What do you suppose the Salary is for middle class? - Page 4

Holadem- your "rim" comment reminded of the latest Chris Rock special on HBO.

That's exactly right. I often say to people "I don't have any money" when asked to do things (eat out for the 3rd time this week, take a spur-of-the-moment cruise, etc). I once made the mistake of leaving my Quicken open when I let a family friend burn a CD (for archival purposes, of course ). She says, "WTF, you're broke alright." So, now I say, "I don't have any money... for THAT."

One thing I see here, is how we tend to seemingly value high income over high net worth, here in the US. A showy lifestyle, with the biggest house, the most expensive car, the "trophiest" vacation, the best private school education, etc. Most seemingly would choose this over making a more modest income (with fewer hours worked) and having a substantial savings in the bank. I used to fall into the former. Somewhere in the last ten years I eased over to the latter, intentionally so. I'm glad I did, for now while I occasionally worry about whether I'm doing the right thing with my savings, I don't worry about having enough.

Some of you may want to read "The Millionaire Next Door."

Todd

P.S. I have the Home Theater, and the old car hobby. Double trouble.

A great suggestion.

Possible explanations:
1. The "family" definition in the first quote is not equal to the "household" definition in the second quote.
2. The distributions in the first quote are not from the same time period as the value in the second quote.
3. The person who wrote the article confused median with mean.
4. 10% of the population is making between $40k and $42k per year. We could definitely call these people the "middle class". This is probably not the correct explanation.

Brad

Re: What do you suppose the Salary is for middle class?

Dude you are exactly right on people thinking all they have to pay is 20 bucks a month. Are people seriously that dumb or do they not care about the future. It seems to me most people don't look ahead.

I just bought my second car at 22 and paid cash for $9,800 and I only make about 15k a year. I use to make about 24k a year and I could seriously had a house by now, a really nice one on a lake. I guess I'm really materialistic and I have to have nice things, so I save and save and then I save more. I guess that's how I get by. To me it's not fair that you guys make 80k a year. I know you pay more for housing, but say a car or a tv is so much cheaper for you guys. The prices for consumer goods is about the same for everyone. Anyone else notice this? You can buy a c6 z06 vette in a year easy, I'd have to save up for one of those for like 8-9 years.

Re: What do you suppose the Salary is for middle class?

You should get a different job that pays more or another job to add more income then...

I used to have huge credit card debt, nearly $30K (mostly due to the expensive hobby of film collecting) and lived with my parents past the normal age of leaving. So by not having to pay rent, no kids, etc, I just got further and further in debt. Then about 3 years ago I discovered I love travelling alot after my first Europe trip, so I decided to start saving up for a round the world trip. I got totally serious in a selling mode on ebay and with a little extra work managed to pay off that debt and now have enough for my trip. It'll mean quitting my jobs but there'll always be something around when I get back.

Re: What do you suppose the Salary is for middle class?

As somebody caught right at the sharp end of the middle class squeeze. Where fixed outgoings which are rent, healthcare and childcare eat up the vast majority of our combined income, we stay well clear of credit cards. It's just too dangerous.

I too am in need of a better paying job. This academic researcher malarky is only just putting food on the table.

Re: What do you suppose the Salary is for middle class?

Academic-related jobs (i.e. teaching, subbing, professorial, etc.) are some of the most under-payed jobs out there. Kind of ridiculous.

Re: What do you suppose the Salary is for middle class?

When I was growing up, I always thought 60 and up was upper class.

I make more than my parents combined when they raised me and I have to live with my brother to get by.


My mother remarried someone with a plumbing business. He made about 80k a year and people(my friends and most of their families) thought he was rich.

Re: What do you suppose the Salary is for middle class?

A single wide in California didn't used to cost $450,000 either.

Re: What do you suppose the Salary is for middle class?

Tell me about it. After healthcare and day care goes out at source, I earn a whopping three figure a month salary. That's partly because all the deduction come out of my pay check so my wifes is untouched. We get slightly more money that way for some wierd reason, but all the same, my pay check is depressing.

