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LOL I misread the 7 as a 1. I could live on 7 million a month.</p>
<p>^jym, you need a reading glass. I get 6 and 8 get mixed up all the time.</p>
<p>No igloo, I need a cup of coffee in the morning before I read and post!! 
Glasses are firmly planted on my face.</p>
<p>Rather than attempting to come up with what the American Dream is or should be, I think time is better spent figuring out “how much is enough” for you personally and then constructing a solid plan to get there by adjusting your lifestyle and saving/investing to make it happen. Being able to do that is the definition of “rich” to me.</p>
<p>DH and I are totally in Hunt’s camp; we took the entire world into consideration when determining how much is enough and realized that, before we had saved a penny, we were starting from “rich” simply because we had decent American professional jobs that provided disposable income.</p>
<p>We’ve had these two bits of wisdom taped to our various refrigerators throughout our married life:</p>
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<p>With this philosophy in mind, figuring out “how much is enough” was not very difficult for us. Long ago, DH and I used these basic parameters for determining when we had met that elusive number (our version of the American dream):</p>
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<li> Zero debt (no mortgage, no car payments, no credit card bills, no loans for son’s education)</li>
<li> A solar home in an active community in a warm climate with low cost of living</li>
<li> An allotment for current and long-term health care</li>
<li> $X monthly living expenses, adjusted to remain equivalent to maintaining our current lifestyle until we’re 92 (age we use in all our retirement scenario calculations)</li>
<li> Current lifestyle includes funds for emergencies, car maintenance/replacement, house repairs, taxes, moderate travel and entertainment.</li>
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<p>We’ve reached that number earlier than expected, are shopping for that solar home, and we do feel rich. But I have to say that, minus these past four years when we were paying for son’s boarding school and were very cash poor, I’ve felt rich right along because I was saving toward a goal knowing that the very fact that I had disposable income to save made me rich. We will never be in the 1%, but that was never the goal. “Enough” was the goal, and that was definable and achievable.</p>
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<p>Certainly 50% could, this is the land of opportunity. But if you meant that 50% don’t, then yes, I agree. </p>
<p>I could be president of the United States.</p>
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<p>If you look at houses built in the 1960s, you will see that they originally were significantly smaller and less featureful than houses built today (or old houses that have been modified). A typical “American dream” house of the 1960s was probably about 1,000 to 1,300 ft^2; new houses these days are often double that size.</p>
<p>It would not be surprising if plenty of other “necessities” of today were unbelievable luxuries in the 1960s (not even including things that just did not exist, like personal computers, mobile phones, and many medical procedures).</p>
<p>Of course, the 1960s also saw the great expansion of colleges and universities, so college education was widely available and relatively inexpensive. But many of the features of today’s “college experience” were probably absent from the 1960s “college experience”.</p>
<p>But the 1960s also came with mandatory military service for many (but not all) men, which was rather unpopular when it involved going to fight in a war that was unpopular at home. Also, social barriers based on race and ethnicity were only starting to come down. The crime wave that would peak in the early 1990s before declining to now (but leaving a more fearful population in its wake) was just beginning to get started.</p>
<p>dstark: I would vote for you. I would even campaign for you.</p>
<p>I would fundraise. </p>
<p>I really like that idea: President Dstark.</p>
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<p>Would that imply that our expectation got bigger?</p>
<p>Pizzagirl-- I don’t think your “loser mentality” remark is a fair one. Most adult social circles are based on an economic strata. That does not mean in the least that you have to have all the toys etc. that others may have. Nor not enjoy the simple pleasures. But often activities such as trips, parties, clubs can be very expensive and it’s easy to get caught up in it despite the best of intentions no matter your will power. </p>
<p>I could live on 7 million a month too but I’d probably still be mad at the amount of taxes I’d have to pay.
Wouldn’t mind trying no matter how mad I was!</p>
<p>Igloo–you sort of forgot income taxes (federal/state) in your assessment of how much you get to keep in your pocket after the 50K income.</p>
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<p>Middle class may typically be buying a house built in the 1950s or 1960s. Yes, there will be more features, these will include AC and a Microwave whereas in the past they probably didn’t, but where as in the 1950s and 60s buying a new house was the norm (at least that’s my impression, let me know if I’m wrong because I could be) now the norm is buying an older home. It’s typically more upper class to buy a newly constructed home.</p>
<p>“But often activities such as trips, parties, clubs can be very expensive and it’s easy to get caught up in it despite the best of intentions no matter your will power.”</p>
<p>Not if you have a strong sense of self. I like the principle of “don’t count other people’s money.” Let others live how they want to live; my spending has nothing to do with it. The only people we need to impress are H and myself.</p>
<p>I could have tried to “keep up” with my neighbor who always had a new Hummer and BMW in the driveway – oh, but he died and his wife lost the house and had to move her kids in with her parents. What good would “keeping up with him” have done me?</p>
<p>Choatiemom, I LOVE your post. We didn’t do so as explicitly as you did, but we achieved zero debt a long time ago (no mortgage, no car payments, all the money in the bank for kids’ education), a comfortable but not excessive home, and money to enable us to retire and enjoy all we’ve worked for. And a lot of that was accomplishable (=new word) precisely because we lived below our means, and worked from the bottom-up versus the salary-down. </p>
<p>Vlandenschlutte wrote: “Certainly 50% could, this is the land of opportunity. But if you meant that 50% don’t, then yes, I agree.”</p>
<p>I strongly disagree. It is simply not possible for 50% of our country to achieve the American Dream. In theory that sounds great but our economy is set up to give us “haves” and “have nots”. The utopia you suggest could never happen without the 1% (or even the .1%) “spreading the wealth” and that isn’t going to happen (partly because Congress would never allow that to happen since they are beholden to the 1% for their jobs). Rant over. Thanks for listening :)</p>
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<p>Haha…this could not be less true where I live. Newly constructed homes tend to be in outlying areas farther from the desirable city center. They are in subdivisions with few trees and generic-sounding names. Because they are not known to people there is no prestige associated with the address, whereas there is living on a well-known street where the houses were built by the original old-money inhabitants. Here and in Chicago, where I lived previously, everyone knows what the “best” parts of each neighborhood are…“east of X road,” “within Y blocks of Z school,” etc.</p>
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<p>I lumped it in with insurance, utilities. I assumed the tax isn’t too high with $50K income. 15% on the amount over $17K of what’s left after deductions.</p>
<p>Alh and poetgrl, you two made me laugh.</p>
<p>Are you looking at averages (means) or the middle value (median)?</p>