I suspect that's not a "middle class" lifestyle relative to most NYers, just a middle of the range for the people you might compare yourself to. But, I admittedly suffer from a similar cognitive bubble, which is to say that my current lifestyle seems awfully expensive for what I seem to be getting for it - which is mostly aggravation at the moment. I can respect you for staying, but personally, I can't relocate soon enough!
median and average incomes vary greatly from neighborhood to neighborhood.
sure , life in the hood can be had for very little , life in manhattan can far exceed anything we can afford .
our area has a median income of 110k and more than one third are over 150k
homes start at a million .
many many years ago the new york times looked in to the difference between a middle class income vs a middle class lifestyle and the two are miles a part .
the numbers are considerably higher today then when this article was written
as the ny times said
There is no single, formal definition of class status in this country.
Statisticians and demographers all use slightly different methods to divvy up the great American whole
into quintiles and median ranges. Complicating things, most people like to think of themselves as middle
class. It feels good, after all, and more egalitarian than proclaiming yourself to be rich or poor. A $70,000
annual income is middle class for a family of four, according to the median response in a recent Pew
Research Center survey, and yet people at a wide range of income levels, including those making less than $30,000 and more than $100,000 a year, said they, too, belonged to the middle.
By one measure, in cities like Houston or Phoenix — places considered by statisticians to be more typical of average United States incomes than New York — a solidly middle-class life can be had for wages that fall between $33,000 and $100,000 a year.
By the same formula — measuring by who sits in the middle of the income spectrum — Manhattan’s middle class exists somewhere between $45,000 and $134,000.
But if you are defining middle class by lifestyle, to accommodate the cost of living in Manhattan, that salary would have to fall between $80,000 and $235,000. This means someone making $70,000 a year in other parts of the country would need to make $166,000 in Manhattan to enjoy the same purchasing power.
Using the rule of thumb that buyers should expect to spend two and a half times their annual salary on a home purchase, the properties in Manhattan that could be said to be middle class would run between $200,000 and $588,000.
On the low end, the pickings are slim. The least expensive properties are mostly uptown, in neighborhoods like Yorkville, Washington Heights and Inwood. The most pleasing options in this range, however, are one-bedroom apartments not designed for children or families.
It is not surprising, then, that a family of four with an annual income of $113k or less qualifies to apply for the New York City Housing Authority’s public housing.