People here have talked about the price of car payments and gas, food etc but if you're in the middle class sqeaze like we are, those aren't the problem, it's the big non-negotiable things that are the problem,

Healthcare: $1200 a month
Daycare: $1600 a month
Rent: $1100 a month

Those three alone come to more than my salary. It's a good job my wife also works.

Re: What do you suppose the Salary is for middle class?

"Healthcare: $1200 a month
Daycare: $1600 a month"

Wow that alot. More than your mortgage. My benefits at work have steadily decreased in the past 5 years. Took away my life insurance, eye coverage and most of my medical. I was able to get a decent life insurance & hospitalization policy from my car insurance(State Farm) for a very reasonable bit extra a month.

Medical is more of a problem though. I make too much for NY state insurance and dont make enough to fork out $500 a month to do it on my own through Blue Cross or whoever.

When I first joined IBM 10 years ago, I had complete, full coverage for $35 a month.It covered everything. Who'd of thought I wouldnt have benefits working at IBM.

Unfortunately this is what corporations are doing and its only going to get worse. Contracting out their work and saving on pensions, benefits, etc.

Re: What do you suppose the Salary is for middle class?

It serves me right for living in Massachusetts I guess. At the last count healthcare costs were 30% of total payroll for all employers in MA, and that includes all the people who don't get any benefits.

Re: What do you suppose the Salary is for middle class?

What's weird is that here in the UK we look at salaries for these jobs in the USA with intense envy. But I'm wondering how valid this is.

I wonder if one of you guys across the other side of the Herring Pond could help me out here? This is frightfully un-British of me, but I want to tell you my salary and ask if it's less or more than I'd get in the USA.

I earn circa $110,000 per year basic salary as a university professor (bear in mind that in the UK 'professor' is a title for only the top rung of the profession - before that you're a lecturer, senior lecturer, or reader). My wife works as a classroom assistant [don't know if you have the same job in the USA - basically, someone who assists a group of teachers and covers an occasional class]; this is just about the bottom rung of teaching salaries and she brings home $30,000 per year (but she does get enormous vacations). [On retirement my wife and I should get a pension of roughly 3/4s of my final salary plus a tax-free lump sum of approximately three times my gross final salary].

Now I am constantly being told by my union and the academic press that in the USA we'd be on at least double that salary. From what I've read in this thread, that's BS and even allowing for taxes, we're way better off in the UK. Okay, our taxes are higher (anything over circa $65,000 gets taxed at 40%, that below at circa 20%) but we don't have to pay for health care or most dental care and there are a fair number of other services (e.g. reasonable pensions provided by the state) that we get for free. So in other words, what we lose in taxes we regain in other ways.

Re: What do you suppose the Salary is for middle class?

It depends on what you are teaching. I looked up the publicly available information for the University of Colorado here:

http://www.colorado.edu/pba/facstaff...isplayAall.htm

Business and law professors are making much more than you, but not double. You are comparable to engineering and journalism profs, but much, much better than education or music majors. The university has an enrollment of around 30,000 students. Most public universities have to publish this information, so you might be able to Google your way to a more analogous situation at a bigger/smaller university that specializes in whatever it is that you profess.

Brad

Re: What do you suppose the Salary is for middle class?

Brad - thank you very much indeed for that interesting info. The relative pay scale is pretty much the same here - where a prof is in effect 'sacrificing' a more lucrative job in order to teach (e.g. law, business) then they get paid more. Where a prof could not walk out of their job into industry (e.g. most of the arts subjects) they get paid less. Medical profs would consider themselves badly paid over here if they were on than less than $300,000 and with two days a week for private consultancy work.

I have been head-hunted for jobs in the States a couple of times but apart from anything else, I'd miss our wonderful cooking and dentistry

Re: What do you suppose the Salary is for middle class?

Andrew, my father is a full university professor at an Ivy League school (note: his school follows the same ranking as what you mentioned in your post so being a full professor is the top of the ladder) and he makes about $130K. A nice salary by any means but since he is in the Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations deparment, he doesn't make close to what the professional schools (Law, business, medicine, etc.) pay. But, not bad for what could be considered pure academics. Fortunately, the benefits, including health, are very good.

Re: What do you suppose the Salary is for middle class?

