-You want your kids to have the best possible education. That means paying about 10k per year, per child, for a private school/lessons. That also means saving about 10k per year, per child, so that you'll be able to someday pay for them to attend a really good private university. This puts us at 60k to start out.
It's already been said but Harvard isn't 'middle class', and neither is private k-12 schooling.
-Do a "family activity" once a week, like go to a sports game, or dinner and a movie. $40 a person, 50 times a year, costs $10k.
"Middle class" goes to a professional sports game every week of the year? And even that I don't know if season tickets cost that much per week. Who goes to a movie every single week? Perhaps a teenager, but not families. Dinner and a movie (with every person having jumbo popcorn and jumbo drink) is $30/person unless I try real hard to find an expensive restaurant, and who is really hungry after a jumbo popcorn?
And frankly, I'd rather spend $7 total to rent a movie, have microwave popcorn and a 12 pack of soda than spend $20 per person for less popcorn, less to drink, and only a slightly better movie.
This is one thing that some families do that is not really necessary and if they need to save money they can easily trim at least some of it off their budget by going to a movie once a month rather than every week, and going to cheaper family entertainment.
Dinner: $20 a person. Movie ticket: $10 a person. Popcorn + drink: another $10. Have you been to a movie lately?
Of course you can eat cheaper going to McDonalds, but you can also go places much more expensive.
WTH? I can find a ton of places other than McD's to eat for $10 per person or less. Remember, the kids don't eat as much so their meal should be cheaper. I have a hard time finding a place to spend $20 per person or more unless I want to eat two meals or have three servings of dessert or something.
-Regular food: about $20k. That's $11/person, per day. A lot of people spend much more than that.
With that kind of money I could eat out twice a day at a locally owned nice family restaurant. If you are counting the expense of eating out in this expense then you wouldn't count it in the 'family activity' part of your budget. This is part of the problem you seem to be having and why all your numbers are so high because it seems some things might be getting counted twice or three times.
Alot of people spend higher than that ($11/day) is true. What a waste, though. Except for meat there is little to no difference in quality of grocery food (I'm not talking spaghettios vs. steaks here, I'm talking about the difference between name brand food and generic brands). Vegetables are cheap and healthy, and no you don't need to eat nothing but vegetables, but if vegetables make up a good portion of your diet you will have a cheap and healthy diet.
-2 cars, both in good condition. I'll assume you buy a new car once every 3 years, spending about $30,000 on it including gas and maintenence. That costs 10k/year.
At first I thought maybe your math wasn't too off on this (each car lasting 6 years), but then I realized that you aren't getting anything back for trading in your cars. So either you are giving away your cars after 6 years or you are buying cars that are in excess of 30k...... so in other words not middle class. Gas is only about $1800 per year (15,000 miles, 25 mpg, $3 per gallon), tires and oil changes are pretty insignificant and you shouldn't have any maintance problems for those new cars until they are well over 6 years old (after you've gotten rid of them).
My last car was a pickup I bought when it was 3 years old. It lasted me 10 more years (215k miles and still doesn't burn any oil) until I got a family and needed something more than a two seater. Bought a used minivan with 55k miles on it for under 10k and that will hopefully last me 10 years as well.
-House: this one is hard to estimate because it depends heavily on where you live and what you want, plus the precise details of the mortgage. I'll guess 20k/year, which should buy a house with a nice big yard and a bedroom for each kid.
I won't go near this one as house prices vary so much. A 30 year mortgage at 20k/year is 600k. I don't think that is middle class in many parts of the country, but it very well could be in some parts. Is a four bedroom house really needed? Ever hear of a bunk bed?
-Health care/insurance/utilities: Also hard to estimate, let's say 10k.
If you pay for your own insurance, sure (but personally I would look at the higher deductible plans). If your employer pays for most of your health insurance than no. I pay about $200/month for family health insurance and $100/month for car insurance. So no, my utilities does not cost $500/month.
-Clothes and other daily necessities: Another 10k.
The middle class isn't the Huxtable family from the Cosby show that has a new wardrobe every week.
-Family vacation: Another 10k
Please tell me what kind of vacation is this? A 10 day vacation would mean you are spending $1,000 per day. For 10k I can fly a family of 5 to China and stay for a month.
5 airline tickets * $400 + 3x motel room * $200/night * 7 days + 5x disneyland tickets + food + souveneirs will run you about 10k.
Oh, it's disneyland. A trip to disneyland is a thing that a middle class family will do once a lifetime or every 5-10 years, not every year.
Your expenses do add up to about 8k. Lets' look at them:
Plane tickets=$2000
Hotel rooms = $4200
Disneyland = $1690 ($169 per ticket per 3 days x 2 = 6 days for 5 people)
Food $2100 ($20 x 3 meals a day x 5 people)
You could cut that expense 25% by having the kids in one room and spending $10 per person per meal rather than $20. A room with two double beds is just fine for 3 kids. When I was a kid and we had a family of 5 we managed just fine in ONE room with two double beds (take turns sleeping in a sleeping bag on the floor). We took a family vacation every single year. But no, never to disneyland, and we drove rather than flew.
Any luxury goods you want to buy: Put 10k here also. This includes things like christmas and birthday presents, which are almost mandatory.
Really? Your kids won't mind that you decided not to give them anything for christmas or their birthday? Your wife won't mind that you don't do anything on your anniversary or valentien's day? Your friends won't mind that you never do anything with them? And you're such a spartan that you never even buy yourself a nice cup of coffee? OK then, enjoy that "American Dream" you're living
So that means everyone gets $1000 for birthdays and $1000 for Christmas? Would these other expenses you mention (that don't get counted in another category) realistically add up to $833 per month?
Also note what this list does not include: giving to charity, expensive hobbies, hospital visits, legal fees, interest on debt, baby-sitting/lawn mowing help, taking care of elderly parents, etc.
Some Middle class families spend money on those things, not all of them do. And some families may indeed spend as high as some of the things you have posted, but they don't spend that high in all of them at the same time. Yeah it would be disastrous if they tried to spend that much in all of those areas.
People make choices in what to spend their money on, and don't spend the max they can on everything.
One family thinks it is more important to have a nice house so they spend more on the house but drive cheaper cars and buy all their clothes from Walmart. Another family thinks it is more important to have nice clothes so will spend too much money on clothes while sacrificing how nice of a house they have. That is the reality of a middle class family. The stuff you are talking about is Bevery Hills 90210, rich yuppy stuff.
When I was single I was earning less than 40k a year and could afford to fly to China every year because that is what I wanted to do and I didn't spend my money on other things I didn't need such as movie tickets, eating out, music CD's, Ipods, etc.
. I've only been 2 years with my company, I max out at 3 years.
