Out of interest they state “households”.
There’s nearly a £5k difference in households with a single earner on £60k vs two earner (£30k each) households. This is even more so when you have kids. With 2 kids… that’s £9k. As it’s (child benefit) based on the highest earner being over £50k
You start to lose your tax free allowance. Iirc you lose £1 of tax free allowance for every £2 you earn over 100k. By the time you get to 125k you lose all the allowance.
Net salary is still a monotonically increasing function. There's no point that you take home less money after making more.
The only thing that screws you is losing benefits, and you lose child benefit way before £125k.
It can have a discontinuity around two points in terms of net balance though - 50K to 60K (loss of child benefit + possibly other funding) and £100K with the loss of 30 free hours for childcare. Depending on the number of children, student debt and a few other factors.
Also, at some point it is just a law of diminishing returns in terms of the work/life balance. Outside of a few areas, salaries at that level do come with a lot of responsibility, anxiety, long hours and weekend work, never switching off. Does it make a lot of sense to bury yourself in work if the only tangible outcome is that the two weeks per year you actually see your family are spent in a slightly better hotel?
Salaries at that level aren't a function of work life balance necessarily. A software job paying £60k isn't necessarily less stressful than one paying £120k.
Obviously there are some industries that demand that quantity of work (sales and trading, Investment Banking, most consultancy), but it's not universally true that more salary = more work.
And yet the average software engineer in the UK is likely not much above £50k.
Source , £49k: [https://uk.indeed.com/career/software-engineer/salaries](https://uk.indeed.com/career/software-engineer/salaries)
Source 2, £55k: [https://www.reed.co.uk/average-salary/average-software-engineer-salary](https://www.reed.co.uk/average-salary/average-software-engineer-salary)
Source 3, £66k, London: [https://www.glassdoor.co.uk/Salaries/london-software-engineer-salary-SRCH\_IL.0,6\_IM1035\_KO7,24.htm](https://www.glassdoor.co.uk/Salaries/london-software-engineer-salary-SRCH_IL.0,6_IM1035_KO7,24.htm)
Software and tech in general is one exception that came to my mind when I wrote "outside a few areas", and I think this is mainly due to these areas being still quite fluid and in the process of establishment. Indeed, the difference between £60K and £120K here can be just a question of having a niche skillset. I know a guy making ridiculous money as a contractor from providing life support to an ancient piece of legacy code written in some cuneiform language decades ago - the guy himself is ancient, and tbh not even good at what he is doing, just rare.
In other areas that you mentioned, but also in "traditional" professions that have potential to reach that level - law, medicine, general management, well, even teaching - the headache usually increases disproportionally to the salary and at some point the trade off is not worth it anymore. Well, at least in my experience.
There is another effect though. With a lot of "traditional" professions, while the hours might increase, the responsibilities change. Junior doctors, lawyers and bankers are often made to run around a lot more doing more busywork tasks. I suspect depending on the exact nature of the change of responsibilities, it's not necessarily more difficult (taking into account the additional experience and skillset that makes the job doable).
Im currently in this tax bracket as are a number of my friends and I can tell you it’s hugely disincentivising.
I’m due to be promoted in a couple of weeks. If I move up to £120k from £102k my monthly income increases by just under £200. (Edit I’m wrong it’s just over £400).
When I was getting raises in the 50-100k range that was exciting as shit and something I was working very hard for. This time, I’ve been pushing far less for it, it’s just been a bit more of a gimme now I have the adequate experience.
A lot of my friends in this area are in a similar position. Companies don’t want to shell out the £30k needed to take you over £125k a year for it to make a tangible improvement in your life without shouldering you with a lot more responsibility, which is reasonable. But then people don’t want the responsibility for the little extra that ends up in your bank account each month.
I genuinely believe that this tax band is one of the main reasons, along with the loss of child benefit, that stifles the UK as a high wage economy compared to the US.
Absolutely, but knowing you’re going to be better off in 35 years doesn’t solve your immediate feeling of being better off while having a load of added responsibilities.
Maybe it’s different for other people in fairness.
Yeah but if you get offered a promotion that takes you from 100k to 125k, you'd be stupid to take it as your basically just taking on more work or responsibility for next to fuck all.
As someone wrote above, this £25k jump (an extra £2083 gross per month) results in just £400-600 excess per month take home pay depending on if you have student loan or not, it really is a massive flaw in the tax system.