Wow, is this thread still around? I have since moved to Germany and got the BMW I didn't need.

Re: What do you suppose the Salary is for middle class?

No matter how much a year you make, you'll never make enough. You'll want more expensive things than you have now and would want more money to accomodate it. (No offense, it's just human nature to want better than what they have.)

My moms making $20-25k a year, which is enough to support 3 kids and live comfortably.

Re: What do you suppose the Salary is for middle class?

The thing is I'm a post-doctoral fellow. Right at the bottom of the ladder and am paid off somebody elses grant. There's a big post-doc crunch in the US with lots of people at my level trying to get into real jobs. I don't know what the average length of time at this level is now but I hear things like 6-7 years. I don't know what the average jnr faculty wage is. Again, I've heard numbers from people of, say, $50,000 with the NIH maximum being $300,000 but I don't know because I'm not yet at that stage in my career.

Re: What do you suppose the Salary is for middle class?

It depends where you live, that wouldn't cover my rent and health insurance.

Re: What do you suppose the Salary is for middle class?

Single mom w/ 3 kids probably has gov't subsidized housing & healthcare.

Re: What do you suppose the Salary is for middle class?

She's got health insurance from her job, a clean driving record (not even a ticket, helps with insurance), a $750/month rent, our hungry mouths (I take full blame for 75% of the food consumption. ), and we're living in a 3 bedroom, 2 bath, 2,000 sq. foot house.

I say she does well.

Re: What do you suppose the Salary is for middle class?

So, is the house haunted or what?

Re: What do you suppose the Salary is for middle class?

The estate agent said:

Apparently, it's built on the site of an old Native American burial ground, which is an interesting local fact. The local kids cal it "The Murder House" but that all happened a long time ago.

Re: What do you suppose the Salary is for middle class?

It's just not in the best area of town.

Re: What do you suppose the Salary is for middle class?

In the UK, a post-doctoral fellow on a research contract would generally be on circa $50k p.a. The traditional career path is something like: PhD, a couple of years as a post-doc research assistant, then named author on own grant for a couple of years, and then a junior lectureship in a permanent post (not strictly speaking the same thing as tenure, alas, but in practice it's permanent unless the department closes down). After that, it's promotion on merit (or in my case, based on possession of compromising photos of senior members of the faculty ). Generally it helps if you're prepared to move between universities (hugely increases job opportunities).

Re: What do you suppose the Salary is for middle class?

It varies by subject though doesn't it? At least it does here. In physics, if you're lucky enough to actually land a post-doc, the starting salary is about $55k, which ain't bad. In biology though, the starting salary is $35, which is less than that for a primary school teacher in rural Texas, according to NPR anyway. Same with the length of time it takes to get from post-doc to jnr faculty, in some fields is a short turnover but in biomedical research it's 6 or 7 years according to what I hear. There's also a discrepancy between what people think is the norm and what actually is the norm. This is mostly due to faculty members telling you how it was when they did it when in fact salaries for post-docs are going down in real terms when you consider the housing and healthcare problems in the north-east and the post-doc holding pattern is getting longer and longer.

I wonder if the people at the top, so to speak, know how tough it's getting down here. There's going to be a crisis if this trend continues at the point when fixed costs like rent and health care become larger than the salary.

Re: What do you suppose the Salary is for middle class?

Not in the UK, or at least, not usually. To explain:

(1) officially, all lecturing posts are on the same scale; you get appointed to a particular starting point on the scale based largely on your years of experience (there is some leeway in this, but not much)

(2) some posts carry an extra 'bonus' if a person is foresaking a highly-paid post in order to teach; hence, medics and computer experts tend to have higher salaries. Plus, they generally have time off to do consultancy work, etc, written into their contracts.

(3) at professorial level, there is more leeway for some folks to be paid more than others. This tends to act in favour of the medics/computer bods, etc, but I've never heard of a wide disparity in salaries of e.g. profs in the 'pure' sciences (e.g.biology v physics) or arts v sciences. Some profs may also be paid more if they're exceptionally good at winning grant money or have an unusual level of administrative responsibility (e.g. heading a research unit).