I think the answer here is simple: "class" means different things to different people.

I'm an American, and I consider myself "middle class". I was born when my mother was 17. She finished high school and went on to work and get a two-year degree from a tiny business college that no longer exists. She married in her mid-20s, when I was in first grade, got a job at a company and is still there over three decades later. She went from making minimum wage in 1991 to in the ballpark of $350k / year today. My father - the man she married, not my biological father - was a public school teacher.

I attended school in a very poor area, and my experience in high school was far more comfortable than my peers.

My dad bought me a very inexpensive truck when I was 12. It was ~20 years old, the bed was badly damaged, and the engine didn't run due to a combination of overuse and neglect. We parked it outside our garage and he taught me how to work on it, return it to operable condition, and sell it for profit. With his guidance I pulled and completely rebuilt the engine and transmission. We went to scrapyards on the weekends, and eventually found a steel bed for it in good condition. We kept all the receipts. The total cost, including purchase price, parts, and a couple of services like having a machine shop mill the engine block flat for the new head, was ~$2k. By the time I turned 14, when I could get a "learner's permit" in my state, we sold that old truck for $4k. I then had my choice - I could take that $4k (of which I had earned about half through my labor) and buy whatever I wanted, or my parents would sell me the truck my dad already owned for the same price. Because I'd done so much work on "my" truck, I jumped on that offer; I knew that his truck was well-maintained, and I didn't want to have to rebuild a vehicle that I was going to rely on.

By 2002, when I graduated high school, I think my parents were making about $175k/yr combined. I went to college on an academic scholarship and my life fell apart almost immediately. After a couple of years of struggling (and my parents paying for mental health services), I was finally diagnosed with severe depression and ADHD. It took me until I was 23 before I was "functional", and another two years after that before I felt at all confident that I wasn't going to fall back into that pit of despair. Throughout that dark period of my life, my parents were there both emotionally and, to a reasonably limited extent, financially. They weren't paying all of my bills, but I knew they wouldn't let me die hungry and homeless.

Today, I'm 38. I've been with my wife since were 14, married her at 21, and now have two daughters. We live in a five-bedroom home that we purchased in our name, with money that we earned and saved. While we don't feel like we have a huge safety net for ourselves yet, we are definitely "financially stable" - and a big part of the reason we feel like we don't have that safety net built is because of the depth of the financial safety net that my parents were able to provide.

So... in summary, while I consider myself "middle class", objectively I'm firmly in the "white collar" world. My wife doesn't work for anyone outside our home, is able to run a side business primarily for personal fulfillment, and our children are happy, well cared for, and want for little.

My wife's parents' story is very different from ours. Her dad was "working class", and retired from Walmart as a cashier in "Tire & Lube Express". He has a large but benign brain tumor that is becoming more and more of an issue as he ages. Her mother has struggle with mental health issues and has never been able to hold down a job more than a year or so at a time. My wife moved between her parents' home and her grandparents' home multiple time growing up. While they have their own problems to deal with, I think they really did the best they could raising my wife.

One of the highlights of my adult life so far came a couple of years ago, when my wife's parents' car broke down yet again. They had asked us a couple of times to take them to doctors appointments, and while I have offered fixed their vehicles a few times over the years, they will not ask me to do things like that. I sat down with my wife, looked at our finances, and decided that we could reasonably take responsibility for their transportation needs from here on out. We looked at reliable used cars, but decided that buying a reasonable new car would mean a warranty and that the total cost of ownership amortized over the expected lifetime of the vehicle would be comparable. Plus, her parents had never owned a new car; at best they were able to buy a reliable used car a couple of times in the past.

We bought them a new Kia Rio S. It's cherry red, and her parents cried when we gave it to them. It's still in my name, so I put it on our insurance and bought a service contract through a local shop. The only thing they have to pay for is fuel.

(continued in a reply to this post)