What's a modest car and a modest home? I suspect if you looked at most people's banks and then at what they drive and where they live you'd think they're living beyond their means.
It also depends a lot on your other expenses. If you have two kids and a mountain of student loan debt, "modest" might be pretty low even if your income is way above average.
I guess so. It's hard to see how much downgrading most families can do. If you're driving a 10+ year old car, which seems pretty normal, there's not a lot of cheaper vehicles to drop down to. A family in a 2-3 bedroom bungalow or ranch, which seems to be the norm for most, doesn't have much room to downsize either.
At the same time, it's not like people don't have things going for them. A house, growing retirement plans, some savings, a vacation here and there... Judging from the tone the last 10 years in this country, this qualifies you as "affluent". Which, in a cosmological sense, it is. But it isn't like it is unusual, or only something the very fastidious achieve. It's normal-ish.
So it's not that I'm disagreeing, people can dig themselves in a hole by overspending. I just don't think this is particularly common, or some sort of national sickness.
I'm not sure how common 10-year-old cars really are. I feel like I don't see that much, at least amongst the middle class. For the house, what you're describing could be $75k or >$1MM depending on location, square footage, and finishes. I know a lot of people are "house poor", though.
> So it's not that I'm disagreeing, people can dig themselves in a hole by overspending. I just don't think this is particularly common, or some sort of national sickness.
Based on the published debt and savings stats, it seems like it is pretty common. I know a lot of people with almost no savings, and not always because their income is too low to save.
Modest car - Tesla non performance. Yeah, I'm kidding. 5 years ago I was looking for a diesel awd with decent mpg, which is not available :-) Unless you count those cars with fake emissions tests. I ended up with a tesla model s, the toy of my life. It's my favorite toy of all time, better than my rock climing shit I bought when i was in grad school and able to climb, better than all my computers except maybe my next machine. My one regret is not having more kids.
It also depends a lot on your other expenses. If you have two kids and a mountain of student loan debt, "modest" might be pretty low even if your income is way above average.