7 ms·

Because this article completely misdefines "middle class"? Being middle class doesn't mean you can afford absolutely everything you want. It just means you're f

Because this article completely misdefines "middle class"? Being middle class doesn't mean you can afford absolutely everything you want. It just means you're financially secure enough not to have to choose between food, clothing, shelter, and healthcare with every paycheck, and to be able to save up a buffer in case of emergency. Example: $2100/mo to feed 3 people is ridiculous. Instead of buying prepared foods, cook meals. You can feed 3 people on $750/mo. If you're spending $300/wk on date night dinner, find something less expensive to do for date night. Similarly for some of the other budgets. Drive a used Honda instead of a new Volvo. Find less expensive ways to entertain yourselves. If you insist on living in an expensive housing market, accept that middle class family living in a dense city means (and has always meant) a (cramped to midwestern suburban sensibilities but quite livable) 2BR without outdoor space, not a house with a lawn; and consider renting instead of buying. Middle class living means making compromises. If you're not making compromises, that's upper class living. And yeah, that can cost $300k/yr easily.

arcanus 9y ago
Agreed. Also, start with: don't live in one of the most expensive cities in the world and expect luxuries not typically associated with urban living, such as two cars, a spacious home, etc.
- kristianc 9y ago
  Not a choice you actually have for many careers.
  - sanderjd 9y ago
    Which ones?
    - kristianc 9y ago
      Politics - DC Media - New York Tech for a BigCo - Seattle/Bay Area. You can of course move to Europe (Visa permitting) but you will find your salary gets much lower too.
      - sanderjd 9y ago
        > Tech for a BigCo - Seattle/Bay Area. This is not accurate.
    - ajmurmann 9y ago
      The article listed several BART workers who earn $200+k. Do you really think their financial situation will be better if they move to St Louis?
      - sanderjd 9y ago
        > don't live in one of the most expensive cities in the world >> Not a choice you actually have for many careers. My question was which careers force you to live in one of the most expensive cities in the world. I don't think your example of public transportation employees is a very good one.
- ajmurmann 9y ago
  Even if you can stay in your career you will earn less as well. All you are doing is moving both numbers the cost and the income down. The article guess into this as well. What's the point of that? There is always someone lucky who can Jeep their job and salary and now work remotely. That's rare though and comes with great anxiety about finding a new, comparable job if your existing one evaporates.
dominotw 9y ago
> Instead of buying prepared foods, cook meals. He acks that in the article, > When you are a dual job household with a baby, there’s little time to cook. > However, food is where this family can cut expenses if they start feeling a little tight.
ianai 9y ago
You’re not wrong. But you’re also attributing choice to things that may not be choice. In your description, if a tech worker wants a cheaper lifestyle and larger living space then they should move away from basically the only places they can find those highest paying careers. There are exceptions, but they are not numerous enough to dismiss that current prices exceed many explanations and leave many people wanting. Also, long commutes to work (longer than 20 minutes) do a great harm to the world. Both in opportunity cost from being able to do other things through to things like climate change. Edit-Also, I want to live in a world where spending the morning in a coffee shop with a scone is affordable on at least a weekly basis for people. Cafes, restaurants, and other such places are cultural bases. We should be insulating them from destruction.
- sanderjd 9y ago
  There are tons of places with great opportunity for that tech worker and non-absurd cost of living. I understand ambitious people wanting to stay in the Bay Area where all the tippy-top jobs are, but there are very good jobs elsewhere. You're just much less likely to become a billionaire or a top executive or a well known name in the industry outside the Bay Area. But again, that isn't a middle class sort of concern.
  - ryandrake 9y ago
    Living in the Bay Area is not just about access to tippy top tech companies. It's about limiting risk. Say I'm living in Nowhereville, USA, and working for the tech company there. If anything goes wrong, for example, an overall tech downturn, this company hits hard times, or I have a job-ending disagreement with my boss, then getting a new job likely means a 6+ month job search, uprooting my family and moving. I know this is true because I have lived in several towns like this. It sucks. In the Bay Area, if things don't work out with a particular company, I can apply to hundreds of others next door. I'm in for a 3-6 month job search, and at the end of the day I don't have the hassle of moving to a different city.
    - trustno1 9y ago
jslsfsafas 9y ago
300 k is ridiculous, but in the coastal regions I would not be surprised if a family of 4 needs 200-250 to feel financially secure.
- geggam 9y ago
