Upper Middle Class Frustration

Paying for College
541

“150K per year basis, college expects us to pay 40K per year for one student. That is living on 110K per year, with the only difference being one person less to feed. And we are “too rich” for him to do work study.”

I think the school’s expectation is that you save ahead or pay in the future not necessarily out of pocket. I think they do expect everyone but the very wealthy (who just don’t feel a pinch ever) to feel pinched.

I think on many, many campuses, or nearby, students can find part-time employment that isn’t work study.

542

@rhandco You are paying 40k per year on 150k income near NYC? You are very nice parents.

543

Where? We tell them our savings. We tell them our assets except our primary residence.

They know whether we saved for college or not.

However, they do know the equity we have in our house, since it is a CSS college, so they rightly assumed we would have to mortgage to pay for our children’s college.

Interesting what will happen if my next kids go to a FAFSA only college…

I would say my parents were higher class, money-wise, before they retired, than my family is now. But conversely, my spouse’s family was dirt poor - we support them, but of course that doesn’t count LOL…

544

There is also an associated article:
http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2016/05/11/americas-shrinking-middle-class-a-close-look-at-changes-within-metropolitan-areas/

Among the things the article notes is that the median income for all of the upper, middle, and lower classes as they defined them went down from 1999 to 2014 (i.e. more downward mobility than upward mobility), while the middle class shrank and the upper and lower classes grew from 2000 to 2014.

Note: falling median income for the upper class could still exist if the income levels at the top end of the upper class increase. However, even if the upper-upper class gained, that still leaves most of the upper class, in addition to the middle and lower class, in the situation of having seen more downward than upward mobility.

545

@ucbalumnus I don’t know. That study is defining upper class as over 161k for five people. That doesn’t seem right.

546

Of course, we’re in a country where >90% of respondents define themselves as “middle class”. When people making both, say, <$25k/year and >$250k/year call themselves “middle class”, we’re in a situation where the term has lost pretty much any useful meaning.

547

Would it be safe to say that middle class and middle income are two distinct things?

548

While some of you having a pity party, I haven’t spent more than $20 @ week to eat for the last month. I need to be able to afford to go to my Ds wedding. I have recently paid a few “extras” for the wedding but that was at the expense of my food and living expenses. Sorry if I dont have empathy for somebody with UMC first world problems. Let me know the first time you can’t figure out how to make ramen good with a few veggies or meat.

549

When you earn 4x the national median, you’re upper income. If you have that kind of income you can keep telling yourself that you’re some version of middle income and be angry that colleges won’t give you more money, but I think it’s a waste of emotion and mental energy.

Nobody ever guaranteed that if you make ~$200k per year that your kids would be able to afford a particular set of schools. If people made that assumption and later found out the schools weren’t affordable for them, how is that the fault of the colleges?

You’re surprised that colleges want 40% of your income? When my son applied to colleges there were some that wanted 40% of ours too, and we made far less then than the upper income families complaining on this thread. If you’re being charged 40% of your gross and we’re being charged 40% of our gross, where’s the inequity?

550

I live close to NYC. It’s possible that in your area, to keep up with your own particular Joneses, that 100K could feel like lower middle class. But no. It isn’t. Not by any rational definition. What FEELS like, and what IS, are two different things.

551

@austinmshauri O’k then. I just looked up the national median and 161k is four times that. I guess were in the upper range with salary never mind assets. So back to the original OP and others who have chimed in about the inferior NE publics so bad that no UMC parent would ever hope to send their kid there. My H and I both went to one such substandard institution. Both are fathers were veterans and blue collar workers. Frankly, I was just happy to go to college. Twenty five years later we are apparently comfortably upper class. As is my physician neighbor, who went to UMass and loved it. These publics aren’t good enough for something? What aren’t they good for exactly? Why are people giving away all their wealth to 60k a year schools?

552

MODERATOR’S NOTE:
To quote ToS:

Thank you.

553

This thread is interesting as each poster uses it as a venue for their own soapbox. So many of the arguments are tangentially at best related to the OP’s original post. Granted, the OP’s original post was fairly vague as to what they wanted to happen, beyond noting top NE LACs had too much geographic diversity for their taste and insinuations about private colleges operating with nefarious motives.

