Maybe they are just fools, austinmshauri 
It is fascinating how some people are so good at stretching a dollar, living a comfortable life and saving for a rainy day, while for some others (I am thinking of a friend of mine) it seems money burns a hole in their pocket. They have expensive taste and don’t seem to let that bother them while all the while complaining about finances.
I think this is a very wise observation.
In what world is this possible??? This distorts the concept of “middle” beyond any meaning.
Well, historically, “middle class” referred to the emerging class between the teeny, tiny, infinitesimally small upper class (only a few people) and the vast majority of the population who were the abject poor peasants. It wasn’t about calculating a median income.
Re: post 210: I agree with you @pizzagirl. He was upper-middle class before and after because of his professional stature. The question was in response to those who are defining class on income alone and who think a $250k income, for no matter how short a period, catapults that person into the “upper” class for the period of time he’s making that amount.
“It’s not so much that they are poor, but that to people making :'250, they are invisible”
Maybe they are invisible to you, but you certainly can’t speak for everyone."
Whoa! I didn’t say they are invisible to me. I’m saying that to the denizens of CC who are convinced that they are “middle class” because look, they only go to Disney once a year and the cleaning help comes only once a week and they just barely get by in a million-dollar home, the lives of the people who are living on $60K a year are completely invisible to them. They don’t go to those neighborhoods, they have no clue how people “exist” without 4 br 2.5 ba on a half-acre lot.
People who qualify for unemployment (layoff,downsize, etc) get it, but it is usually capped at what would be a rather small amount for someone used to a $250k/yr income. Here’s a table of the max benefit by state: http://jobsearch.about.com/od/unemployment/fl/unemployment-benefits-by-state-2014.htm
I seem to recall the feds did a temporary, small add-on to the unemployment cap back during the 2008-9 crash and IIRC, extended the maximum time someone could collect benefits. Still was a big change for people previously earning in half a day what they were then getting in a week (approximately).
“Whoa! I didn’t say they are invisible to me. I’m saying that to the denizens of CC who are convinced that they are “middle class” because look, they only go to Disney once a year and the cleaning help comes only once a week and they just barely get by in a million-dollar home, the lives of the people who are living on $60K a year are completely invisible to them. They don’t go to those neighborhoods, they have no clue how people “exist” without 4 br 2.5 ba on a half-acre lot.”
I have no idea how you can speak for the denizens of CC. I have no idea how you can know that people on CC don’t go to these neighborhoods and have no clue how people exist without large homes. People may very well consider themselves middle class, because they consider that group includes everyone who isn’t poor and everyone who isn’t rich.
You can only speak for yourself, not what you are fantasizing is in the minds of all those CC parents who are “barely getting by in a million-dollar home”.
When people who live in “nice” suburban areas of NYC or San Fran conclude that that they are middle class because they only make $250K and that doesn’t go very far, it tells me that they are completely unaware of and unfamiliar with the lives of the many, many people who live in NYC and San Fran on a heck of a lot less. In other words - those people are invisible to them.
That’s a heck of a lot of assumptions going on right there. I suspect that clueless lot of people that you think exist, would say they are upper middle class if pressed for details.
Why not just use -/+ 50% of your cities household income for your age to define middle class? So if you live in a city where the average household income for your age group is $80,000 then you would be considered middle class if you made between $40,000 to $120,000.
@HarvestMoon1-I like that idea as long as people don’t define their city or community too narrowly. If you define your community as Winnetka IL or Dover MA the results will be very, very skewed.
Maybe we need new qualifiers for “rich,” like “moderately wealthy” instead of “upper middle class.”
No one is ever going to agree on terms, criteria, etc as it is always going to be seen and filtered by the lens of the person assessing their inflow and output. What many may have trouble considering is that many of their expenses are not essential (eg my friend, on a budget, whose jag was in an accident so she had to “settle” for a used BMW), and they might feel “richer” if they saw a better cash flow with lots left over to save. People whining about being poor when they have 6 figure incomes, discretionary spending money, live in a reasonable COL area and are likely at the very least middle class by most other criteria are not going to be seen as “poor” by most. They well may be seen that way by people in the top .01%, but those folks probably see a lot of people with very livable incomes as poor.
OK, here I am to answer any questions for you - First of all, I consider myself UPPER middle class, I live in the SF Bay area, have had average income of $250K, and I live in a “luxurious” $1 million home - 15-yrs old, 2400 sf, 4BR/2.5Ba tract home in the suburbs on a sprawling 1/8 of an acre lot. I am painfully aware of how difficult it is for lower income families and individuals to live here, I know many folks in this situation and I employ many more who literally cannot find affordable housing, even in areas they would never want to live. They are very visible to me and are included among my friends as well. And for the record, I think it would be dangerous to call myself “middle-class” or to characterize class by area b/c like Sue22 says above, you would not be able to get apples to apples very easily.
Maybe the right term is “impacted upper middle class” for those of us who seem wildly wealthy on paper to most of the country but still basically live paycheck-to-paycheck like when I first graduated college. And please, in no way am I bemoaning my situation or complaining here - I consider myself very fortunate to have had the opportunities I’ve been given, and I’ve worked hard to get to where I am. However, when you choose to live in an expensive area, there are a lot of tradeoffs involved, and that includes saving for and paying for college (that is what this forum was originally about, right?).
Upper middle class is not middle class. Upper middle class is not rich either.
Cameron121, I like your post.
I think these are the categories… 
Lower class-lower middle class-middle class-upper middle class-well off-rich-wealthy-super wealthy…
How about me? I’m always bemused by these discussions–it’s like King Kong arguing that he’s not an enormous monster, because Godzilla is bigger. In a global context, almost everything that we call “middle class” is rich. Those of us who are “upper middle class” are fantastically wealthy by global standards.
Again, it’s certainly true that a dollar will go a lot farther in Nowheresville, Kansas than it will in midtown Manhattan. If that fact amazes anybody, they can move to someplace in the Third World where that dollar will really go a long way.
But why call it a name with the word “middle” when the percentile is so far from the 50th?
Cost of living calculators help us equate costs in different locales, eg http://money.cnn.com/calculator/pf/cost-of-living/
http://www.bankrate.com/calculators/savings/moving-cost-of-living-calculator.aspx
http://www.payscale.com/cost-of-living-calculator etc. The challenge is getting more people to think like Cameron121 does, that even though they are living in a very high cost area and may have little left at the end of the month, they still should rightly consider themselves upper middle class. Others might equate “I don’t have $ left over at the end of the month” to “poor” or “lower middle class” and thats where the difficulty lies.
Dstark-- you forgot filthy rich and ridiculously wealthy 
Jym626, I do not want to use any derogatory terms.
There is nothing wrong with being rich, or super wealthy.
I don’t understand why people are so modest. Almost everybody wants to be middle class. There are so many people here that just want to be average, but if you said to the same people, “Your kid is average”, they would scream and yell, “How could you say such a thing? My kid scored a 2250 on the SAT.”
I don’t know where I am on my scale. From reading the posts, I am starting to feel poor. i should go take a walk.
I like cost of living calculators.