  As a family of 4 who just left the SF Bay area making what you call secure. I can assure you we did not feel secure and were living paycheck to paycheck on that amount.
  - froindt 9y ago
    If you don't mind sharing, what were some of the biggest expenses you had leading to you living paycheck to paycheck? I'm a Midwest non-tech worker. I live in one of the 5 largest cities in my state. It's very foreign to me that such a large income wouldn't allow you to feel financially secure. A starting engineering salary in the area is ~65,000. 1, 2, and 3 bedroom apartments in my complex are $830, $1200, and $1500 respectively. I'm ~2.5 miles from work (7 minute commute via car) and <0.5 miles from a grocery store. Houses in the area with a really good school system are 200-400k typically.
    - geggam 9y ago
      200k == about 11600 take home a month after taxes and insurance Monthly Rent : 3300 ( east bay 45 minute train ride into SF) Utlities : 350 BART riding : 260 BART parking : 60-100 or Drive to SF and Car parking $500 ( instead of the 360 BART ) Groceries : 1400 ( 2 teenage boys eat ) Car payments + insurance : 800 ( 2 cars ) renters insurance : 120 Clothing : 300 ( teenagers outgrow stuff fast ) Cell phones : 300 6930 so far... no savings, vacations, entertainment or misc taken out 4670/4 = 1167 per person a month / 4 is 291 a week per person left for savings vacation misc and entertainment 1 family outing in the bay will run $300 to $ 500 easily BTW to buy a house you typically had to come in with an offer 10-25% over ask and typically a full cash offer would get the house. Good luck buying a house with a mortgage ( the house across the street, in the east bay, went for 699k and it was only 900 sq ft )
mratzloff 9y ago
$2100/mo to feed 3 people is ridiculous. You can feed 3 people on $750/mo. $700/mo/person is $7.65 per meal, which is quite reasonable. $250/mo/person is about $2.70 per meal, which is not. "In 2005, sociologists William Thompson and Joseph Hickey estimate an income range of roughly $35,000 to $75,000 for the lower middle class and $100,000 or more for the upper middle class."[0] In 2018 dollars, that's $44,800 to $96,000 for lower middle class and $128,000 for upper middle class. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_middle_class#Income https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_middle_class#Income
- harryh 9y ago
  $250/mo/person is about $2.70 per meal, which is not It's plenty. I just looked at my mint. I've averaged $678/month on groceries for my 3 person family over the last year. One of those 3 people is a toddler so I'm obviously saving some money there. We eat out occasionally (so not part of this budget item) but rarely more than once a week. And I'm not in a position where I have to scrimp. My wife and I had lobster last night. 2.70 doesn't sound like much if by "meal" you think of "dinner" but it's a ton if you're eating eggs or cereal for breakfast and a sandwich for lunch.
  - dvdhnt 9y ago
    Same here. Family of 4 and we rarely cross $1k/mo for our entire family.
  - graeme 9y ago
    Do you live in a coastal city and work a professional level job that pay $150,000 and requires intense hours at the office? And does your partner as well? An assumption in the article was that both parents were too busy with work to cook reliably. I agree it's plenty for most households. Just may not be for the households this author is talking about. It's a good illustration of how a higher paid job may not net that much more: you lose a lot of the income in extra taxes + extra lifestyle expenses to support the job.
- dvdhnt 9y ago
  Are you saying $700 per month per person is reasonable? That’s pretty insane if you are, we’re a family of 4 who live a pretty sweet upper middle class life and spend maybe that much each month on our entire family...
hpcjoe 9y ago
I found the "well vetted" expense itemization to be non-reflective of my situation. I am (I think) middle class, though thanks to some crap in my recent past I had a significant issue with food/housing anxiety (very long painful story). 2100/month for a family of 3 for food. No. Not even close. If I bought the best of the best stuff from the high end grocer in my town (burbs between Ann Arbor and Detroit), I'd be hard pressed to break 1k/month for 3. Car ... volvo? No. 1-3 year old used vehicles for me. And soon I am buying another one so I can give my daughter my 9 year old car. Child care? She's in college now, so lets call that tuition and room/board. This works out to $30k/year in state. If I take an out of state offer, that shoots up to about $100k/year. We looked this up last night as it turns out. Tuition + room/board goes from $14k/semester to $46k/semester. Most of the rest of the expenses are not relevant. This all said, the point the article is making is fair and correct, maybe not quantitatively for everyone, but I'd argue the order of magnitude is correct. Some multiple of $100k is needed to raise a family in a middle class scenario while saving for retirement and servicing large debt. One of the huge turnoffs for the left coast is the real estate issue. This forces me to ask for salary adjustments to make sure I am not impoverishing myself by taking a "better paying" job in CA. I've helped recruiters through the math, similar to this, in my last year job search. The cost of living