This is a fluff piece written by someone in a rich bubble.
The 2 year old and 4 year old have no concept of money, the 4 year old did not “do most of the work” in a lemonade stand, and they do not have “their own money” to spend. Picking up after yourself and putting dishes in the sink are not chores, and kids this age aren’t taking out the trash - of course they enjoy it when mummy does it and makes a big deal of how grown up the kids are for helping, and probably rewards then for it.
None of the ideas are innovative or relevant to most parents, and particularly not with a kids that age. This is just one rich bored parent with young kids sharing their “experiences”. Pretty out of touch with reality.
$150 a month for her dog’s health insurance…
And she’s calling herself “middle class” like she lives in the burbs…
The wealthy always think of themselves as “middle class” because they know people wealthier.
Just because billionaires exist doesn’t mean millionaires who take annual child free vacations are suddenly “middle class”.
They just don’t want to actually admit they’re wealthy and wasting a shit ton of money that should be going to taxes.
I worry that she actually is “middle class” and the wealth disparity has moved to the point that those of us who cannot spend $150 on pet insurance or drop $750,000+ on a house or $100,000 on a truck are effectively “poor”, at least as far as the market is concerned.
There’s people with “Fuck you” money and people without “Fuck you” money.
I mean, it should be median income/wealth, then a standard deviation either way.
But capitalism doesn’t care about people, it cares about money. That’s the only way the “middle class” can be defined differently.
Don’t let capitalism define words.
deleted by creator
And neither communism nor socialism care about people either, they are just ideas with the inability to care about anything.
Where does she claim to be middle class? It seems she recognizes she was middle class as a kid, but now is not, considering she said “were” instead of “are.”
I have a very different take away from this and that she knows she is wealthy, and trying to impart the understanding of their luck onto her kids…I don’t see her at all denying her wealth.
She did say that she grew up middle class and sometimes her family couldn’t afford pizza. If you can’t afford one of the most cost effective ways to feed a family without making the food yourself, you’re not middle class. Now she’s rich and lying about lemonade stands. It’s embarrassing that someone with no idea what middle class means is writing an article about teaching kids about money.
That’s a whole lot of judgement made from pure ignorance about anything from her life, and putting words in her mouth.
Yeah, but she’s rich so she definitely deserves it! /s
“Sometimes couldn’t afford pizza” shouldn’t exclude her from middle class… we rarely ate out because we were trying to save that money for a trip or something - we would have said that we couldn’t afford pizza, too. Even if it was well within reach, it wasn’t within budget.
Erm, not arguing that this lady is middle class, but dog insurance cost is not remotely relevant to that lol. I pay that for my dog and make less than 6 figures. My dog is just really important to me, and our last dog cost us thousands and thousands of dollars on vet bills. I’m not going to be blindsided dropping $5k in a day on vet bills again. Our dog has insurance because it seems like the financially responsible thing to do, especially when your dog is extremely active and engaging in sports that it may be injured doing.
So-called upper middle class: “I’m middle class because there are people richer than me”
So-called lower middle class: “I’m middle class because there are people poorer than me”
IMO the middle class is an illusion
Middle class is paycheck to paycheck, has been for a while.
I’m lucky enough I can stack retirement and I got a house when it was (comparatively cheap).
If we’re splitting the classes by median income (assets could be done, but people in the middle class by median are lucky to even have a mortgage on a home) then it’s about 40k for an individual and 75k for a household. And I’m solidly “upper class” even though I’ll never amass more than a million in assets unless real estate inflation jumps past Ludacris and into plaid.
The fact that anyone with a million in assets, let alone cash/stocks would consider themselves “middle class” just tells you stupid people can luck out and become millionaires.
It’s a level of delusion that is actual impressive.
So the “middle class” that’s a single income, house in the burbs, two cars, vacations every year…
That shits gone. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t still a statistical middle class.
If you’re living paycheck to paycheck, you aren’t middle class.
You might not be poor but definitely not middle.
Anyone who thinks that’s middle class has just been fooled by the wealthy to make them think they’re doing better than they are
You have an idea in your head of a standard that is “middle class”.
That is not what I’m talking about.
If we’re splitting the classes by median income (assets could be done, but people in the middle class by median are lucky to even have a mortgage on a home) then it’s about 40k for an individual and 75k for a household.
Statistically speaking “middle class” is the median and a statistical deviation either way.
But that paints an incredibly depressing and realistic picture of what America’s “economy” is really like. So the wealthy have pushed the narrative you’re following that only a minority of people can obtain “middle class”.
Historically when shit gets organized like that, it doesn’t end well for the ones that hoarded all the wealth.
The harsh truth is that “middle class” is pretty fucking broke. It’s just what happens when you concentrate the wealth at one end of the distribution. And literally the only way to fix that, is by moving the wealth to people lower in the distribution.
