Someone Asked What Things Scream “I’m Middle Class,” And 36 People Delivered

Most people are obsessed with labels. Well, maybe in most cases not obsessed, but they definitely like to be defined by something. Basically, we’re wired in a way that we crave labels, so we can not only understand ourselves but others better. 

We can define ourselves by a variety of things, from the things we are fans of or haters of, personality types like MBTI, and things like our gender identity and the social class we belong to. 

For instance, belonging to the middle class can be a way to define yourself. This class refers to people who are in the middle of the social hierarchy, because, as the name suggests, they have an average income, education, and occupation. Granted, the exact definition depends on different countries’ economies, but the general idea of “average” stands. 

Yet, how do you know that you belong to the middle class? Well, there are some general signs to look for. Here, Forbes has distinguished 6 of them, and they kind of overlap with things we already mentioned. Like income – in the US, it’s believed that middle-class families earned a little more than $106,000 in 2022. 

Then, there’s education. Apparently, a college degree is a “ticket to a middle-class life,” as two-thirds of college graduates consider themselves a part of this social group. At the same time, student loan debts can be an obstacle to achieving this, so it’s rather tricky to look at it from an educational point of view. 

So, you can look at employment instead. Turns out, jobs like the military, public administration, and education, to name a few, have the most middle-class employees. 

When it comes to homeownership, it used to be a firm sign of the middle class and still is, but it’s getting trickier, as owning a home becomes more and more difficult in current times, with prices rising exponentially. 

The last two are savings and retirement, which are also kind of tricky to look at, but knowing what kinds of sums these funds involve for middle-class folks can be used as a sign to tell them apart from other social classes. 

While these aforementioned signs are the most common ways to recognize middle-class peeps, there are some more unusual ones. You can find them in today’s list. These submissions weren’t written by experts at Forbes; they were suggested by netizens, and sometimes, you know, they can be pretty ingenious. 

As you can see, people online think that things like enjoying Starbucks, having a house in the suburbs, having a full pantry, or simply having “stacking dolls” of plastic bags (a plastic bag filled with more bags) are signs of a person being middle class. So, we’re leaving you to decide whether you agree with such ideas and to express your own in the comments!