I have a question for HN hackers. I make over 6 figure a year. My wife doesn't work. She keeps telling me that we are not middle class, and that I should earn more if I want to afford us a middle class lifestyle, because everything is very expensive now. She also thinks that I'm a bit of an underachiever, professionally, for earning only 120K a year. Am I an underachiever or is she out of touch with Midwestern America? I keep telling her that the average family can only dream of the money I bring home every month with my two jobs.

$120k a year is more income than about 90% of U.S. households. The median household income in the U.S. is about $45,000.

Your wife needs to find different friends.

Y'know, the actual amount doesn't matter here at all.

I don't care if he's only earning $30,000 a year -- no wife should be talking to her husband like that.

Either that, or he needs to find a different wife.

She's out of touch.

The problem that I've found is that most people live way beyond their means when they are selecting housing. This means that if you want to live with people like yourself, you have to too. If you spend what you should on housing, you end up "in a bad neighborhood".

So I feel like your wife has fallen victim to this problem. To live with the people she wants to associate with, she has to spend a lot more of your money.

I'm sorry but your wife sounds awful!

You are in the top 10% of wage earners in the US.

It's a nice place to be. I make about the same and my wife treats me like royalty (and works herself and makes about 2/3 that).

It depends on where you live. Where I am, a 4 bedroom house in the city (mediocre school district) is $180k. So $120k is a good chunk of change, and you can comfortably live on a single income.

If her vision of a "middle class lifestyle" is buying lots of shiny things, you're screwed.

Wow, 180k for a 4BR house!? Houses in the poorer suburbs of my city (the poorest capital in Australia) are still $400-500k +. Rent for a 4BR is about 450+ a week.

I'm in upstate New York. Not a ton of opportunity in these parts, but if you're fortunate you can live well.

You're not an underachiever. Class is all relative. "Middle class" in America translates to "extremely wealthy" for the average human being. My wife and I were just in Newport Beach, CA over the weekend, and we felt very poor. But back here in Nevada, we feel very blessed.

Here are some links to make your wife feel better:

http://politicalcalculations.blogspot.com/2010/12/whats-your... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_...

encourage her to go and get the best job available for her qualification. She will come to a more grounded opinion.

> Am I an underachiever or is she out of touch with Midwestern America?

What has she achieved, besides you? The answer doesn't matter.

What matters is that marriage is an investment and you've both made a bad one. You both deserve better and will have to separate to get it, the sooner the better.

It won't get better.

Most people, even those in the top 1%, think themselves as middle-class. You're probably still middle-class, but definitely quite close to the upper bound.

Depends on where you live, but 100k+ is well-to-do where I come from. Most people I know aren't making half of that, and they are working 60 hour weeks. She's out of touch.

120k is middle class and considered underachieving? She needs a dose of reality.

Do not value yourself based on that. This is a race you cannot win. If you win the race against the Jones, are you going to start competing against the Jobs or Gates?

It is very easy to criticize, if she is still believes you are an underachiever(you are not) Do what Fraajad says, let her find out how easy(or difficult) it is to succeed.

The problem is that "middle class" comprises a fairly wide range so your income level qualifies as middle class as would twice as much of an income.

According to:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/09/14/us-usa-taxes-middl...

"Some academics divide the middle class into an upper bracket that includes professionals and middle managers who hold postgraduate degrees and often earn more than $100,000 and a less affluent lower middle class that typically has some college education with household incomes around the national median. Median household income in the United States was $52,175 in 2008, according to the U.S. Census Bureau."

$120K/year is damn good money for one person to be making, and in most of the US, a family pulling in that kind of money is still doing very well. If your wife thinks that isn't enough to be considered middle class, she's been living in a bubble.

I suggest you sit her down and talk to her like the person who wears the pants. In other words, grow a pair of hot damn brass balls. Next week she will love you even more for your new unknown-to-her-bad-attitude.

Many ways to approach this. I suggest a few weeks of tracking each and every expense, then look over it with her. She is wrong, of course, but if you can show her some numbers and get her thinking about it on her own, then you have the possibility of winning her over.

middle class is something like $40K family income...so you are more than double that.

$40k is roughly average income, which is not the same thing as middle class.

divorce

alimony

My family is solidly middle class, have provided enormously for me so I've had advantages most of my college peers havn't, and make around 100k a year.

It's also been shown that while happiness increases drastically up to 60k a year in annual income (in the U.S.A.), happiness does not increase further after that point. I.E. People making 100k are on average no happier than people making 60k, and people making 200k are no happier than those making 100k.