--- title: How Do You Know When You're Upper Middle Class? description: What is upper middle class income? What other education, home ownership and behavioral characteristics define it? Reddit users have ideas. authors: - name: Kaitlin Mulhere role: Editor url: https://money.com/author/kaitlin-mulhere/ bio: Kaitlin Mulhere is an editor at Money.com. Since joining in 2015, she’s written and edited about a variety of personal finance topics, including banks, credit, student debt, saving strategies and more. education: University of Florida at_money_since: 2015 articles: 217 covers: - Lifestyle - Banking - Business - Career Advice - Credit - Credit Cards - Debt - Economy and Politics - Education - Health and Wellness - Housing - Identity Theft - Insurance - Investing - Loans - Mortgages - Personal Finance - Retirement - Shopping - Taxes social: - https://twitter.com/KMulhere - https://www.linkedin.com/in/kaitlin-mulhere-64503048/ published: '2017-10-23T16:04:16.000Z' modified: '2024-05-16T12:45:38.000Z' section: Lifestyle tags: - Class - income - middle class - reddit - upper middle class - Wealth word_count: 384 canonical: https://money.com/upper-middle-class-characteristics/ type: Article source: structured-blocks --- > **Disclosure:** We research all brands listed and may earn a fee from our partners. Research and financial considerations may influence how brands are displayed. Not all brands are included. [Learn more](https://money.com/page/disclaimer/). ![171020-upper-middle-class](https://img.money.com/2017/10/171020-upper-middle-class.jpg) Are you a member of the upper middle class? It’s not exactly easy to say. The [majority of Americans think they’re middle class](https://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/30/70-percent-of-americans-consider-themselves-middle-class-but-only-50-percent-are.html)—even if they don’t really know what defines the group. Income may be the clearest defining characteristic: The Pew Research Center says [roughly half of the U.S. population](https://money.com/income-inequality-middle-class-us-europe/) falls in the middle-income brackets, those with 2010 earnings ranging from $35,294 to $105,881. And in 2016, the [median household income](https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/income-poverty/cps-hinc/hinc-01.html) was $59,039, according to U.S. Census Bureau. By that formulation, the *upper* middle class might be the fourth-highest [income quintile](https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/income-poverty/cps-hinc/hinc-05.2016.html)—the one above the middle but below the wealthiest. Those households range from $74,875 to $121,017 in income, nationally. But of course the relative strength of your income depends largely on where you live. In New England, the Census Bureau says, median income jumps to $70,077. In the central southeast states, it falls to $47,356. That means an upper-middle-class salary in the Tennessee might barely qualify for middle class in Massachusetts. There are other ways to think about the matter. Some loosely define the middle class through home ownership—the median income of homeowners ($73,313) is roughly 80% higher than the income of renters. In that case, perhaps upper middle class means owning a home valued above the [median price of $201,900](https://www.zillow.com/home-values/), according to Zillow. Here again, though, geography matters. In major metropolitan areas, sky-high rents place home ownership outside the reach of even many professional workers. Eighty-nine percent of Americans think having a secure job is a requirement of being in the middle class, and 86% think the ability to save is a key element, according to a Pew survey. And a four-year college degree is often considered a prerequisite for maintaining a middle-class lifestyle—bachelor's degree recipients, on average, earn much more over a lifetime than peers with less education—but there are exceptions. So maybe the upper middle class is defined less by hard numbers than by behavior: Do you buy groceries without looking at the price tag? Do you pay off your bills each month without worrying? How do you decide it's time for a new car? If that’s the case, what sort of other habits define upper middle class? Reddit users have a few thoughts. Read more: [What Screams Upper Middle Class?](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/77e53z/what_screams_upper_middle_class/) ```json { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@graph": [ { "@type": "BreadcrumbList", "@id": "https://money.com/upper-middle-class-characteristics/#breadcrumb", "itemListElement": [ { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 1, "name": "Home", "item": "https://money.com" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 2, "name": "Lifestyle", "item": "https://money.com/lifestyle/" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 3, "name": "Life Advice", "item": "https://money.com/life-advice/" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 4, "name": "How Do You Know When You're Upper Middle Class?" } ] }, { "@type": "WebSite", "@id": "https://money.com/#website", "url": "https://money.com", "name": "Money", "publisher": { "@id": "https://money.com/#organization" } }, { "@type": "WebPage", "@id": "https://money.com/upper-middle-class-characteristics/#webpage", "url": "https://money.com/upper-middle-class-characteristics/", "name": "How Do You Know When You're Upper Middle Class?", "isPartOf": { "@id": "https://money.com/#website" }, "datePublished": "2017-10-23T16:04:16.000Z", "mainEntity": { "@id": "https://money.com/upper-middle-class-characteristics/" }, "inLanguage": "en-US", "breadcrumb": { "@id": "https://money.com/upper-middle-class-characteristics/#breadcrumb" }, "dateModified": "2024-05-16T12:45:38.000Z" }, { "@type": "Article", "headline": "How Do You Know When You're Upper Middle Class?", "articleSection": "Lifestyle", "image": [ { "@type": "ImageObject", "url": "https://img.money.com/2017/10/171020-upper-middle-class.jpg", "width": 2800, "height": 2348, "caption": "171020-upper-middle-class" } ], "author": [ { "@type": "Person", "name": "Kaitlin Mulhere", "url": "https://money.com/author/kaitlin-mulhere/", "@id": "https://money.com/author/kaitlin-mulhere/#author", "description": "Kaitlin Mulhere is an editor at Money.com. 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