Are you in the Charlotte middle class?

I don’t remember when or where or why or in response to what, but sometime over the course of the last two years someone responded to something I wrote here with a neutral reference to my “upper middle class” life.

I took it in, rolled it around, tasted that phrase on my tongue about myself for the first time and spit it back out. “I’m middle-middle class,” I corrected in my head.

That’s because in my reality, I’m comfortable but hardly wealthy. I make ends meet but without much slack. I save but not as much as I’d like to. I’m doing well but not that well. I’m not struggling but I’m not summering in The Hamptons either.

I identify more with the half of America that makes up the middle class than I do with the 20% at the top, right? I’m right in the middle, right?

Unclear on the quantitative measures of the American economic class system and apparently unequipped with the self-awareness to accurately categorize myself, I went in search of a way to clear up the confusion.

The Pew Research Center has a calculator that will tell you where you fall based on your income and geographic location and then lets you compare yourself to other people who are like you in terms of education, age, race and marital status. (It adjusts to accommodate household size and geographic cost of living and was last updated in May 2016.)

I entered my information and was surprised to find our household categorized in Pew’s upper income tier.

It threw me off not only that what I believed to be a fairly modest lifestyle was categorically more comfortable than I realized but also that I could be so far removed to mistake my life for anything resembling the true working class.

Underestimating one’s economic class is apparently not uncommon, even among the wealthiest Americans.

A CNBC poll found that most millionaires describe themselves as middle class or upper middle class even though they are among the wealthiest 10 percent of the population. In fact, only 11 percent of millionaires worth $5 million or more (that’s the wealthiest 5 percent of the country) described themselves as rich or wealthy. Come again?

In our ladder-climbing, keeping-up-with-the-Joneses, American-dream-chasing world, it’s interesting how quickly people who are after wealth will deny they have it once they’ve got it.

The danger in this delusion is a total disconnect from the reality of what life is like for those in the working class and below. If millionaires think they’re middle class, where do they think the poverty line is? How can you even attempt to process or empathize with the struggle of true poverty if you can’t even identify your own wealth?

The median household income in Charlotte is $53,637.

In the Pew calculator, this is considered middle income for a single person.

The American middle class encompasses about 50 percent of the population. It’s complex and diverse, often divided into multiple subclasses — upper middle class, lower middle class and the working middle class. For a single person in Charlotte the middle income tier ranges from $22,000 to $67,000. That’s a considerable lifestyle gap for people at opposite ends.

The tipping point into the upper income tier for a single person living in the Charlotte is $68,000. About 20 percent of the American population sits here in the upper income tier.

Would you have guessed that? Do you think someone making $22,000/year feels like they’re in the middle class? Do you think someone making $68,000/year feels like they’re in the upper class?

Do the numbers change how you view our class system and your place in it?

For me, understanding my economic class doesn’t change my daily life.

My salary is no higher than before. My expenses are no lower. My bills are no less burdensome. I’ll surely still carelessly complain that I’m “so broke.” And I’m no less motivated to desire more money. But it has put things in perspective.

With no limit to how high the upper class can climb, it’s easy to dissociate from the richest people at the very top and assume that I am comparably “poor” and always scrambling for more.

But with a clear quantitative measure that shows how low an upper-income salary can be, how rare it is to get there (only 20 percent of the population) and how much higher it is than the true lower-income cut off, I am better positioned to respect the struggle of real poverty without blurring the lines with my own rich-broke woes.

So in my new reality, I’m focusing on what I’ve got. I’m comfortable. I make ends meet. I save. I’m doing well. I’m not struggling.