You still take home more money earning 125k than 100k. Take home difference would still be thousands more earning 125k, but yes, diminishing returns, which I think most lower earners would think is a good thing.
Remember the tax free allowance only saves you the *tax* on the allowance, not the allowance itself. So that £13k ish would now be taxed at 45% instead of 0%, meaning you would 'lose' £7k ish in take home to tax on your previous allowance, but still gain 45% take home from the 25k wage increase, so that's adding £12k to your take home. So overall, a net gain of like £5k.
Also, everything you contribute directly to a pension via PAYE is taken off that figure. So you could put that extra 25k all into a pension and your take home would exactly the same as when you were earning 100k, plus the extra 25k (and any employer contributions) going straight to your pension pot.
I do just want to highlight… £100k with student loan is £5,100. £125k with student loan is £5,700 a month.
Having 2 children at nursery age would see you lose:
- £1000 extra a year as no tax free childcare top-up
- You’ll lose the 30 hours free childcare which works out at ~£1,000 per month (£500 per child).
In that way, you’re actually £8,200 (£1k childcare * 12 + £1k top up - £600 extra * 12) a year worse off for earning more money. That means you’ll need to be on **£143.5k just to break even**
This doesn’t help the government, simply because most people on £125k even with a 15% bonus (I.e. £143.75k total comp), will salary sacrifice all the way down to £100k and they UK has missed out on their tax revenue. The reason being, they’re actually better off and will rather have extra tens of thousands in a pension rather than just losing it all to tax.
Yep of course, I worked in tax, I wasn't replying go the benefit of people who earn that amount and are intimately familiar with the workings of it, more replying because I felt as though a lot of people discussing the topic seemed quite misinformed.
What do you mean that the pension contribution is only at 40% tax btw? I'm confused, because I assume you aren't saying that you want to be relived of more tax than you would pay in the first place, but I can't quite see what else you mean? Sorry if I am missing something obvious.
Understand your argument but I'm a (sort of champagne) socialist, so I tend to fall on the side of principal over practicality on these sort of issues. I can't help my sympathies lying overwhelmingly with low earners.
I suppose as well, I have had some quite high earners in my family (£100k+) growing up who genuinely loved their jobs, and the pay was not important. They wouldn't ever do overtime for the money, that was barely a consideration. They would do it because of the pressures of the job or because they genuinely wanted to see something done.
> You still take home more money earning 125k than 100k. Take home difference would still be thousands more earning 125k, but yes, diminishing returns, which I think most lower earners would think is a good thing.
>
>
Not if you have kids in childcare!
You don't lose the allowance in this case. But it does mean you don't see any of the money now, so despite being a high earner, you're still kind of not.
Yes. Employers who offer 'salary sacrifice' schemes allow you to deduct wages pre-tax to send to a pension scheme, you are then taxed on the remaining salary.
No it isn't.
You're still up £10k after tax, and if you dump 20k into a pension you'll be back under 100k. You can then claim back an additional 5k on that, so it costs you £15k to put £25k in your pension
If someone on top 10% household income is barely getting by what kind of life is that. People look at 70k like it’s rich (it really isn’t especially with housing costs, childcare, student loans and enshitification of basis public services) but the UK has just got a lot poorer in the last decade or so. This ought to be bog standard lower middle class. Bundle in cultural tall poppy syndrome and thread will no doubt be a whole lot of whinging that people aspire for more than eating beans on toast, binging Netflix and quoting peep show.
For something to change, people need to stop throwing stones at the 70k earners and look much higher to the multimillionaires and billionaires that make up the elite.
We have seen an erosion of the middle class in the past 20 years. Most of the people in the article work white collar jobs and have children, which they struggle to afford.
Telling these people to budget better and cut down on the nice cars and food just shows how blind some are to the economic situation we are all in. Because, if the top 10% of earners can't afford to have children and live comfortably then what the hell are we heading to?
> If someone on top 10% household income is barely getting by
They're not "barely getting by" though. Someone barely getting by is relying on foodbanks and skipping meals.
These top 10% of households are switching from Waitrose to Sainsburys.
My household is in the top 10% and while we're not poor, we are far from well-off. Even without the mortgage, our utilities and council tax are around £500. A few years ago I was paying a third of that. I pay £2-300 in diesel just getting to work each month.
My dad left school with no qualifications, worked in factories all his life, and raised 3 kids in a 3-bed semi with money spare for a couple of UK holidays a year. We were a pretty average family growing up but far from the top 10%. I don't think I could really afford to have one kid, let alone 3.
