u/CoastieKid

Being upper middle class is a great place to be in America. Significant overlap with the HENRY community - High Earners, Not Rich Yet.

Many of us got to our positions by being in the professional class. Physicians, dentists, attorneys, software engineers, pilots, MBA grads doing finance or consulting, sales people.

Many of those in the upper middle have debt from undergrad and graduate/professional school. Additionally, if we have children in this tax bracket, those children will not qualify for federal student loans due to our expected family contribution.

General markers in our position: we are typically able to maximize contributions to our retirement accounts, own homes, own paid off vehicles. We typically choose our luxuries and have to decide, unlike the truly wealthy high/ultra high net worth families.

No one feels bad for doctors or attorneys in this country yet also doesn’t understand those debt loads and lifestyle sacrifices.

As for me: Single, 35M no kids, military veteran. Own my home. Make 300-400K. Used my time serving to earn an engineering degree then an MBA with my GI Bill. Came from a lower income family.

I just see that if they raise taxes it’s likely on us and not the wealthy. In the average income earners eyes we are the wealthy

Mid-30s, own my home, single no kids. No debt aside from my mortgage. Monthly net is around $16,500/month (this is after taxes + HSA and 401k deductions, maxing those). My monthly expenditure for bills + mortgage + basic groceries is 5-6K a month. Let’s say $6K/month on average.

I recently completed a part time MBA program which was consuming a lot of my time. Now that that’s done I suddenly have a lot more time on my hands.

Work from home. Don’t have any family members or anything. Feel like I’ve nailed everything like I’ve learned how to cook well. Learned hobbies and got well at those.

I feel pretty freaking bored. I enjoy my industry don’t get me wrong. Maybe I need to take some time off or something.

I’ve mostly just been dumping all my extra cash into my taxable brokerage. Thinking maybe I could use it for something else. I could definitely stand to be in better shape. I got bored of even that a few years back and just feel depressed all the time.

Thoughts fellas?

Getting a bit tired of just hitting up happy hours after I wrap up my work day. I work remotely and tend to finish around 3 or 4 PM depending on when I start my workday.

Are there any spaces that aren’t bars that I could hang out and interact with people?

Guess it’s a combination of feeling bored, lonely, and having time on my hands

Really showcases his place. Sure he’s not the best pilot but without him they wouldn’t have gotten to where they are.

He’s modded the hell out of the arwings lol

Kind of a joke that we don't spin around in Meteo during the warp. I turned on first person to attempt it. Instead just got an easy path.

Very fun in All Range Mode though

https://www.instagram.com/haylujan/?hl=en

Is the person. I'm genuinely confused here. I got out years ago is this a common thing?

Buddy of mine is a JAG officer and mentioned that they have an option to choose how the panel is made up.

Seems like enlisted like to critique officers? So what gives?

Just a fun fact. I tried it a few years ago. Would need to get back on the emulator and do it again. I can upload footage of it later

Being a police officer is a really tough job. I don't mind that they get paid what they get paid.

If you want someone to take that job, you need to provide good enough incentive and benefits to deal with the BS that is the public.

Same goes for serving in the military. I see so many people online hating on military benefits and veteran's benefits.

Life's all about tradeoffs. I served in the military. Got my undergrad degree paid for, then used my GI Bill for an MBA. Never filed for FAFSA and never have had a student loan.

I came from a working class background and first person in my family to go to college. I owe so much to my time in the military for the life I have now. I traded off my health and time in my twenties to set myself up for 30s and beyond.

Same goes for a lot of police officers.

Note: This doesn't include the ICE chuds. Most of those guys probably couldn't have made it through the LEO hiring process or basic military training. Those guys were set up to fail as well. They hardly gave them any training on how to deal with the public. No wonder they react the way they do

Making E9 is statistically much harder than making O-3E. For anyone who starts off their career as enlisted, and wants to go to 20, please weigh this out. Make yourself competitive to go warrant if your branch of service offers it, or go mustang and to OCS.

As everyone should know, your retirement is only based off your basic pay. Allowances such as BAH and BAS are not included, nor are special & incentive pays. The below is 20 years of service. For ease of math I used the 2026 military pay chart and assumed that is the high 36 on what is on the table.

Terminal Grade @ 20	High 36 avg/month	Pension @ 40% (BRS)/mo	Annual	Vs E7
E7	$6,118.50	$2,447.40	$29,369	-
W3	$7,988.90	$3,195.56	$38,347	+30.6%
W4	$8,825.70	$3,530.28	$42,363	+44.2%
O3-E	$9,609.60	$3,843.84	$46,126	+51.7%
O4	$10,473.80	$4,189.52	$50,274	+71.2%
E9 @ 24 (48% BRS)	$10,055	$4,826.00	$57,917	+97.2%

The above table doesn't even factor in what you may receive from the VA and CRDP if your rating is above 50% from them.

I opted to project the numbers for BRS at 40% as many younger service members now fall under that option rather than the Legacy Retirement (2.5%).

The military offers incredible opportunity for someone to move from a blue collar/working class income into middle class+ if you seize all of the opportunities afforded to you.

Highly encourage going the warrant or officer route if going to 20. Please note that these numbers will be lower for an actual projection since the 2025 and 2024 military pay charts were lower.

Edit: Someone asked about E9 so I went ahead and added a row for E9. E9 is statutorily capped like O4 and above. Most likely to make E9 around 20 years of service. Extremely competitive to make E9. I am always impressed whenever I've met a retiree who did make E9. These are the top enlisted guys and could've easily made a great officer.

Please note though that the E9 would need to stick in longer in order to get their high-36 pay. Compared to an E7 who retires at 20 YOS/40% base pay, an E9 who retires at 24 YOS/48% base pay makes nearly a 100% more than the E7.

Compare that to an O4 though, which is vastly easier to make than E9. The E9 @ 24 YOS does make more than the O4 @ 20 years of service. E9 is likely to be vastly more stressful at the command level too

For context, I am a liberal military veteran mid-30s man who owns his own home. Never married, no kids. Have an engineering degree + MBA where I focused on business strategy. Make 300K+ all in.

It’s funny how so many younger Redditors just want to force elderly out of their homes for being “Boomers who are rich in home equity”. Everyone needs a home to live in and a lot of those people live on a fixed income.

Or they complain and hate on the professional class and see HENRYs as “rich”. A lot of those people spent years earning credentials and are now in a spot in their 30s to reap the rewards.

Younger Redditors also hate on anyone who owns a company or in the C-Suite. Dunning-Kruger effect IRL. Running a business and providing capital for R&D is complex in a competitive environment.

I’m proud of my accomplishments. I definitely had a lot of right place in the right time. I came from a working class environment. First in my family to go to college. I served in the military for 9 years. Got my degree through that + an MBA with the GI Bill while working full time.

I see many people bitching over on anti work

A lot of them don’t even want to put any effort in and lack positivity and understanding of the system.

The financial subreddits I am a part of see a different story. I’ll take my downvotes all day everyday for voicing my authentic opinion over the crowd mentality

I'm currently sitting under 60K miles and it's been fully paid off for quite a long time. I don't drive it as much as I work from home and tend to walk to most things in my neighborhood. Had to change the battery once and I do oil changes every 6 months or 4-5K miles.

Main concern would be if the head gasket would explode. If you were in my shoes, should I trade it in before anything like that potentially happens or keep it? No complaints on the car or anything.

Mechanical - Enemy shields analyzed

Biological - Data analysis complete, here it comes