You have plenty of lower class.
We used to call it the lower middle class... but that was considered demeaning.
They changed it to workforce... which is what Laconia actually considers middle class.
The actual middle class has financial stability...
Which generally means enough emergency funds and retirement funds to meet a certain age-based standard relative to household income.
Laconia has a household income of $70K - seems low to me. Which means a middle class household headed up by someone in the 35-40 year old range should have emergency savings of around $21K and retirement fund around $140k. Someone in the 55-60 range should be around $70K in emergency funds, and around $560k in retirement funds. That means that they can sustain their household standard or living through retirement years even with the cuts expected in SS and increased Medicare premiums.
Laconia has a lot of residents that have housing, and a full time job, but only have the appearance of being middle class.
Same thing with the people that believe themselves to be in the upper middle. They generally have higher annual household incomes (above $105K per standards), but may not have enough emergency funds and fall far short of the retirement requirements.
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