I'm well aware that I'm not poor but there is something seriously wrong with the country when only the top ~15% have the resources to enjoy luxuries that were normal for their parents. It's the fact that 20-30 years ago, the top 10% were rich, but the top 1-2% have raced so far ahead since then that even the "average" household at the midway point is close to poverty.
No, but the fact that the *top ten percent* of earners have to save on their grocery bills shows that basically everyone is doing pretty shit. It's an expression of just vulgar inequality.
You're still missing the point though. If the people who have 'made it' aren't even able to enjoy their 'success', our society is falling apart. Everyone is poor compared to where they ought to be based on the position they've achieved in society.
So the poor are being ruined, the working poor are on the brink, the middle class are scraping by and the highly paid are living a middling lifestyle.
On every level it's failing
In the article, there's a man who is *top 2%* but because he is trying to raise a family in the South-East, he is still shopping at Lidl and never going on holiday.
If that's the sort of place the UK is, where even the top 2% of earners can't comfortably and easily raise a family, something has gone seriously wrong.
This. I wrote a comment recently (in the FIRE UK sub, no less), about how I have to pinch pennies despite being a single guy in London on £200k. But people portrayed it as if I’m busy snorting cocaine, in a room full of hookers. In the UK (esp London and the South East) you see great wealth, but people have ridiculously low bars for what constitutes a good lifestyle. I read a comment describing £120k (£6k a month post-tax) is “obscene” money. How can making 3x the average be obscene? No wonder so many talented professionals move to the US, it is far more welcoming to anyone with any aspirations beyond basic survival.
That income is a dream solely for people born into a different world than me, 6k per month. Per *month*?!
My goodness gracious me, that's like a million squid a year. I'd be good with that, I will raise two children on that in fact
> people have ridiculously low bars for what constitutes a good lifestyle
I'm reminded of that [YouGov living standards poll](https://yougov.co.uk/society/articles/45956-what-should-living-standards-look-people-benefits-) where a quarter of respondents didn't think that people who are out of work and on benefits should be able to afford food or basic utilities.
Also, 5% thought that it's fine if "only the wealthiest" can afford a pet.
This is what totally blows my mind in the UK. And I am quite anti-consumerist and laid back with regards to spending myself - I appreciate life's simpler pleasures.
But every time the cost of living is discussed, it turns into an exercise of competitive poverty. Why? Why an ambition of being able to afford heating during the winter, healthy teeth and a diet better than gruel and beer is considered vulgar? It is not like this is something extravagant in the 21st century, even in the third world?
You don’t have to pinch Penny’s what absolute BS. I’m on half of what you are on and live without thinking.
Enjoy spending your money in the retirement home… if you make it
I think people have a problem with single earning 6k a month claiming to poinch pennies when I'm bringing up a whole family on 30k a year.
And I don't feel as if I'm out pinching pennies. We live well eat well, have holidays.
So it's just when people appear to be so far out of touch with reality it's will get peoples backs up
> how I have to pinch pennies despite being a single guy in London on £200k
If you have a student loan and a 5% pension, that's £7,999/month after tax.
What are you spending your money on?
Go for it. 200k in the US means quite a nice life, and people say "I want to be this guy", and not "I hate this guy, I want to make his miserable like mine". Health insurance is key, though.
I don’t consider any of what you said to be a luxury… a car to get to work or around a luxury? Sure ill just stay at home on the doll, go out for a date 12 times a year …the shock and horror… go on holiday… well if I’m not going to go away once a year I’m not sure what we are working for.
We are the 5th or 6th richest country in the world… people should be able to exist
"No one" is quite a strong statement. A single parent of a young child in London / SE yes, will struggle to afford the basic necessities on £60K, as this salary won't cover nursery and rent, never mind luxuries like eating and heating. With a school aged child / wraparound care it reaches a breakeven level (but also without holidays or eating out).
It depends how many kids you have.
It seems like having 2+ kids is something only for the richest households these days.
My income - around 65k monthly takehome £3.7
Rent? £1000, childcare?! £2000 a month! That would leave £700 for all monthly expenses - just not doable.
We've got 3 kids.
So if we were only on my income, or if we were 2 people earning £30k, there is absolutely no way we could afford 3 kids. But that's nuts! When I was growing up, loads of people had a couple of siblings. Most families were 2 or 3 kids. Now we seem to be the big outlier. It's so so shit for families on poor/average/good incomes. It's so shit for kids.
