People making six-figure salaries used to be considered rich--now households earning nearly $200,000 a year aren't even c

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

considered upper-class in some U.S. states

A six-figure salary used to be considered wealthy—but now, most of these earners are struggling to stay afloat amid raging living costs and salary deflation. That’s because households making $100,000 annually are still considered “middle-class” in every U.S. state, according to a recent analysis of 2023 U.S. Census Bureau data.

How much money you need to make to be “rolling in it” has changed: Earning nearly $200,000 a year isn't even considered upper-class in some U.S. states. Being considered rich is becoming more gate-kept among the 1% raking in millions every day.

According to a recent SmartAsset analysis of 2023 U.S. Census Bureau data, a household making $199,000 a year in Massachusetts and New Jersey would still be considered middle-class.

Even in Mississippi, which has the lowest median middle-class income in the U.S., households would need to earn over $108,000 to be considered well-off.

-more-

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/people-making-six-figure-salaries-155739028.html

[WarGamer]

1. true... in my suburb north of LA an hour...

100k isn't enough to qualify for a mortgage on a condo.

Even 250k is just enough to pay for an average 1M house, pay the bills, save for retirement, send kids to college, car payments, auto and home insurance...

[Johonny]

5. I can hire people and pay enough

For them to start their lives here. You have to be a dink with two high earners or else your trapped renting.

[Johnny2X2X]

2. Precisely why we need to know who is a working person.

The rich get the lower middle class to hate the middle class and the middle class to hate the upper middle class. Even the top 10% are mostly just regular working people. Not rich. It’s the top 1% who are greedy and the top 1/10th of 1% who own the country and are destroying it for the rest of us.

My own situation. I do pretty good. Make good money and have a normal middle class lifestyle. Am able to save. Am able to not go into debt. Not living paycheck to paycheck. But this is what most of the middle class used to live like. I shouldn’t be special. 40 years ago I was the average autoworker. Today I have an engineering degree and an MBA with finance degree to live the life that’s less than my dad as a GM die maker gave our family in the 80s.

The middle class has fallen so far. Biden had started to reverse that and the middle class finally saw real gains, but that’s going to be gone soon. Trump and his clan will leave nothing for regular people.

[uponit7771]

3. Yep I 76 most made 10k yr and that was equivalent to 66k a year now

[Igel]

4. Inflation does that.

So does regional price variation.

Look at it this way: I'm a high school teacher, public high school, no unions. I'm divorced, but if I were still married and my wife still worked in the same district as me, as she did pre-divorce, our combined gross annual income last year would have been over $155k.

Public high school teachers in Texas ... Not exactly the usual picture of opulence.

Now, a lot of my colleagues have mates that make more than they do putting them towards that $200k boundary. Which explains why, exactly, my "vacation" involves resurrecting my kitchen garden or pruning fruit trees or rebuilding Texas-summer-blasted flower beds and *their* vacations involve snorkeling off of Maui or spending weeks at their cabin in the Texas hill country or hanging out in Gatlinburg.

[EllieBC]

6. Where I live, $200k a year means you can maybe afford

a small condo. 1 bedroom. Maybe. Currently the cheapest 1 bedroom condo is 600k for a 625sq ft condo.

It’s insane out there.

[moondust]

7. Median home price Q4 2024: $419,200

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MSPUS

[rickyhall]

8. But Biden invented inflation.

[Meowmee]

9. It would be rich for me

Could easily live comfortably on that.

[Kaleva]

11. Yes. I could be going on Caribbean cruises twice a year on that money

And still have a bunch to put in savings

[Yavin4]

10. Do this exercise. Use the inflation calculator at the link...

Enter your salary from 10 years ago. The result is how much you should be making today just to maintain the same purchasing power.

https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/

I entered my salary and just to have the same purchasing power, I would need to $50K more. I just checked. No one in my former industry is paying what I made in 2015 when adjusted for inflation.