@len recently shared the following interesting statistic:
I only have one of those qualities, which got me thinking:
Which of these are you?
How Touring Plans are you?
(How many of the descriptive boxes did you check above?)
I only checked 2 boxes currently but when I started using Touring Plans I would have fit the age box also. I am now older so that doesn’t fit anymore.
Yes I would have fit the age group when I first subscribed.
Same
Same about the age.
I’m three of them now. Would have been four. Only income doesn’t fit.
The income figure is tricky. For a family with two or three kids in or near an expensive city, that income wouldn’t be very luxurious. For a single it would allow a lot more discretionary spending.
It’s the 150K household that astounded me more than anything. The rest just seems like standard “life differences” that I’m used to.
I mean, I know people make $150K or more, sure…but I wouldn’t have thought that was average. And given the amount of users TP has, that means a TON of households are making $150K+. Aaaaand that’s where my existential crisis begins. 
I personally always figured everyone made roughly $100K-$120K. A quick google search tells me that’s even pretty optimistic as Philadelphia and New York only have 50K and 67K median household incomes, respectively.
So IF you make more than $150K… Good for you! And I hatechu. AND… you lookin’ to adopt? I don’t need much…y’know…just an allowance. Good with dogs and kids.
I dunno, According to this:
That’s still a very well off household in most cities. And of those 15 most expensive cities, only Bethesda Maryland is coming in with a higher median household income. Even the Hamptons in New York clocks in at $125K. 
This precisely. It’s the demographic that participates here, apparently (according to Len) and it absolutely sounds like a lot of money, but depending on the personal circumstances and makeup of the family, it really might not be.
This is the problem with raw data, right? It’s just a fact without context.
That article discusses median, not mean, just as a point of discussion.
Same, though I think there are probably a lot of dual income households. At least that’s what I’m telling myself 
Yes that was my thought. That’s only $75k per adult and I feel like that’s a pretty reasonable middle class salary for a college educated couple in their midlife unless you’re a teacher and then of course our country hates you and pays you nothing like you deserve, nor do we really respect you. (I come from teachers successively and though it was my preferred career I chose it not because of that observation).
$150k per year is an average???
I’m well under average. Looking to become BFFs with anyone who helps raise this average 
It all depends on who you’re around.
In good years my parents came out about here with 3 FT jobs between them, and we were the most well off people I knew by a long shot. Bought clothes at a fabric warehouse and ate beans for a week if weather was bad and dad couldn’t work, but also lived in a brick house vs. rented modular, had mostly working vehicles and went to church school. By the time I was 16 my parents had done well enough to buy me a car, even.
Then I got to college with my student loans and scholarships and 3 jobs and met people who didn’t know what “single-wide” meant and had never stepped foot in a Walmart. Their parents had jets and their monthly shopping and beer money budgets were more than my parents made in a month. They stayed in hotels, not campgrounds. Somehow I felt poor.
But the reality is that food and housing insecurity is more and more the norm, not the margins. I was spoiled to grow up like I did, and I knew it. When I graduated I lived in communities more like you’re describing, where everyone is middle class. So at that number ive felt rich, poor and average. Context is huge.
I checked all 5 boxes this time but have been as low as 3 since I joined almost a decade ago.
That makes it worse. The mean is higher the median in data such as these.
Exactly, that was my point. The $150K figure by itself doesn’t tell you much about the household’s socioeconomic status.
You’re the math guy I’ll trust you
But if a bajillion people make 20K and 5 people make 500K … does the 500K pull it up that much?
I have no idea honestly and there’s a reason I don’t work in math
And anyway my point was that the word “average” was used in the discussion where median was quoted, which is different.
Wow, I check all the boxes. I’m the average TP user.
The same TON would be making less than $150K for that to be the average.
That’s true - if $150k is the median, then the same number are making more than $150k as those making under $150k. The median is the middle number in all of the data not the average.
That makes more sense, actually