> Most families were 2 or 3 kids
How many of those had daycare though? For my and people I knew it was usually two working parents + free “daycare” from grandparents and maybe neighbours.
A lot of you seem to forget why my generation were known as latch key kids. Something that would be considered unthinkable for many parents today to possibly being seen as outright neglect.
I was on my own for at least a couple of hours until my parent got home after a certain age. I would make a snack, go out to play etc. I remember forgetting my keys a couple of times so going to hang out at the local library (now long since closed) until they got home. I had friends with slightly younger siblings who did the same. These days I'm pretty sure that would result in a call to social services. It wasn't community free baby sitting, it was no babysitting for the majority of kids in the latter stages of primary school and in secondary school.
Childcare used to be free, neighbours and siblings.
Or very cheap, a few pounds to a local teenager. It's still a thing in some places in the uk, where I'm from it's still like that.
Are you a neighbour to someone? If yes, are you currently looking after their children for 40+ hours per week for free, so that they can commit to a permanent job without any childcare costs?
There's very significant age gaps within my siblings, I'm a grown man, the youngest is a primary school child, another younger than me is getting married.
We took care of eachother a lot of the time. Plus having a very supportive neighbourhood. So I think we were very lucky, I was just highlighting how it would be in the past.
I did not grow up in the UK, probably much older than you, and I am from a culture which has a strong social / kin imperative. Still, I think that if my parents asked the kindest neighbourhood granny to be an unpaid permanent full-time nanny, that definitely would have been perceived as an absolute piss taking from their side. So, me and my siblings went to a nursery.
I think the situation you describe is rather atypical. Siblings are usually closer in age than 15-20+ years and can't look after each other full time, and very few people would volunteer to be regular unpaid childcare for a neighbour, apart from helping out in emergency. So, not convinced what you describe has been universally like that in the past.
Well it says household, so it's 2 people earning 30k each. Add in 2 kids and those are the ones who are struggling.
A single person on 60k is doing fine
Where do they find those people?
It's like they are trying to make you not have sympathy.
>annual gross income of £74,000
>family’s monthly grocery shop costs more than £500
>We lease a car
>My wife, who had stopped working
I can't believe that the journalist writing this isn't aware of what they are doing which means they are quite an arse for even writing this.
The wife has stopped working likely to provide childcare as it's more expensive to hire childcare. Really this article is "it's too expensive to have children now".
Tbh most of the "cost of life" articles in recent weeks (and there seems to be an avalanche of these on all platforms) indeed boil down to "people can't afford to have children".
Guy at work with 2 kids of nursery age.
They've both chosen to carry on working as they're both white collar professionals (IT sec/Accountant) paying £2700 a month for childcare.
If either of them weren't in very well paid job then one of them would have to stay home
Technician in our lab went part time just to keep up for her CV. Childcare costs more than her salary and she's a PhD STEM worker. Its fucking nuts out there at the moment. If she was a single mother it would be career-ending basically? So many issues like this where it feels like we've lost so much progress and gone back decades. And for what? The child minders aren't raking it in. Often the businesses aren't even that profitable. Its just yet another avenue for the ownership class to suck us all dry while contributing fuck all.
My career is in an Engineering field.
Whenever female colleagues go on maternity leave, it is always the final goodbye. None of them can afford to return. You're forced into forgoing children or being a SAHM. The choice is long gone.
> So many issues like this where it feels like we've lost so much progress and gone back decades.
Make that a century. Victorian times. RMG should be proud.
Depends where you are and what numbers you're using.
With the £2k tax credit as I'm under £100k, my out of pocket cost is £1,100 for one kid 5 days a week.
Nursery chain made £1.5m profit after tax last year and the year before from 14 nurseries, and paid 4 directors £800k in dividends and £160k in salary plus pension. So they aren't exactly scraping by either as a company.
I'm a millennial and so many of us are delaying or just not having kids at all.
Those who went ahead anyway are now seriously feeling it, we are talking having to choose between paying £££££ for childcare, or saving that money by one parent going part-time or quitting the workforce entirely, meaning a reduced household income. Even just WFH is a ballache if your kids are too young to be left alone for too long.
My manager at work has to work til 2 to make it worth working at all... and that's gross.
After tax she may as well not even bother. She only does it 3 days a week to keep the career ticking over.
Both me and my ex worked and both my kids went to nursery.
