Can you live in California on a $60,000 a year household income? Living the middle class lifestyle in California on $60,000 a year.
Can you live comfortably in California making $60,000 a year? It really depends on what you define as comfortably. We should note that the median household income in the US is $50,000 and in California it isn’t much higher. California gets a notorious rap of being an expensive state but this is if the entire […]
Saying goodbye to the middle class concept of retirement – many workers plan to work up until they are 80 well beyond the typical life expectancy of Americans. How long will $25,000 last in retirement?
The romantic concept of being able to retire on a sunny beach with endless drinks is a modern notion largely pushed by mainstream advertising. It is hard for many middle class Americans to imagine a world where retirement is a luxury for the very few. However that is the path we are now following. The […]
United States of Dollar Stores – dollar stores see a rise in households making $70,000 a year or higher as a customer base. What does the rise of dollar stores say about the middle class?
Before 2000 dollar stores were largely seen as a bazaar of quirky trinkets and plastic oddities. Many sold excess volume of products, even selling old Super Bowl t-shirts of teams that did not win. Yet the dollar store of today is not the one of even one decade ago. The disillusionment of the middle class […]
The wonder years – over 70 percent of GDP comes from personal consumption. For the past decade home equity and credit from other sources fueled growth because of falling household incomes. What happens when credit contracts and home equity evaporates?
In a debt based economy a credit crisis is similar to an uncontrollable virus spreading from house to house. The slow infection hibernated for decades until it went into a pandemic. It is troubling to see how the middle class is slowly being dismantled. However there is one silver lining of the home price correction. […]