delta, just from that aspect, was huge. I explained to them that they could leave me where I was, and not deal with that. It is so bad right now, I could sell my $220k house, and not have enough money for a down payment on a modest similar sized house/property in a reasonable, not upscale, neighborhood in CA. Much less of an issue in NY area, though you have to deal with the traffic getting to/from the trains. I understand the article was aimed at the left and right coast folks. And the numbers may be more accurate for young families there. For the rest of us in fly over country, this delta means that the larger salaries still generate an often (much) lower quality of life in those locations. It is far worse in CA than NY area. Definitely a disincentive to give those locations significant consideration without dealing with the massive delta in costs. Which most companies are loathe to do.
sethammons 9y ago
I don't know how to spend that little on food. We have a family of five (and sometimes cousins or neighborhood kids are over and playing and snacking on fruit and such) and $2k+ a month for groceries is normal. Practically every meal is home cooked. We might get take out once every couple weeks or go out to eat once a month, which is on top of that $2k. We could cut that cost in half with processed foods and a pasta heavy diet maybe, but we want to eat healthy.
- DougN7 9y ago
  That really surprises me. We are also a family of 5. Because of diet issues we even buy a handful of organic items (primarily dairy), and we easily spend less than $1500/mo on food. Oh, and I’d say our diet is above average as far as health, though it could be better. Most meals are home made. Could it matter where we live? I’m near a big city in the midwest.
  - eganist 9y ago
    Seth's linkedin page puts him in Orange County, so I'd not be surprised if his cost of living is easily 30% higher than yours.
randomdata 9y ago
> It just means you're financially secure enough not to have to choose between food, clothing, shelter, and healthcare with every paycheck, and to be able to save up a buffer in case of emergency. I would say that more accurately it means that a portion of your income is made passively (which that buffer provides) alongside having a working income. The working-class, as the name implies, make all of their income by working, and the upper-class make all of their income passively. But the fun thing about middle-class is that it has no generally accepted definition, so it can mean whatever you want it to.
hacknat 9y ago
I disagree. First of all I don’t think any organization, including the Census Bereau, Pew, Gallup, et al have some kind of official definition of what “middle class” is. Second, by and large most Americans seem to identify themselves as being Middle class+. I think Middle Class is strongly associated with the American dream, and typically benefits like a vacation once a year, retirement, a home, and sending your kids to College are all mentioned as being a package deal of being Middle class. I think the biggest 2 things that have happened that requires people to have a lot more money to be part of this “dream” is the complete dissapearance of the Pension and the dramatic increase in the cost of College tuition (in the 60s-90s, sending your kid to College meant supporting them a few more years, tuition wasn’t even really a factor). The Pension being lost is a double hit, because you lost the guaranteed retirement safety net, and you have to now save a huge portion of your own paycheck to make up the difference. +http://news.gallup.com/poll/212660/middle-class-identification-pre-recession-levels.aspx http://news.gallup.com/poll/212660/middle-class-identificati...
dustycowboy 9y ago
The problem is that there's not one definition of middle class. Most Americans think that they're middle class, whether they make $22k or $200k: https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-america-divided/middle-class/ https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-america-divided/midd... Everyone lives inside their own social bubbles and think that their lifestyle is average. In this bubble, vacations to Europe every year are normal; "Everyone" send their kids to private school, dines out three times a week etc.
lifeisstillgood 9y ago
i would say working class means "not having to choose between health, clothes food and rent". in fact not having enough to cover those is a pretty good definition of poverty. I do agree that 300/dinner and so on is choosing an expensive middle class lifestyle. But the authors argument stands - a "decent" lifestyle (non poverty) and a "middle class" lifestyle have all got more expensive without us noticing - and pay has not kept pace. Personally I think there is something wrong with inflation measures. I should do some research but the annual 2% target or whatever is missing a lot - we should be referencing weighted decade long averages or something. for example I found an old pub prices menu from my year of birth - a pint of well know brnad lager was 5pence. It is now heading for 5 pounds in similar outlets - that's a 100x inflation leap in my lifetime. if inflation at 4% was shown as double the price by the time your kids reach college then it might have more "real" impact
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