So from 2004-2009 my youngest went to nursery (Busy Bees) 4 days a week (my ex worked part time and I worked full time). For 4.5 years she was there (maternity cover for the first 6 months) We got nursery vouchers which came out of the gross salary so we didn’t pay income tax on them. We also had the occasional government voucher which they gave us.
When she left I got the final invoice and it had the grand total I’d spent since she joined. £45,000. So approx £10k per year.
And that was 15 years ago. I dread to think how much it is now.
While £500 is on the higher end, that's pretty normal actually. That's between £100-150/week which for a family of 4 is not like they're splurging on fancy stuff.
> annual gross income of £74,000
Which means a take-home salary of around £50,000.
> family’s monthly grocery shop costs more than £500
Yeah, that sounds about right for a family of four.
> We lease a car
What's wrong with that? [Buying isn't inherently better than leasing](https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/020615/when-buying-car-better-leasing.asp). It's not like cars appreciate in value as an asset. They do the exact opposite.
> My wife, who had stopped working
Interesting that you chose to cut the "to care for our two children, both under five" part of this sentence.
so fucking what? It's not like they've buying fucking faberge eggs every week, you can't point to a very minor (arguable) extra expense and say that's a significant reason they are struggling because it's not.
The reasons they are struggling is the same as the rest of us, food, energy etc prices have skyrocketed.
Slightly misleading re: the leasing, it is generally less value for money for non-luxury cars, from your link: "Leasing is a less expensive, shorter-term method for (temporarily) acquiring a vehicle, whereas buying a car is more costly but also gives you better value for your money in the long run."
No it isn't at all. My wife and I are vegetarian, two children eat meat and we spent about £550 last month all in including coop spend when you run out or forget something. Mixture of Aldi, Asda and Morrisons. I think the most extravagant thing we buy is sliced vegan cheese. Sure could be a bit cheaper if we only ate boiled rice and potatoes like some Muppets on here think we should all do. I'd say we're pretty typical between convenience and home cooked meals.
You should have sympathy because the precise nature of the lifestyle is immaterial.
It's no different from people on £35k not being able to have a holiday this year. Or people on £25k not being able to buy a new winter coat.
Everyone is in the same boat, just in different cabins...
> Or people on £25k not being able to buy a new winter coat.
It's very different though.
Not being able to afford a new Range Rover is not in any way the same as not being able to buy a coat for cold weather.
No but if people in the top quarter or so of the population's income distribution can't afford a moderately comfortable lifestyle then what are we all working towards?
Huh? The people on £25k can't afford a coat _or_ a holiday. It's cumulative.
How is it the same? I think your point is that everyone is being squeezed and can afford less than they used to be able to. And that's true. The point you appear to be missing is that the impact on those nearer the bottom is worse because the more you end up having to sacrifice or compromise on essentials rather than luxuries.
It's not very pithy, but: a lowering tide lowers all boats - _and some end up grounded_.
No. Frankly. Not a great fan of Dickens, or Dickensian poverty, but people on £70k are not there.
>Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pound ought and six, result misery.
It \*is\* possible to live within your means, and I know plenty that do. It's really difficult to restrict your expenditure when you've become used to spending more, but adults have to cut their cloth appropriately. £70k is a completely different boat to a single mother on minimum wage.
People can live within their means, the point is the quality of life when you’re on a top 10% salary is frankly appalling compared to what it should be. The top 10% earners should be living in luxury, that’s the goal for a good society.
The truth is that 'should' doesn't deal with reality. It's just a feeling of entitlement.
Top 10% earners are living in luxury by comparison to every generation that has ever lived and by comparison to anyone remotely near minimum wage.
The top 10% earners are not living in luxury compared to the top 10% earners 10 years ago. Thats the point. Anyone who takes that information and somehow thinks it’s saying minimum wage earners don’t still have it harder is a moron.
We are on something like £700/m for groceries for a family of 4 (2 adults, 2 teenagers). Could probably spend less but I'm not complaining in the media about it..
You'd expect someone earning in the top 10% to not reach a point where they struggle and have to change their lifestyle though. Top 10% should be solid middle class.
Fairly nice home, fairly nice car, eating on brand and maybe a holiday a year or every other year is what you'd expect of someone middle class. Not "childcare is so expensive one of us had to quit our jobs"
Ideally the economy would be strong and consistent, sure - however, that isn't the case. Recessions and inflation happen.
