I remember sitting in my apartment in Sydney back in 2015, fresh from signing a lease on a decent two-bedroom place that cost me about 30% of my income. My wife and I were planning our first overseas holiday together, and we didn’t think twice about booking those plane tickets.
Fast forward to today, and I’m watching friends in similar jobs—good jobs, mind you—struggle to afford the same lifestyle that was considered perfectly ordinary a decade ago.
The middle class isn’t what it used to be. And I don’t mean that in some abstract economic sense. I mean it in the very real, monthly-budget-spreadsheet sense that keeps people up at night.
Here are eight things that have quietly slipped out of reach for what we used to call the comfortable middle class.
1) Buying a home in the city where you work
This one hits hard because it fundamentally changes how we think about building a life.
Ten years ago, if you had a steady professional job—teacher, accountant, marketing manager—you could realistically save for a deposit and buy a modest home within a reasonable commute of your workplace. It might take a few years, but it was achievable.
Now? I’ve got a mate who’s a software engineer in Singapore. He earns well above the median income, and he’s been pushed an hour outside the city just to afford something. And he’s one of the lucky ones.
The math has become absurd. In most major cities, median home prices have grown at two or three times the rate of median incomes. What used to require 3-4 times your annual salary now demands 8-10 times or more.
This isn’t just about property ownership as an investment. It’s about stability, about putting down roots in the community where you work and your kids go to school. That option has been yanked away from millions of people who, by any historical measure, should be firmly middle class.
2) Annual family vacations abroad
When I was growing up, middle-class families took holidays. Maybe not exotic ones, but a week at the beach or a trip to visit relatives interstate was standard.
By 2015, international travel had become accessible to regular middle-income earners. Budget airlines had opened up Asia and Europe. A family of four could do Bali or Thailand for a couple thousand dollars all-in.
These days, I see families making hard choices. Do we fix the car or take that trip we’ve been promising the kids? Do we replace the aging laptop or book those flights?
Flight prices have surged. Accommodation costs have jumped. And critically, the financial buffer that middle-class families used to have—the slack in the budget that allowed for discretionary spending—has evaporated.
Travel hasn’t become a luxury good exactly. It’s become a sacrifice that requires cutting back somewhere else. That’s a fundamentally different position than the middle class occupied ten years ago.
3) Raising kids without both parents working full-time
Here’s something that makes me genuinely sad: the disappearance of choice around childcare.
I’m not making a statement about whether parents should or shouldn’t work. I’m talking about whether they have an actual choice in the matter.
A decade ago, many middle-class families could make it work on one full-time and one part-time income, especially when kids were young. One parent might work three days a week or from home a couple of days. It was tight, but doable.
Now, with my own young baby, I see the reality up close. Childcare costs have skyrocketed. But more fundamentally, housing costs, healthcare, and education expenses have made single-income families nearly impossible for everyone except the genuinely wealthy.
Both parents working full-time has shifted from a choice to an economic necessity. And that changes everything about how families function, how much time parents have with their kids, and what childhood looks like.
4) Healthcare without financial anxiety
I’ll speak from my Australian perspective here, though I know this varies wildly by country.
Even in places with public healthcare systems, the middle class has been quietly pushed toward private insurance to avoid long wait times. But private health insurance premiums have grown much faster than wages.
What used to be a manageable monthly expense has become a significant line item that many families simply can’t justify anymore. So they drop coverage and hope nothing serious happens.
For my American friends, the situation is even more stark. I’ve watched middle-class families with “good” insurance still get hit with bills that would have been manageable a decade ago but are now genuinely threatening their financial stability.
The middle class used to mean not worrying about whether you could afford to see a doctor or whether that specialist your GP recommended would bankrupt you. That security has eroded.
5) Retirement at a reasonable age
This one is insidious because it plays out slowly, but the numbers don’t lie.
Ten years ago, middle-class workers in their 30s and 40s could look at their superannuation or 401(k) and see a path to retirement at 65, maybe even 60 if they were disciplined savers.
Now? The goalposts have moved. Housing costs have eaten up money that should have gone to retirement savings. Stagnant wages mean less to contribute. And the cost of living in retirement has increased while expected returns have become less certain.
I talk to people in their 40s who are doing everything “right”—saving diligently, living modestly—and they’re looking at working into their early 70s. That’s not because they love their jobs. It’s because the math doesn’t work otherwise.
A reasonable retirement age used to be part of the middle-class promise. Now it’s becoming a luxury good.
6) University education for their kids without debt
The explosion in education costs over the past decade has been well-documented, but it’s worth sitting with what this means for actual families.
In 2015, many middle-class parents could realistically plan to help their kids through university. Maybe the kids took on some debt, but parents could contribute meaningfully—whether through direct payments or by providing free housing.
Today, even upper-middle-class parents are struggling to make meaningful dents in education costs without jeopardizing their own retirement. The amounts involved have become staggering.
This creates a painful choice: do you help your kids avoid debt and compromise your own financial security, or do you let them start adult life already behind the eight ball?
Education was supposed to be the ladder that secured middle-class status for the next generation. Instead, it’s become a potential financial catastrophe that middle-class families can no longer easily afford to navigate.
7) Quality groceries without budget stress
This might seem small compared to housing and education, but hear me out.
A decade ago, a middle-class family could go to the supermarket and buy good quality food—fresh produce, decent meat, some organic options—without obsessing over every dollar.
Sure, you’d look for specials and avoid the most premium brands, but you weren’t doing mental arithmetic in every aisle or putting items back because the total was getting too high.
Now, I watch my own grocery bills and I’m genuinely shocked. And I’m not buying anything fancy—just trying to feed my family decent, healthy food.
Food inflation has been brutal. But it’s not just about the prices. It’s about what it represents: the middle class used to mean not worrying about basics. Now even basics require careful budgeting and tradeoffs.
When feeding your family well becomes a financial challenge rather than a given, something fundamental has shifted in what “middle class” means.
8) An emergency fund that actually covers emergencies
Here’s the thing that keeps me up at night: the complete erosion of financial resilience.
Ten years ago, financial advice suggested keeping 3-6 months of expenses in an emergency fund. For a middle-class family, this was challenging but achievable. You built it up over a few years, and then you had a cushion.
Today, not only is building that cushion harder because less money is left over each month, but emergencies cost more. A car repair, a medical procedure, a broken hot water heater—these things that used to be manageable bumps have become potential crises.
I know people with good jobs, people who would have been considered solidly middle class a decade ago, who are one serious car problem away from credit card debt. That’s not middle class. That’s precarity with a better job title.
The emergency fund—that basic marker of financial security—has become unaffordable for people who should, by any reasonable measure, be financially secure.
The uncomfortable truth
Writing this list has been uncomfortable because it’s forced me to confront how much has changed in what feels like a very short time.
The middle class used to mean security. Not wealth, but stability. It meant that if you worked hard and made reasonable decisions, you could afford a decent home, could raise kids without constant financial stress, could retire at a normal age, and could handle life’s inevitable problems without everything falling apart.
That’s not the reality for millions of people who occupy the same economic position—the same jobs, the same relative place in the income distribution—that would have guaranteed those things a decade ago.
The label “middle class” still exists, but the substance behind it has been hollowed out. What we’re witnessing isn’t just inflation or market fluctuations. It’s a fundamental restructuring of what’s possible for people in the middle of the income spectrum.
And that should concern all of us, because a society where the middle class can’t afford the markers of middle-class life is a society with a serious problem.