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Hi,
Can ibm pay 28.5 ctc under 7B band?
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This should go well

What are your favorite things about living here?
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Upper middle class is probably $20 million+
We grew up with anywhere between $1 million and a few extra million later on and we were VERY middle class for most of that - think public school until high school, first car was only a Lexus, one sibling went to a state school (Cornell), etc.
With a little ingenuity and a small loan of a million dollars, any one of you could do well like me. Never give up 😤 💪
I don’t even look at prices now when I hit up McDonald’s. I just get what I want.
Tell that to my kids.
Enthusiast
never choosing mcdonalds over five guys based on price
These biglaw people on FB are delusional because all our salaries are so high 🤣
Yeah, I mean I could get a condo in LA for $1M. But even houses in gang-ridden neighborhoods are $1M. A fixer-upper in a work-accessible suburb is minimum $1.5M, and I have $200K in student loans.
Lol @ these comments saying people in the top 1% of income are middle class. Delusional.
Yeah people are crazy. No one in big law is middle class. Maybe a first year with huge debt may be upper middle dlass
Mentor
Varies widely depending on where you live.
In NYC / LA / SF - household annual income of at least $500K.
Elsewhere in USA - household annual income at least $200K.
We lived in a 2 BR lux apt in Rittenhouse for less than a 1BR so so appt on the outskirts of Boston.
The problem is that "middle class" is considered more virtuous to many people in the US, so people making a ton of money call themselves upper middle class. It's also a class issue more than a money issue - someone who makes $500k a year but who comes from a wealthy family (went to private school, may get an inheritance, country club brunches, etc) may be in a different class than someone who grew up with teacher parents and went to law school and has the same income. So I really think a lot of the "class" categories have to do with culture, and less to do with income, so in the US you have to think about whether you're in the top 1%, top 5%, whatever, and then what your social class is (how you behave, where you go, who your friends are, where you live and send your kids to school, etc.). Not sure that makes any sense 😂
To me, upper middle class is a household income of at least $500k (northeast).
Upper Middle Class isn’t good enough. Not in this industry. Not in big law. Not today. 500k income frankly isn’t good enough. I don’t want to do this career and then go and pay $2 million for a 69 year old beater, 1,200 sq foot home in Burbank or Mountain View. When people say $20 million on here I’m assuming they’re saying they want the $8 million home in Palo Alto or the $10 million home in Brentwood or the apartment in Soho or the estate in Greenwich. They want to be a part of the communities of people who can and do afford those homes. Upper Middle Class isn’t good enough because it won’t get you any of those.
It’s part of Marco economic issues that are so much bigger than a paycheck. The ultra wealthy divide from everyone else is pulling further and further away, so many thousands of miles away that it’s becoming ridiculous. I don’t want to own a private jet or an NBA team. But $20 million is the threshold of getting to Upper Class and frankly it’s ridiculous that’s the level if net worth to get to the level of comfort in influential communities these days.
Subject Expert
We make $850k annually and our house is only 2M. Feels like dead middle middle class.
Subject Expert
Sorry to hear that VP1. Living paycheck to paycheck sounds really stressful. We bought a house that was within our means and did a lot of calculations beforehand to make sure we weren’t living paycheck to paycheck. We could have actually spent more but didn’t. We don’t have any other loans other than a small loan left on a car. We are maxing out 401ks, investing monthly, and are still pocketing an average of over 10k a month. I personally wouldn’t have done a 2M house on a $650k salary + multiple kids (I’ve heard kids are very expensive) so I think we’re in slightly different positions and can understand where A2 is coming from if taking into account your kind of context.
Compensation at your class level on the Milbank scale. I am not paid at my class level, therefore I’m not upper middle class 🥲
Probably $75k-$100k most places.
Right? I get that I still don't feel like I'm "at the top" because I'm surrounded by people making BigLaw partner money (or more) but I know that in comparison to 99.5% of the country, I am. Ridiculous.
Class is more status and attitude based. Do you own capital? Are you a third gen grad of Choate Rosemary? Did you have live-in maids?
A17 pulling rank!
Mentor
Upper middle class is an outdated term now, mostly because the middle class is disappearing. A lot of people these days are high earners but have a lot of debt so are technically in the negative when it comes to NW, or are in VHCOL places so can’t afford a home, so if stratified by income, we are very high up there, but net worth-wise would not. I see the term HENRY (high earner, not rich yet) to describe the typical associate in big law
Never heard that acronym but I like it. Unfortunately I feel like for big law associates, except for those who were either born with wealth (see below) or are extremely frugal or don’t have kids, that “not yet” part is a very, very long runway.
I feel like it is getting to the point these days that anyone who is an “earner”, as in, you have to work for a W2 paycheck, is not going to get enough of a net worth to have anything more than a middle class existence. You need to be a shareholder (including of course a law partner) to unshackle yourself from the reality of the “new” middle class (at best) lifestyle. Anyone who is even at the lowest end of upper class has money usually from family, or else from generating it through asset ownership.
Mentor
https://dqydj.com/income-by-city/
I know you guys are financially illiterate but come on
in New York suburbs like a joint income of 300k a year.
UMC is anywhere from 100k to 1M salary.
Middle class = making ends meet. Upper class = the actual rich. UPC is a small sliver of the population but disproportionately the educated professional class.