So rather than that be the discussion, it benefits the wealthy if people do what you’re doing, and act like it just disappeared and can magically be made to reappear from thin air without taking wealth back from the people who have it now.
Simply taking a statistical look ignores what it was for centuries before. Middle class is more than just income, it’s what that income means for your lifestyle and ability and it has been eroded as you say and will need to be taken back, but people fooling themselves into thinking they are just because of their income are in a bracket.
Oh you earn the middle income? Too bad it’s 90% of your rent but don’t worry you’re still middle class! Nothing to be worried about here!
You’re right. Middle class to me means owning a home or at least paying well on a mortgage. One car per person. Vacation money. Fun money. Paycheck to paycheck will never be middle class to me just because it’s the statistical median. This is what people mean when they say the middle class is disappearing. The majority of Americans are working class, poor, or destitute. There’s a fraction that are middle class and up.
In this stupid article the author says she was middle class but her parents often couldn’t afford pizza. That is not middle class. Am I fucking crazy here?
Oh you earn the middle income? Too bad it’s 90% of your rent but don’t worry you’re still middle class! Nothing to be worried about here!
I’m not saying that’s fine, I’ve literally said multiple times it’s not, and that looking at like you are downplays the problem.
I’m sorry I couldn’t find a better way to explain it.
I can’t afford $150 for my own health insurance
Yep, people keep replying like it’s a choice to pay it or not…
For most Americans, that shit ain’t a choice, they just can’t.
What if how she lives is the way middle class should be? Like, we want to create a system where most people live this way (or have the option to).
Depends on your measure of middle, I bet median would be pretty low but average is still probably way higher than most people.
Wealth gap has never been worse
I make less than 100k a year and my dogs insurance costs about that much. I didn’t have insurance for him before because he was young and healthy but then he tore his ACL and the surgery set me back 6.5K. That wasn’t exactly a drop in the bucket for me, at the time I had less than half of that in savings, and had to max out my credit card. So now yeah it sucks having to pay that much but if he does get a bad injury or illness - obviously I really hope that doesn’t happen and I have him for many more years to come - as he grows older, it will cost me way less as a lump sum.
That last sentence is odd. What do you mean should be going to taxes? Sounds like you define wealthy by what taxes they pay. I know the billionaires have lots of loopholes to pay a lower percent, is using those loopholes your deciding factor?
You’re talking “should” legally…
I’m talking “should” ethically, but really, they “should” have never made that wealth to begin with.
Well my question was really about what “should” means to you. I have 2 kids, so my effective tax rate is like 25% or something. If I understand things right, the billionaires work things so they have very little taxable income, making thier 35% more like 1% of their actual income. So are you saying if a millionaire still pays thier taxes based on actual income, not using the method that billionaires use to lower their taxable income, then they are paying the taxes that they should pay?
Idk why you guys are so obsessed about millionaires here. We aren’t some evil devils that you can put all the blame for your problems on. It’s just life some are wealthier some are poorer. It was like that since forever and it will be like this forever except in this system you also have a chance for success unlike feudalism where everything was 100% predetermined.
In literally every system that ever existed there was someone wealthier and someone poorer what matters is the dynamics, can the poorer become wealthy, can the wealthy lose money if they stop being productive proportionally to their wealth? This is the problem
Idk why you guys are so obsessed about millionaires here
Because they keep denying they’re the 1% and claim to be “middle class” and need tax breaks because the 0.1% exist.
When they’re still causing problems for the rest of the 99%
It was like that since forever and it will be like this forever
At this point, it’s real hard to think you’re not trolling…
Like just statistically, very very few people would ever legitimately try to use that argument these days after sooooooooooo many people have been shooting it down for centuries.
If progress wasn’t possible, shit wouldn’t have fucking progressed.
Quick edit:
Completely unsurprised by that post history
Millionaires aren’t necessarily the 1%. It’s not until about $13 million in the US that someone’s in the 1% of wealth.
This is truly insane. And yet millionaires will look at this statistic and use it to justify calling themselves middle class.
I like to use quintiles to define the classes.
“Middle of what?” is a good question to ask. If you’re in the top 2%, or even 10%, you’re not middle class. More money than 90% of everyone else is not the middle class.
Flipping it around, if 0% means 100% of the country is richer than you, and 99% means 99% of the country is poorer than you…
- 0~20% is lower class.
- 20~40% is lower-middle class.
- 40~60% is middle class
- 60~80% is upper-middle class.
- 80~100% is upper class.
Now, I couldn’t find quick figures for wealth. But for income, middle class household income topped out at $94,000 in 2022. So a household making more than $100,000 is probably not middle class.
