I'm your huckleberry.

Jonathan Guzman and Mayra Finol earn about $130,000 a year, combined, in technology jobs. Though that is more than double the median, debt from their years at St. John’s University in New York has been hard to overcome.

The two 28-year-olds in West Hartford, Conn., have about $51,000 in student debt, plus $18,000 in auto loans and $50,000 across eight credit cards. Adding financial pressure are a baby daughter and a mortgage of around $270,000.

So they're 28. They bought two cars when they were 26. They probably graduated at 22, 23. So after three-four years of trying to get by, they got jobs of $65k each. And of course, they both need to drive because I'll betcha they work at opposite ends of town. Let's say they dropped $6k each on two $30k cars - that's $48k worth of financing. That's a pair of Priuses.

Now - my wife and I bought a new Honda Fit in 2009 because the price difference between a new 2009 fit and a used 2007 fit with 40,000 miles on it was $875. And that was a $16k car. We wanted an Insight but there was no way we could afford one. But the stretch between "yay! We've arrived! Let's buy the cheapest Honda there is!" and "yay! We've arrived! Let's buy a pair of Priuses!" isn't "this is horrible" territory. It isn't "let's scold the spendthrifts" territory. It isn't you deserve to be poor because you're a failure" territory. It's - wait for it -

Families Go Deep in Debt to Stay in the Middle Class

Territory.

So. You've got two college graduates in their late '20s who have late-model cars and a starter home below the median income in a nowhere suburb of Hartford, CT. And they're a third of a million dollars in debt. Pretend they got out of college at 24 with no credit card debt. They're running up about $6k a year in credit card debt, the majority of which is probably interest.

You? You're making living wage for Alabama. You're a buck under in Connecticut and should you have a kid, you're fucked - for a living wage, your $12.50 an hour had best become $28 an hour or forget about it. I'm glad life is good for you and I mean no disparagement whatsoever but It costs $116k a year for two adults and one kid to not be poor in Los Angeles County. This is a big reason why nobody young is having kids anymore - if you have to more than double your income to be able to afford children, you're getting a cat.

The whole problem here is that being "middle class" costs substantially more than "middle class wages." Let's go with the median wage of West Hartford: $106k per family. Let's go with the median home of West Hartford: $285k. You're supposed to spend a max of 30% of your income on housing so your mortgage payment, PMI and all had best be $2650 a month or under. Let's assume our peeps can scrape together the $60k downpayment. Their mortgage is gonna be $1100 a month. The cars? The cars are $900 a month. Daycare is probably $800 a month and the average employee health plan is now $20k a year of which employees pay about 35% so we're at $600 a month. If they're paying an average of 19% on their credit cards, and they've got $6k on each, it's costing them $800 a month to keep those cards flat.

Let's be honest. They didn't scrape together $60k for a downpayment on the house. That came from their parents, or they got a 3.5% loan in which case their payment is more like $1500 with PMI etc. But whatever let's roll with it. Just paying the cars, the house, the health insurance, the daycare and keeping the credit cards flat is costing them $4400 a month. They've got $1100 a week for food, clothing, gas, car insurance, Netflix, heat, cell phones, cat food,

...student loans...

Yeah. You can thread that needle. The good ones do. Here's the thing, though - you don't want just the good ones to be successfully middle class. You want the guys who can't figure out how to post on Facebook to be successfully middle class. You want the ones who can't fix their own leaky faucet. You want the ones who go to H&R Block for their 1040EZs. You want the dead-enders, the remainders, the clueless who dream of five days at a Sandals resort all year to be able to be comfortably middle class. You don't want people who went in debt to their eyeballs getting a bachelor's degree who are rolling six figures between them to go "holy shit we can't afford a kid and a Honda Prelude." You want things to be better for them than it was for their parents. You want things to be better for their kids than it was for them. You want the social contract to be upheld by both sides: put in the time and you'll get a life.

And that social contract is in breach.