554

I normally despise Gladwell for his criminal ability to dumb down the original subject matter but I thought that podcast was a brilliant, unintended advertisement for Bowdoin. If they’re going to make us pay because they can, they better offer me a premium product.

Because this thread’s really about the top 1-3% vs the rest and reflects people attitudes towards inequality.

Relevant non-sequitur. People where I grew up (rural midwest) would be astonished by much of the behavior that’s common in our local schools. To wit, “Why does your kid go to math tutoring? He’s already doing geometry in 7th grade!” Depending on where you live, the answer to a question like the above will be blindingly obvious or just plain baffling.

555

@gearmom, I don’t think labels really matter unless people are using them to reach the conclusion that colleges are treating them unfairly. If I call myself low income, I might be upset that I don’t get as much in grants as low income people. But I’m not low income. If colleges are asking for a percentage of gross income, I don’t see how that’s unfair. It’s at least as difficult for a family who earns $60k/year to pony up 40% of their income as it is for a family making $200k to pony up 40% of theirs.

Maybe OP needs to shift away from comparing net costs – s/he pays $60k while the family making $60k only pays $24k – and look at it from a percentage of income standpoint. After paying $60k, she still has $140k. The $60k family has $36k. If people are getting by on less than $40k, I find it hard to believe that it’s impossible to get by on more than 3 times that.

I happen to like public schools. Although I attended 2 privates and worked at a 3rd, I’ve also attended 3 different publics. There were a lot of intelligent, creative, and interesting people at every college I attended. I think it’s too bad if OP shuts out a whole category of schools without really knowing them. If they give them a chance, they may find some really great schools that their children would love to attend. But the tone in the original post worries me. It might be very difficult for OP’s children to enjoy the college they can afford if the family is filled with resentment and anger because they’re dwelling on what they can’t.

556

“Oh, but the taxes!” /sarcasm

557

It seems to me that the complaining about taxes and cost of living are about as common as referencing those posters as a way of virtue signaling or mocking questions or concerns of even people who aren’t making those complaints, or who have special circumstances. (Upper middle income, rolling in gratitude at being able to pay tuition for three kids).

Income and class are not synonymous.

558

Income and class are not synonymous.<<<<<<<<<

           For sure. IME of growing up in the UK the traits of being middle classed would not be apparent in a thread about money LOL.
559

It depends on who you are and how you do it. My husband and I made that income and much, much less (I will stack my hungry and holes in shoes right up there with anyone else’s), by stocking shelves on a supermarket overnight, seven days a week in addition to another job, and working insane amounts of overtime. Income and class are not synonymous. People driving a cab 80 hours a week married a to a waitress in a busy restaurant can make that $100,000 per year, but I defy anyone to say that’s not lower middle class. If you’re making that money on multiple jobs, doing physical labor, without benefits or a safety net. It’s lower middle class. It may not be lower middle income at that exact minute, but it’s lower middle class, because all it takes is one injury that prevents lifting tons of weight a day to throw that family on the street. Now a family with two social workers with master’s degrees making that money are probably not lower middle class. Not everyone is an educated professional with choices. Some just have strong backs and big dreams.

560

Sorry, long.
Austin makes good points. The sting of the bite is there for nearly all. But it’s somewhat relative- to the total money one has, the discretionary choices made, and what remains, to live on. Then factors like family size, unique needs (needs, not optional choices.)

Imo, trying to put this into fixed income brackets (what exactly is UMC?, whether 130 is the low end or pretty good, whether the high end is 350, 390, or more,) distracts.

The academic discussions of “class,” btw, go on for years. No thread will resolve that. Among social scientists, there’s acknowledgement that education levels achieved, certain cultural factors (what one values/pursues,) one’s perception of “struggles,” neighborhood, one’s idea of the Joneses, and more, contribute. In fact, one can be poorer in dollars and still feel they embody UMC values. Or be exceptionally wealthy and “feel” lower or middle class.

Much easier to fall back on: the good family earning X, has less money than the good family earning 2-3X. IF we all paid 40%, some would have less left over, for basics.

So, there’s not always sympathy for the higher earners, who can proceed differently, with what’s left. The rest if it, your local taxes, your older car, economizing, don’t change that.