“But my household makes over $100,000/yr and we don’t live a middle class life style!”… that’s probably because you’ve been sold the idea that an upper[-middle] class lifestyle is actually “middle class”. It’s not. The lifestyle you’d have at about $80,000 household income is a middle class lifestyle.
“Well, I might make over $100,000/yr household income, but I’m definitely not middle class because i make less than that after tax!”…nope, these calculations are usually before tax. You aren’t middle class.
“This doesn’t apply to me. I have 3 kids and a dependent spouse, so my $100,000+ doesn’t go as far as a single person’s would!”…sorry, still not middle-class.
This is not my understanding of the class system. It’s not divided evenly mathematically. Many years ago, this was most likely the case, but I would argue that unless you’re at least in the top third percentage for income, you probably aren’t living a “middle class” life. Features of what we used to call middle class, and I argue still should, are things like owning a home, going on vacations, and having a retirement account.
Reducing the idea of middle class to statistics normalizes things like living paycheck to paycheck because that’s what median income earners in this country do. That will never be middle class to me. That’s working class at best and more like working poor. I would love for everyone to have what I think of as a middle class life, but it’s sadly out of reach for most of us.
Middle class is not median income. It is a lifestyle that is enabled by income that fewer and fewer people can attain.
You’ve invented your own nonsense system that isn’t anything like how anyone uses the word.
Liberalism or rather liberal social democracy is greatest system ever devised. I cherish it every single day like a treasure of humanity it is.
It’s so good everyone tries to get here from all over the world to partake in it and I welcome them if they are willing to obey basic rules and integrate.
Woe to communists and facists alike
I was about to upvote the funny satire then I read the rest of the comment and… you’re serious.
Of course I am serious…
“Look! My kids are almost like other kids, except they’re spoiled-wealthy-at-birth!”
–businessinsider.com
Every parent wants to spoil their kids. So they have it better than they had at their age. It’s just how it is. Your parents couldn’t afford Lego? You will buy the biggest set etc
Definitely not every parent.
Yep mine have a shitload of legos, plus the power wheels cars that I never got to have as a kid
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
He just made a small comma error, here is the rectified version:
It’s not the kids’ fault in any of this. Make it about the parents instead.
Cordially,
Idiot
A kid being spoiled is not the kids fault, its the parents so i dont get what you are saying.
deleted by creator
Stop posting like you did? Love that you regretted your words right after saying them lol. Do me a favour and delete your next comment in advance too.
I’ll do something even better.
Cry to mommy mod and daddy mod? Typical lmao. A coward, a snitch, and an idiot, what a combo.
I looked for past articles from her on Business Insider. She is middle class, like rest of us. Which middle class person doesn’t hire an accountant and spend $1000 per month to make parenting easy!
Hello fellow middle-class citizens!
Lol, have you seen the cost of daycare… $1000 per month easy in most cities. Probably not what you meant, but it still made me laugh.
She has a job and 2 kids in child care age. $25 a day seems reasonable even cheap to maintain her career. And if an accountant can pay for themselves on a journalists salary then she should right?
I was pleasantly surprised by this sentence:
But I made it a point to explain [to my children] that while sometimes being homeless can be a result of not making good choices, sometimes it’s a result of not having good choices.
It smacks of empathy, which is more than I expected. Whatever one may think of the author, she’s trying to teach her children to be better, and that counts for something.
I’m putting my foot down! No more than fifteen presents!
What the actual fuck?
Also, what’s the deal with the golf cart? Why do they have a golf cart?
THUTTY SIX BUT LAHST! THUTTY SIX BUT LAHST!
It’s quite common here to have one for driving around neighbourhoods, as cheap ones can be $1,000+.
That still does not answer my “why” question tbh.
But I suppose that in a country where “walkable neighborhoods” are construed to be some nefarious communist plot to rob people of their freedom, not walking its a status symbol.
“for driving around neighbourhoods”, same as having a car.
So an inferior bicycle basically.
Depends on your needs.
Fair enough, although I’d argue getting around the neighborhood is easier on a narrow vehicle that can carry some cargo and doesn’t depend on batteries. A golf cart has all the downsides of a car in day to day use and it’s slower and exposed to the elements. It’s probably a Veblen good in this case.
My friends have one because they have a small baby and don’t want to use their scooters (small motorbikes) with her when going out. They don’t own a car. They can carry their shopping in it.
Removed by mod
Sometimes things depend on other things.
Your out of hand dismissal of complexity is, frankly, baffling and concerning.
That said, I have lived in suburbia all my life and never have I gone “hmmmm, I really wish I had a golf cart in addition to my car and bicycle”.
Removed by mod
The US hasn’t really discovered Bakfiet bicycles yet.
Watching people take six kindergarten kids or a whole refrigerator on a bike through town in Berlin and Amsterdam was wonderful. They could do a pretty good Costco run on those things.
