Five Categories : Where do You Fit In?

There may be more but in general we are lumped into five groups here in America.
1. Poor
2. Working poor
3. Middle class
4. Upper middle class
5. Well to-do and rich
Some folks feel uneasy dealing with these categories for any number of reasons. But in my opinion it helps us get a truer picture of ourselves if we spend some time really thinking about where we are in the great scheme of things. One fellow, I spent quite a bit of time with a few years back, told me that he was netting around $ 350,000.00 per year. I said that puts you in the top two percent in the income bracket. That caught him by surprise, since college he had worked, worried and fretted that he might never make it to the top. But after 20 years of hard work; running his own business he had made it almost to the top. My statement stuck with him and over time he thought about it again and again. Two months ago he told me; you know, I decided that I could slow down, be less concerned about profits and as a consequence, have spent a lot more time with my wife and family. On the other hand I had dinner with a professional lady the other day. She had struggled hard to get her education, built a practice, went through a divorce but now told me she had taken $ 40,000.00 out of her business last year and thought it was time to move her office and buy a new car. It was hard to tell her that this was still very low income for a professional business person and that I would not recommend that she do both of those things until she was more sure of her client base.
Still another example is of a 23 year old, who said that he had been promoted to an $ 8.00 per hour job and that now he was planning to get married. The next time I saw him he had spent $ 895.00 on a guitar and another $ 100 on some amplifiers, now he says as soon as I get these paid down I will get her a ring.
I wonder if the main reason we don't like to consider these benchmarks is that it makes us uncomfortable; at least for about two thirds of us, who feel that we are not far down enough in the numbers to feel good about it.