>Upper middle class is retirement and educational savings, and not living paycheck to paycheck. For the love of God! Give me a break! If you can't somehow mana

>Upper middle class is retirement and educational savings, and not living paycheck to paycheck. For the love of God! Give me a break! If you can't somehow manage to do that while making over $100k you are living way way way above your means, period. You can live over your means at any income level and adding more income doesn't solve that problem. Sure, maybe if I owned two Beemers, a Cadillac, a boat, and a second home I'd be unable to do that. >I believe it's 70% of households could not come up with $1k within 2 weeks. 90% could not miss a paycheck without skipping bills. That says more about spending habits than is does income. >as long as the investment difference can be liquidated to pay it off at 15 years (or in early 50s. Your can never know your investment returns. >Can't be done debt free with any major, much less STEM course load. So what? I went into debt for an education and it wasn't a bad thing. Its my opinion that downright giving your kids money is a bad thing. I made my choices accordingly. I would be a total loser nowadays if my parents gave me money, for my education or otherwise. Its also in my opinion that parents obsessing over saving money for college is a big cause of rising tuition.