arcanus 9y ago

Agreed. Also, start with: don't live in one of the most expensive cities in the world and expect luxuries not typically associated with urban living, such as two cars, a spacious home, etc.

kristianc 9y ago
Not a choice you actually have for many careers.
- sanderjd 9y ago
  Which ones?
  - kristianc 9y ago
    Politics - DC Media - New York Tech for a BigCo - Seattle/Bay Area. You can of course move to Europe (Visa permitting) but you will find your salary gets much lower too.
    - sanderjd 9y ago
      > Tech for a BigCo - Seattle/Bay Area. This is not accurate.
  - ajmurmann 9y ago
    The article listed several BART workers who earn $200+k. Do you really think their financial situation will be better if they move to St Louis?
    - sanderjd 9y ago
      > don't live in one of the most expensive cities in the world >> Not a choice you actually have for many careers. My question was which careers force you to live in one of the most expensive cities in the world. I don't think your example of public transportation employees is a very good one.
ajmurmann 9y ago
Even if you can stay in your career you will earn less as well. All you are doing is moving both numbers the cost and the income down. The article guess into this as well. What's the point of that? There is always someone lucky who can Jeep their job and salary and now work remotely. That's rare though and comes with great anxiety about finding a new, comparable job if your existing one evaporates.

dominotw 9y ago

> Instead of buying prepared foods, cook meals. He acks that in the article, > When you are a dual job household with a baby, there’s little time to cook. > However, food is where this family can cut expenses if they start feeling a little tight.

ianai 9y ago

You’re not wrong. But you’re also attributing choice to things that may not be choice. In your description, if a tech worker wants a cheaper lifestyle and larger living space then they should move away from basically the only places they can find those highest paying careers. There are exceptions, but they are not numerous enough to dismiss that current prices exceed many explanations and leave many people wanting. Also, long commutes to work (longer than 20 minutes) do a great harm to the world. Both in opportunity cost from being able to do other things through to things like climate change. Edit-Also, I want to live in a world where spending the morning in a coffee shop with a scone is affordable on at least a weekly basis for people. Cafes, restaurants, and other such places are cultural bases. We should be insulating them from destruction.

sanderjd 9y ago
There are tons of places with great opportunity for that tech worker and non-absurd cost of living. I understand ambitious people wanting to stay in the Bay Area where all the tippy-top jobs are, but there are very good jobs elsewhere. You're just much less likely to become a billionaire or a top executive or a well known name in the industry outside the Bay Area. But again, that isn't a middle class sort of concern.
- ryandrake 9y ago
  Living in the Bay Area is not just about access to tippy top tech companies. It's about limiting risk. Say I'm living in Nowhereville, USA, and working for the tech company there. If anything goes wrong, for example, an overall tech downturn, this company hits hard times, or I have a job-ending disagreement with my boss, then getting a new job likely means a 6+ month job search, uprooting my family and moving. I know this is true because I have lived in several towns like this. It sucks. In the Bay Area, if things don't work out with a particular company, I can apply to hundreds of others next door. I'm in for a 3-6 month job search, and at the end of the day I don't have the hassle of moving to a different city.
  - trustno1 9y ago

jslsfsafas 9y ago

300 k is ridiculous, but in the coastal regions I would not be surprised if a family of 4 needs 200-250 to feel financially secure.

