These real-world examples show that the answer is complex and controversial

Po

What does life really look like in the middle class?

Income statistics say you’re middle class if your family is $ 45,200 to $ 135,600 a year, according to the Pew research center. Social tradition keeps him having a permanent job, having a home and a car, being able to save for retirement and send kids to College, and taking annual leave.

But as the standard picture of the middle class shifts – or in some cases disappears – there is perhaps no better way to understand the changes than by looking at the real budgets of families across the country.

At the lower end of the income scale, for example, there is Sheboygan, WIS., a family of four, including two toddlers. Parents earn $ 4,000 a month after taxes as part-time retail jobs and a line cook gig, neither of which offers paid vacation or health insurance. Their monthly expenses include:

The full spending list adds up to $ 3,232 a month, leaving them with $ 738. They take turns watching the children save on childcare costs, and the children are covered by the state health insurance program. Mom and dad are not insured, however. “We have such high levels of stress from juggling our schedules,” mom Lauren Koch told the Times.

But they have more left at the end of the month than a San Francisco couple with a young daughter who earn more than twice as much. Amanda Rodriguez and David Allen take home $ 9675 a month that gets gobbled up:

Their list is $ 9,760 at the end of the month, meaning they break about even. “This is a very expensive city, “Rodriguez said, noting that”we are actively making choices to be here.”

Of course, sharing such detailed budgets opens the door to a lot of debate about where people prefer to spend, and where they scrimp and save.

MarketWatch recently shared a budget compiled by Sam Dogen of the financial samurai blog, which revealed how a family of four earning $ 350,000 a year in an expensive Metropolitan area barely qualifies as middle class. Dogan said the budget line items were vetted by thousands of people living in expensive coastal cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles, new York, Boston and Washington.

But it’s been hard for many readers to wrap their heads around a family dropping $ 24,000 a year on preschool, or $ 70 a day on meals, especially considering that the median family income in the U.S. is $ 57,782, and about 95% of U.S. households don’t pull anywhere close to $ 3,50k.

Read more: this budget shows how $ 350,000 salary barely qualifies as middle class

“They spend more on childcare than I and most other people do in a year,” one reader wrote in comments on the story.

Another person, who claimed to also live in southern California, noted that housing and childcare costs are the realities of the region, but many other points of the line suggested this family should be more accurately described as upper class.

“If you can afford entertainment, rest (a few) and date nights (as part of the meal?!) as three separate line items, while saving for College and retirement, and still have more than $ 1,400 net cash each month, there is no way you are struggling, ” this person wrote. “You’re not the only “middle class”. You do very well .”

People will always have opinions on the best ways to save, spend and invest money, but the reality is that different households have different needs.

The cost of living varies across the country, and many families with incomes that look rich on paper are saddled with student loan and credit card debt, child care bills that eat into their incomes, and housing costs that continue to outpace wage growth. That’s why some people who earn $ 90,000 a year don’t consider themselves rich, even though they earn more than 87% of the U.S. population.

Family size can also weigh down finances. The couple earning $ 43693 to $ 131,078 can be considered middle income, according to the census Bureau and Pew data center’s crunched personal Finance website HowMuch.net But if they have a child, they must make another $ 7,000 to meet the minimum threshold of being middle class (which jumps between $ 50,697 and $ 152,092 for a family of three, and $ 60,499 to $ 181,496 for a family of four.)

Read more: Who really is the middle class in America? This chart shows how important family size is

Bottom line: even while the US has been a bull market for a decade, the middle class – as traditionally defined – is shrinking, and what it means to be middle class is now being redefined in different ways across the country.

Join the conversation