What is middle income

According to the census data, all three could be considered correct.

Choice #1 is the middle quintile of household incomes.
Choice #2 is the second, third and fourth quintiles
Choice #3 is the 10th percentile to the 90th percentile. In other words, if you consider $100,000 per year to be middle income, you have to accept that 90% of US households are middle income and a household which brings in $7,000 per year can be considered to share a common economic interest.

http://pubdb3.census.gov/macro/032005/hhinc/new05_000.htm

live. $100,000 per year is just getting by in the NY/NJ/Conn areas.

is considered to be $45,000. I remember it because it's $15,000 above what our income is!

I assume that's a national average though.

:hi:

We live in NW Connecticut. We're part time "homesteaders" with two pre-teen daughters. Combined income of about 75,000. I'm a carpenter that works for somebody else. My wife is the art teacher at the three regional elementary schools. We have been thriving... maxing out my wife's 403B, our Roth's, paying down our small mortgage on the house we built 6 years ago.

But... we aren't fooling ourselves. It's getting noticeably harder. The rural vacation house market is slowing waaay down here and although this is anecdotal, all we have built for the last couple years are GIANT houses on 50 to 100 acre "compounds" for very wealthy people. Don't know how they plan to heat them in the future. You know, 8 to 12 thousand square feet, oil heat, 6 300gal. tanks etc.

We also realize that the arts will be the first education cuts and then there goes the health insurance. We are starting to focus on paying down our debt rather than risking 25% of my wife's pay in the war profiteering market.

So maybe this is just getting by. We are definitely not commuting into Manhattan, while sipping lattes in our Escalades every morning. Nor would we want to. People have become really quite crazy as far as I can see.

and as others said, depends geographically as well.

.... geography is everything.

Obviously you had something in mind in posting the poll. What is it?

Edit to add:

In the Baltimore/Washington SMA, as I heard on the radio just last week, the median income is $74,000. Extrapolate that out a bit and you get over $100,000 pretty damned fast.

Even living in western washington, I would not support policies which provide tax breaks targeted to affluent communities.

Edited to add:
I've heard a number of posters suggest that middle income includes households earning $100 - $200,000. Some have also suggested that rich doesn't start until $1m or so.

I was curious what middle income really was.

That I'm (for the moment) only a thousand dollars below the upper end (East Coast Florida). I'm comfortable enough, but if I start earning any more, I'll be "upper income" and have to become a Republican.... :scared:

I'm just suggesting that "middle income" is currently an overused term roughly synonymous with "Me". :)

That was just a lame attempt at humor on my part. I realize that these things are relative... I once read a statement by a congressman that to him, "middle class" was about what his yearly income... $200K or so... lol

As if there's anywhere in the country that it wouldn't be impossible to survive on $7,000. $7,000 - $100,000 - $18,000 - $88,000; eh, it's all the same.

Don't anybody respond to me, I can't go through this shit again.

Wondering.