geggam 9y ago
As a family of 4 who just left the SF Bay area making what you call secure. I can assure you we did not feel secure and were living paycheck to paycheck on that amount.
- froindt 9y ago
  If you don't mind sharing, what were some of the biggest expenses you had leading to you living paycheck to paycheck? I'm a Midwest non-tech worker. I live in one of the 5 largest cities in my state. It's very foreign to me that such a large income wouldn't allow you to feel financially secure. A starting engineering salary in the area is ~65,000. 1, 2, and 3 bedroom apartments in my complex are $830, $1200, and $1500 respectively. I'm ~2.5 miles from work (7 minute commute via car) and <0.5 miles from a grocery store. Houses in the area with a really good school system are 200-400k typically.
  - geggam 9y ago
    200k == about 11600 take home a month after taxes and insurance Monthly Rent : 3300 ( east bay 45 minute train ride into SF) Utlities : 350 BART riding : 260 BART parking : 60-100 or Drive to SF and Car parking $500 ( instead of the 360 BART ) Groceries : 1400 ( 2 teenage boys eat ) Car payments + insurance : 800 ( 2 cars ) renters insurance : 120 Clothing : 300 ( teenagers outgrow stuff fast ) Cell phones : 300 6930 so far... no savings, vacations, entertainment or misc taken out 4670/4 = 1167 per person a month / 4 is 291 a week per person left for savings vacation misc and entertainment 1 family outing in the bay will run $300 to $ 500 easily BTW to buy a house you typically had to come in with an offer 10-25% over ask and typically a full cash offer would get the house. Good luck buying a house with a mortgage ( the house across the street, in the east bay, went for 699k and it was only 900 sq ft )

mratzloff 9y ago

$2100/mo to feed 3 people is ridiculous. You can feed 3 people on $750/mo. $700/mo/person is $7.65 per meal, which is quite reasonable. $250/mo/person is about $2.70 per meal, which is not. "In 2005, sociologists William Thompson and Joseph Hickey estimate an income range of roughly $35,000 to $75,000 for the lower middle class and $100,000 or more for the upper middle class."[0] In 2018 dollars, that's $44,800 to $96,000 for lower middle class and $128,000 for upper middle class. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_middle_class#Income https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_middle_class#Income

harryh 9y ago
$250/mo/person is about $2.70 per meal, which is not It's plenty. I just looked at my mint. I've averaged $678/month on groceries for my 3 person family over the last year. One of those 3 people is a toddler so I'm obviously saving some money there. We eat out occasionally (so not part of this budget item) but rarely more than once a week. And I'm not in a position where I have to scrimp. My wife and I had lobster last night. 2.70 doesn't sound like much if by "meal" you think of "dinner" but it's a ton if you're eating eggs or cereal for breakfast and a sandwich for lunch.
- dvdhnt 9y ago
  Same here. Family of 4 and we rarely cross $1k/mo for our entire family.
- graeme 9y ago
  Do you live in a coastal city and work a professional level job that pay $150,000 and requires intense hours at the office? And does your partner as well? An assumption in the article was that both parents were too busy with work to cook reliably. I agree it's plenty for most households. Just may not be for the households this author is talking about. It's a good illustration of how a higher paid job may not net that much more: you lose a lot of the income in extra taxes + extra lifestyle expenses to support the job.
dvdhnt 9y ago
Are you saying $700 per month per person is reasonable? That’s pretty insane if you are, we’re a family of 4 who live a pretty sweet upper middle class life and spend maybe that much each month on our entire family...

hpcjoe 9y ago

I found the "well vetted" expense itemization to be non-reflective of my situation. I am (I think) middle class, though thanks to some crap in my recent past I had a significant issue with food/housing anxiety (very long painful story). 2100/month for a family of 3 for food. No. Not even close. If I bought the best of the best stuff from the high end grocer in my town (burbs between Ann Arbor and Detroit), I'd be hard pressed to break 1k/month for 3. Car ... volvo? No. 1-3 year old used vehicles for me. And soon I am buying another one so I can give my daughter my 9 year old car. Child care? She's in college now, so lets call that tuition and room/board. This works out to $30k/year in state. If I take an out of state offer, that shoots up to about $100k/year. We looked this up last night as it turns out. Tuition + room/board goes from $14k/semester to $46k/semester. Most of the rest of the expenses are not relevant. This all said, the point the article is making is fair and correct, maybe not quantitatively for everyone, but I'd argue the order of magnitude is correct. Some multiple of $100k is needed to raise a family in a middle class scenario while saving for retirement and servicing large debt. One of the huge turnoffs for the left coast is the real estate issue. This forces me to ask for salary adjustments to make sure I am not impoverishing myself by taking a "better paying" job in CA. I've helped recruiters through the math, similar to this, in my last year job search. The cost of living delta, just from that aspect, was huge. I explained to them that they could leave me where I was, and not deal with that. It is so bad right now, I could sell my $220k house, and not have enough money for a down payment on a modest similar sized house/property in a reasonable, not upscale, neighborhood in CA. Much less of an issue in NY area, though you have to deal with the traffic getting to/from the trains. I understand the article was aimed at the left and right coast folks. And the numbers may be more accurate for young families there. For the rest of us in fly over country, this delta means that the larger salaries still generate an often (much) lower quality of life in those locations. It is far worse in CA than NY area. Definitely a disincentive to give those locations significant consideration without dealing with the massive delta in costs. Which most companies are loathe to do.

