I think that a person would be right in assuming that if they have a household with 44k and a certain amount of children would often be correct in assuming that a household with 100k (say in the same metro area) in general has more “flexibility” than them. You’re not talking about a 44k vs. 60k-70k or something. Often 100k is a huge threshold.
As for middleclass, let us just assume that I mean middle income with respect to the standard incomes made in a country, provice/state, or metropolitan area. Regardless, median income in America is below a years tuition at Emory (when I came in, it was about the same, then Emory increased tuition and fees and this “thing that must not be named” happened in 2008 lol). By your definition, a person at or below the median (or middle income) in America is struggling. That has a large degree of truth to it unfortunately. However, I would claim that many in the south, for example, make it work while having a surprising amount of “flexibility”. Six figures in a southern city generally holds some weight. More so in Houston and Dallas than Atlanta, but in all of these, your household is generally in a solid position. The exception may be the higher education landscape, which as I already mentioned, has gotten so out of hand that even those at income levels that have lots of “flexibility” with respect to other sorts of spending face a challenge there. If you fall in these brackets, do whatever it takes to make your child a national achievement or merit finalist or competitive enough for scholarships at some decent schools (note that I don’t even say elite/very selective- many of these folks will be qualified for admission to these places given their intelligence and resources, but affording it is a completely different story). If below it, get high (somewhere in the actual interquartile ranges and certainly not too far below 25%) scores and grades and hope that you are applying to a truly needblind school to be taken seriously.