Yes, but mostly used by fat, old people.
Yeah the why is laziness I guess? Why walk when you can drive a smaller electric buggy for small distances and a big car for big distances?
Golf carts make sense in retirement communities - presumably the companies behind them are “growing the market” by targeting families as an alternative to push chairs and walking? Also I’m guessing these are American neighbourhoods which still are designed around cars than true walkability?
They are popular in more affluent areas so they can be driven to clubhouses or other neighborhood spots, and unsurprisingly very common in neighborhoods that have their own golf course.
Imagine spending $1,000+ when walking is free.
I can imagine someone with a disability wanting a cart like this to get around, but this woman does not need a fucking golf cart.
We’re all going to die because of this overconsumption bullshit.
Does someone having one prevent someone from getting one?
My friends have one because they have a baby and no car. Is their consumption too much for you?
Having one instead of a car isn’t overconsumption, but the woman in this article clearly has both. It’s a problem.
Imagine spending $1,000+ when walking is free.
This seems exclusive from that.
It’s quite common here to have one for driving around neighbourhoods, as cheap ones can be $1,000+.
So, where I come from, there’s nothing to drive to in the neighborhood except other houses. Also, a neighborhood is at most a square mile. That’s all I envisioned.
What, exactly, did you even mean by “neighborhoods”? It’s starting to sound like you’re talking about driving several miles.
It can be several miles since my friend’s one goes for 40km. Your neighbourhood is yours, we have lots of places to go to between neighbourhoods and districts, and lots in each.
Where is “here”?
deleted by creator
My first thought was “that’s insane”, but when you put it that way, it seems less insane than driving a car.
Normalize golf carts! I guess?! 🤷
Electric cargo bikes fill the same niche here. Well, minus the boat part.
I feel like people just haven’t tried hard enough with the boats. 😉
deleted by creator
Cambodia.
Seems ridiculous. Why not a bicycle?
Because babies exist.
Babies shouldn’t drive golf carts though
Shit, you got me.
Why should everyone live exactly how you want them to?
Can I do an audit of your life and switch everything over to how I think you should live?
Lol
Generally, people can live how they want. It doesn’t mean I can’t think doing something a certain way is ridiculous.
I did ask a “why” question. I’m open to changing my mind.
I tell ya, the present thing is rough. When I was a kid, I got cards from aunts and uncles. But now they all send gifts. So there is 5 gifts right there. Then there is the grandparents. They have so much time to shop, they can bring 5+ gifts for each kid and only spend $50. So we are already at 15 and we didn’t even buy anything yet. It’s nuts.
Also, everything seems to have to be a gift now. Can’t just buy a thing and give it to them. It has to wait to be a present. Or maybe that’s just my wife. But also, when I was a kid, even in the rural area I lived, there was a convenience story where we could buy gum, or baseball cards and stuff for very little money. Now a pack of Pokémon is like $6 for way less cards. The only cheap things kids can buy is candy, and we aren’t supposed to let them do that anymore either. So everything ends up as a present.Also, everything seems to have to be a gift now. Can’t just buy a thing and give it to them. It has to wait to be a present. Or maybe that’s just my wife.
We specifically don’t wait for holidays to give things we want to gift to our daughter (soon to be 3). On her birthday in two weeks she will get a book, a plush animal, and a second hand peppa pig puzzle (I hate peppa pig but she loves it and she doesn’t even know there is a show). That’s it, but she gets many things throughout the year. My husband hates holidays and celebrations, I think that’s where this feeling of “let’s please not make a huge stock of presents to give her twice a year” came from. And it is so much less pressure to find “the perfect gift”.
And you can get rid of things much more easily. I don’t know about you, but if I got a bad birthday present, I tend to keep it, because it was a birthday present. Same for children’s stuff. She got that for her first birthday feels different than she got that when she was around 14 months. Somehow it’s less sentimental, and I am an awfully sentimental and nostalgic person, so this saves my ass.
Another point is that can change interests so quickly. I would not dare to buy her something peppa pig themed right now for Christmas or plan ahead for her 4th birthday. Or let’s say she needs a new bike - why would I wait until the end of summer to give it to her just because it’s her birthday.
But talk to me again on September 9th, I usually get very sad that we don’t celebrate with a crap ton of presents and decorations and a big party right before her birthday.
My sister has a 3-row golf cart and I have no idea why. If I even ask she’s going to think I’m shaming her for being wealthy 😂
This reads exactly like my sister, if there wasn’t a photo I would think it was written by her. She has a closet filled with presents she is waiting to give her kids because they have too many at one given time
deleted by creator
This is so tone deaf and privileged. Fuck this woman and this article.
Nothing funnier than seeing a bunch of Lemmings argue about the definition of middle class.
Time to abandon the family and start a new one