sethammons 9y ago

I don't know how to spend that little on food. We have a family of five (and sometimes cousins or neighborhood kids are over and playing and snacking on fruit and such) and $2k+ a month for groceries is normal. Practically every meal is home cooked. We might get take out once every couple weeks or go out to eat once a month, which is on top of that $2k. We could cut that cost in half with processed foods and a pasta heavy diet maybe, but we want to eat healthy.

DougN7 9y ago
That really surprises me. We are also a family of 5. Because of diet issues we even buy a handful of organic items (primarily dairy), and we easily spend less than $1500/mo on food. Oh, and I’d say our diet is above average as far as health, though it could be better. Most meals are home made. Could it matter where we live? I’m near a big city in the midwest.
- eganist 9y ago
  Seth's linkedin page puts him in Orange County, so I'd not be surprised if his cost of living is easily 30% higher than yours.

randomdata 9y ago

> It just means you're financially secure enough not to have to choose between food, clothing, shelter, and healthcare with every paycheck, and to be able to save up a buffer in case of emergency. I would say that more accurately it means that a portion of your income is made passively (which that buffer provides) alongside having a working income. The working-class, as the name implies, make all of their income by working, and the upper-class make all of their income passively. But the fun thing about middle-class is that it has no generally accepted definition, so it can mean whatever you want it to.

hacknat 9y ago

I disagree. First of all I don’t think any organization, including the Census Bereau, Pew, Gallup, et al have some kind of official definition of what “middle class” is. Second, by and large most Americans seem to identify themselves as being Middle class+. I think Middle Class is strongly associated with the American dream, and typically benefits like a vacation once a year, retirement, a home, and sending your kids to College are all mentioned as being a package deal of being Middle class. I think the biggest 2 things that have happened that requires people to have a lot more money to be part of this “dream” is the complete dissapearance of the Pension and the dramatic increase in the cost of College tuition (in the 60s-90s, sending your kid to College meant supporting them a few more years, tuition wasn’t even really a factor). The Pension being lost is a double hit, because you lost the guaranteed retirement safety net, and you have to now save a huge portion of your own paycheck to make up the difference. +http://news.gallup.com/poll/212660/middle-class-identification-pre-recession-levels.aspx http://news.gallup.com/poll/212660/middle-class-identificati...

dustycowboy 9y ago

The problem is that there's not one definition of middle class. Most Americans think that they're middle class, whether they make $22k or $200k: https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-america-divided/middle-class/ https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-america-divided/midd... Everyone lives inside their own social bubbles and think that their lifestyle is average. In this bubble, vacations to Europe every year are normal; "Everyone" send their kids to private school, dines out three times a week etc.

lifeisstillgood 9y ago

i would say working class means "not having to choose between health, clothes food and rent". in fact not having enough to cover those is a pretty good definition of poverty. I do agree that 300/dinner and so on is choosing an expensive middle class lifestyle. But the authors argument stands - a "decent" lifestyle (non poverty) and a "middle class" lifestyle have all got more expensive without us noticing - and pay has not kept pace. Personally I think there is something wrong with inflation measures. I should do some research but the annual 2% target or whatever is missing a lot - we should be referencing weighted decade long averages or something. for example I found an old pub prices menu from my year of birth - a pint of well know brnad lager was 5pence. It is now heading for 5 pounds in similar outlets - that's a 100x inflation leap in my lifetime. if inflation at 4% was shown as double the price by the time your kids reach college then it might have more "real" impact

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]