What you are referring to is what the Wall Street Journal once called the &quot;HENRYs&quot; - High Earner, Not Rich Yet.  Or in other words, &quot;once I spend all of my money, I have nothing left!&quot;.<p>This is an argument that can be made at virtually any income level.  Consider the following article and this really charming infographic they put together:<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wsj.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;six-figure-incomesand-facing-financial-ruin-1409936418" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wsj.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;six-figure-incomesand-facing-fin...</a><p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;si.wsj.net&#x2F;public&#x2F;resources&#x2F;images&#x2F;BF-AE118B_05WIc_G_20130104192101.jpg" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;si.wsj.net&#x2F;public&#x2F;resources&#x2F;images&#x2F;BF-AE118B_05WIc_G_...</a><p>(infographic from <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wsj.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;SB10001424127887323689604578220132665726040" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wsj.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;SB100014241278873236896045782201...</a>)<p>After all - $400k <i>isn&#x27;t really that much</i>, after you&#x27;ve paid taxes and put away $22k per year for retirement and the kids&#x27; college, and after you&#x27;re done spending $87k per year on a mortgage, $25k per year on property taxes, $40k per year on maintenance and utilities, $30k per year on groceries, $21k per year on dining out, $26k per year on vacations, $24k per year on car expenses, $12k on country club dues, $10k per year on children&#x27;s sports, and $9k per year on gifts and donations.  Why in fact you&#x27;re $10k in the hole!<p>I don&#x27;t quite know how to say this other than bluntly, but $125k is a long ways above median household income everywhere in the country.  For comparison, the median household income for New York City is $50,711 and the median household income for the San Francisco Metro Area is $83,222.  Most people live off less than $125k, don&#x27;t pretend it&#x27;s impossible.  Expenses tend to find a way to encompass available income unless you make a deliberate effort to stop that - even for people making $400k per year.<p>$125k isn&#x27;t &quot;rich&quot; in the sense that you could quit working and live off the income from your investments or commute every weekend from your villa in the Caribbean, but it&#x27;s vastly more than most people will ever see, and it&#x27;s enough to be totally financially secure _if you choose to be_.<p>This is really the distinction the article is getting at: some people use &quot;lower&#x2F;middle&#x2F;upper&quot; in the sense of income quantiles, other people use it in the sense of working-vs-rentier classes (i.e. proletariat-vs-bourgeois).  But there&#x27;s always been a group of HENRYs - Marx labelled them as the &quot;petit bourgeois&quot;.