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Growing up, my family definitely wasn’t rich. We weren’t jetting off to Europe during the summer or visiting a ski lodge over Christmas break. We might have had one domestic vacation a year, often a road trip, and we’d spend most of our summers at the neighborhood pool doing cannonballs until the sun went down.
But we did have a cluttered garage with an extra refrigerator for drinks, a lawnmower that my dad was proud to use and a grill that cooked more burgers, salmon and veggies than I can count. We were the quintessential middle class family. And, of course, my upbringing wasn't unique; there are millions of other families around the globe who had nearly the exact same experiences.
Redditors have been discussing the tell-tale signs that someone is middle class, so we’ve gathered their most spot-on replies below. Enjoy scrolling through, and be sure to upvote the ones that make you want to have a picnic with your neighbors!
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#1
Being able to afford everything you need but not everything you want.
ChuushaHime:
This is where I am now for the first time in my life and I love it. I'm very comfortable, have solid emergency funds, can afford everything that I need as well as small luxuries like the occasional nice restaurant or weekend getaway, but still need to put some effort into saving for trips or similar largescale purchases that make me feel like I earned them. Next financial goal is to move apartments to a more expensive but prettier and more convenient part of town. Looking forward to it :)
RELATED:
#2
Adopted a little boy earlier this year... 6 years old. His background is, erm, rough, shall we say.
Last week we were sat in a Cafè and he described his scone as "delightful". A little later he asked where we were going for dinner.
I suddenly realised we'd ruined him already. 🤦♂️.
#3
Student loans
Too wealthy for need-based scholarships; not wealthy enough to pay for college.
#4
Family vacations. I remember coming back from summer break and my classmates talking about the trips their families went on and being extremely jealous.
#6
Spending an entire day from your weekend cleaning your own house and doing your own yard work and going to Costco.
#8
When your passenger side door handle breaks, you take it to the dealership for repair since it's under warranty, when they send you to the rental company for a loaner car and the only thing they have is a ~~Camero~~ Camaro. When you pull in to the driveway of your suburban home and tell your pregnant wife you're going out to dinner at a nearby sit down restaurant because you need a reason to drive the ~~Camero~~ Camaro around.
Ladies and gentlemen, my husband last week.
#9
*opens fridge full of tons of diverse fresh food*
There's nothing ~~already cooked and prepared to mindlessly shove in my gullet~~ to eat.
#10
I'm going to paint my fence China white instead of 1/4 piano white.
My suburb passed a ruling no green fencing...so I'm getting white that has a green hue in it.
I'm just one man fighting against the oppression.
#14
Helping your children do their homework.
Poor people don't have time for that. Rich people have tutors for that.
#17
A mortgage, a car loan or two, and having to save the entire year (or two) to take a vacation with the spouse and kids.
#20
Gotta go to work everyday so I can come home and spend all my free time taking care of bills, food, and my children. Just so I can wake up tomorrow and do it all over again.
#21
Planning for retirement. The rich don't have to worry about it, and the poor know they wont ever reach it.
#22
A Toyota Highlander with "Frozen" playing in the backseat pulling up to a block party at a master-planned starter home community's pool where the dads are grilling and the kids are running around everywhere eating freeze pops.
#24
I take _forever_ to grocery shop now that I'm making a decent living.
When we were poorer it was just buy whatever we could afford that would keep us alive. Now, when arriving at the spot in the aisle for EVERY item on my list, a chain reaction of decision making fires off that passes through statistics, guilt, and the meaning of life.
> There are 6 choices of jarred olives
> That one is $18 so its an outlier
> The remaining 5 prices are between $0.89 and $3.99, biased to the right
> My income is in the 65th percentile nationally
> http://i.imgur.com/itMcsy5.gif
> Really these are just going in my martinis, I won't even notice the difference from the cheaper ones
> But I do like to eat them in salads sometimes...
> *Looks back at $18 olives*
> I MAKE GOOD MONEY DAMNIT I SHOULD BE ABLE TO BUY NICE OLIVES.
> They're just going to waste in the fridge because I pass out after 2 drinks
> The expensive ones probably taste funny anyway
> Honestly I don't even remember how much Gin I have left
> *Looks back at list*
> I'll go look at the yogurt and come back to the olives before I leave.
#25
A grade school aged child having tempered expectations for Christmas gifts, and getting pretty much everything they wanted except for the most expensive thing. "Maybe next year, bud.".
#26
Having a nice double car garage but no room for your mid size SUV or Toyota sedan because its full of kids toys, unopened boxes of random s**t that you haven't looked at since you moved in and golf clubs you don't use often.
#29
A basketball hoop in every driveway.
EDIT: or on the garage. but i mean really that's still in the driveway isn't it?
#30
As a Hispanic that grew up middle class.
Using butter containers to store leftover beans. My Tupperware came from re-purposed lands.
*typos are inevitable.
#34
An above ground pool, alone, in the middle of the back yard, with those s****y plastic ladders that flail all over the place when you climb them.
#36
This thread has me reminiscing on the sweet summer times of my middle-class childhood:
-drawing with chalk in the driveway.
-Going to a neighbor's to swim in their above-ground pool, while swatting away occasional wasps, and if this wasn't an option, putting a sprinkler under the trampoline.
-A tire swing and/or one of those assembly-required jungle gyms in the backyard.
-Various soccer/music/overnight camps (not fancy ones, usually run by the local university)
-Being a tomboy by necessity because all your bikes/sporting goods/some clothes were passed through the neighborhood boys before they got to you
-Bringing your dad a glass of freshly mixed red koolaid while he takes a break from mowing the lawn with giant noise-cancelling headphones on. Not the ones that play music. They just cancel noise. Blanking on what to call these.
#39
"I'm so glad I bought that Chevy Tahoe. Now I can listen to NPR while driving Bella from her Montessori school to soccer practice.".
#41
My wife told me about growing up, regularly having smoked salmon over eggs for breakfast, took regular family holidays to other countries/continents and had horse riding lessons.
Meanwhile there's me not allowed to have milk in my porridge/off brand Weetabix.
#42
Getting nice and loaded prior to a sporting event to save money; getting drunk enough for long-term-financial-goal apathy to set in and buying tons of food and beer in the stadium because you *can* afford it but *shouldn't* waste the cash.
#43
Buy a house with a 2 or 3 car garage and pack them full of c**p and park the cars in the driveway.
#44
My father having his neighborhood friends over to play horseshoes and drink Yuenglings out back.
#45
Having a moderate sedan that you try to keep clean. Theres bird s**t all over it but youre waiting for the next rain instead of doing a car wash.
#46
Camping as a family vacation. We went to Disney World when I was 9, but other than that our vacations were usually camping trips. My dad made enough money to be able to take almost a month off of work each summer (not consecutively, but a week or weekend here and there), but not enough to take us anywhere expensive.
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