/come from the same place as they do. Just isn’t the case.
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No. But , it is relevant aa to how you could make the following statement:
How do you know so many people in the group?
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Maybe things are different where you live. But in the midwest where I live, there are million dollar houses down the street from $150k houses. And kids from both of those houses go to to the same public school. Many of those districts also have Section 8 housing. Friend groups for people with school aged kids are often based on their neighborhood and kid friends at school (based many times on activities). And places where top percentile people work (doctors offices, hospitals, law firms, etc.) also have people in the bottom 50 or 90% working there. And …egads…sometimes people talk to people who make more or less than they do at work. And when they talk, they talk about…you know…their lives…outside work.
In some parts of the country I expect that there is more stratification. People living in high priced houses are surrounded by other high priced houses. That would mean its less likely families/kids there would interact with kids outside their income levels. And social circles are formed by country clubs. So people in those areas are less likely to know top 10% people if they aren’t top 10% people themselves. Just not true everywhere.
Based on my casual observation, there’re more posters who stated that they’re full pay, or were looking for merit-based scholarships (i.e. they don’t qualify for need-based financial aid) than those who were asking questions about need-based financial aid. Why do you think otherwise?
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I guess I’ve lost track of why it matters. I’m in the T10, and when I was a kid I was 100 miles away from the front line. I remember pretty well what it was like and how it affects one’s point of view.
My parents speak broken English and my G-dad was not the chairman of Standard Oil.
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@1NJParent Because my experience here is just the opposite. I see more people who are not full pay than I do who are. And a lot of that is based on time spent in Class of 20xx threads. In my experience those threads are a much better cross section of posters here than are the more narrowly focussed ones that tend to have the same cast of characters making the same arguments over and over. But in the end, neither of us has statistics to back of our observations so that is all they are.
@circuitrider I am not being coy. Just that unless this board has 3 posters (which it clearly doesn’t) I do not see the relevance of the two of us being in or out of 10% in terms of whether a majority of the people on this site are. You pointed out reasons why you think I am and I just pointed out the flaws in that reasoning. If that is snark, so be it.
And I never claimed to be an expert in the 9.9%. Just pointed out my experience. What makes the interviewer an expert? Or author of the article/book? I saw nothing in the Vox piece which set forth the basis for the statements/responses.
But enough of that. We have strayed too far from the point of this thread. I apologize for my part in that. Back to discussing whichever of the articles anyone else wants to discuss.
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Yeah, but no. You didn’t point out your experience initially. You just said you knew a lot of members of the 9.9%. That’s wasn’t adequate when you first said it and it certainly wasn’t adequate when later on in the thread you opined that most people on CC didn’t impress you as belonging to the 9.9%.
When I - respectfully - asked you what you were basing all these opinions on, you responded with:
Huh? Was the completely gratuitous regional chauvinism really necessary?
Apology accepted.
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Hi, I am just pointing out that Rutgers athletic department has used student funds for some time-it is not totally self-supporting. From Inside Higher Ed 12/1/20: Killingsworth described a history of repeated broken promises by new administrators at the public New Jersey institution to balance the budget of its athletics department, which has $121.5 million in internal debt as of this year. University leaders have funneled a significant amount of general funds and fees from the student body into the Scarlet Knights’ largely unsuccessful sports teams for about a decade, as ticket sales and donations for athletic operations dwindled, according to financial information submitted to the National Collegiate Athletic Association and published in a USA Today database.
And a quick search will pull up continued financial scandal surrounding the department. I live nearby and had a kiddo graduate from there so I have been seeing this on the local news and in the school newspaper, etc… Knowing someone at the top of that department a few years back has kept me in the chatter loop. As a parent of a student, I simply would have preferred student fee/fund money was not funneled to athletics when the campus transit system is sorely in need of additional buses just for transporting students between campuses.
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I believe these sorts of conversations lack meaning unless the context of path and trajectory are considered.
A family whose grandparents were war refugees, and parents were first generation Americans that worked multiple jobs so their kids could get an education will approach education (and most things) from an entirely different perspective from a family that has experienced generational wealth get diluted such that they are now in the 9.9%.
There is no one size fits all as the author tries to define and trying to super impose concepts of morality, entitlement and fairness is not just a waste of time but insulting to the realities of individualism and concept of free will.
In terms of the CC community I can’t speak to financial status but we are largely members of either a leisure class, slackers, or terribly unproductive workers given our collective dedication to mindlessly wasting our time arguing over arcane subjects😀. FYI if you intend on disputing this point you are kind of proving the point.
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Slacker here… since Covid anyway. Probably going to move into it full time with retirement TBH, but I keep telling myself I need to figure out what I want to do when I grow up because it does feel odd to bring in no money (next to none anyway). We know we’ll be wandering more though. That’s an addiction and at our ages, who wants to break it? Certainly not us.
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There are definitely frequent-flyers here (imagine me raising my hand.) I thought it was clear we’re the ones I was referring to upstream.
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I recommend Girls with Bright Futures (novel: competitive private school, 3 different socio economic classes: bottom 50%, top ?%, top 0.1%, 3 bright kids and their classmates, all vying for a spot at Stanford).
It was mostly written before the Varsity Blues scandal but likely was finished when it became news.
The authors know what they’re talking about in terms of college admissions and competitive parents, minus a blip at the end.
There’s even a cameo by a website named CollegeAdmissionSecrets 
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Added that to my library save list. Thanks.
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And we can’t even complain about it when a school system costs $30k a year and a private colege costs $70,000? Even with a $300,000 income, finding that level of money is difficult. We budgeted for our expenses and decided how many children we would have so that we could fund their schooling, in my case one. So we may still retire without becoming a financial burden to our son. I’ve seen folks who make a lot of money but chose to spend it all because they have no savings, live a posh lifestyle, and pay only 15% of the cost of private education. We can’t, however, complain about it.
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Unless their income has dropped precipitously since then, how could they only pay 15% of their kids’ education (presumably the other 85% came from need-based financial aid)? Assets are treated very differently from income and only has limited impact on financial aid, so if you saved a full $300k for your kid’s college education, it’d effectively add a little over $16k to your income for financial aid purpose.
They live with many roommates.
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