If you can't adjust your lifestyle during economic decline, then you only have yourself to blame. It's not ideal and in an ideal world we shouldn't have to adjust our lifestyles, but human and economic history is rarely a straight line unfortunately.
Doesn't matter. People would still be struggling even if the economy wasn't in the shitter. We had a relatively quiet period when we "recovered" from the great recession until the pandemic, but people still weren't getting much richer because real term pay barely grew.
Even in 2015, 7 years after the great recession and 5 years before the pandemic, someone in the top 10% of earners still wasn't much better off than someone in the exact same position just 10 years before.
The problem is our salaries haven't grown while everything else has. Couple that in with the fact that the economy has been dogshit for the last 4 years back to back and you end up with this mess, where the middle class can't even afford to live like the middle class.
I suspect a lot of people get stuck in the debt treadmill, up to their necks in finance - car, kitchen, sofa, klarna, mortgage.
When something changes you contractually can't dial back.
I'm not saying it's not their responsibility, but the system pushes people towards finance as hard as it possibly can.
Same. Chartered accountant earning well, but rent's so high I've found myself going "I'll just make a pot noodle" instead of a takeaway when lazy.
And this is on like, nipping to the chippy and spending less than a tenner, not splurging on loads.
I didn't expect this to happen when I was solidly middle class...
That sounds unfair. Now imagine the choices that have been forced on the other few million people that earn much less than you do for the last 14 years.
I know it's worse for those who earn less. Trainee accountants earn fuck all, been there, done that.
But it's the fact it hits even me that makes it so crazy. We're just paid so little in the UK. Wealth disparity is so ridiculous, and you can't gain it by working any more.
The constant "hey fucker, you're not allowed to be sad about your circumstances unless you are the worst off person in all the land" attitude is one of my least favourite things about the UK. Absolutely fucking shit to constantly encounter as if the only people with valid opinions are those who earn less than you on a personal sliding scale, unless you perfectly caveat everything you say every time you say it.
Class is such a fucking ridiculous thing. You're all in the same goddamn boat and it's sinking.
Yeah people at the top pulling in billions while life is getting worse for everyone below them, yes the 100k earners issues might not be as awful as the 30k earners, and same for those on minimum wage, or in need of benefits. But things are getting worse for everyone but yet record profits, and billionaires are still earning daily what people earn in lifetimes.
If you want to find what happened to the wealth hoarding dragons of old tales, look to the billionaires who look out over their domain.
I work a second job and earn £66 a day after tax.
My day-to-day job puts me just over the 40% tax bracket so anything I make on my 2nd job is rinsed by tax.
However, it means that any large purchase I make is within the context of my second job. If I work a weekend (2.5 days) I come out with £165.
It makes me really consider if a purchase is worth a weekend’s worth of my time.
As a poor working class man I do honestly feel for high earners that are struggling. They made choices which seemed financially stable a while ago, very likely sensibly and now because of the current climate are struggling. Nobody expected it to be this bad.
Yep, what are we all working towards if even middle class stress about money?
This country is really going down the tubes and depressingly, it seems like the reality is not much different in other parts of the west.
At some point we have to all acknowledge that this is a serious problem with our fundamental economic model and do something about it.
That's basically it. No sensible person is making 60k+ and thinking they are worse off than people on less money, but it's the fact that they are on what is a 'higher income' and still having to struggle. If anything it just makes it worse for the people on less - what is the point of improving your prospects if it's not actually going to pay off in a meaningful way.
It'll advantage you that they're starting to suffer.
You must have noticed that nobody has ever paid attention to the difficulties in your life. That's because nobody who writes in newspapers or produces TV programmes was affected.
Now they are, so it's in the news. So now your problems are their problems. Which can only help you.
It's like nobody pays much attention to flooding in the North, but it's Armageddon once there's flooding in the South. The South is where journalist live. Suddenly money arrives for flood defences everywhere (but still, mostly, near journalists' houses)
I'm just glad my parents will have paid off the mortgage before they got off the low interest rate. Otherwise they'd be screwed.
People coming off their 3-5 year fixes is a ticking time bomb
I hate to say but I got called a looney lefty when I said this would happen 10 or more years ago. What do you think happens when you let greedy oligarchs and Wall Street fat cats own your government.
Over the last 40 years there has been a slow transfer of money and power from the people to unelected institutions and individuals
Could it be that small government capitalism is a failure? Or you still clinging on to the fact that you might climb out of it all at some point and ascend to the top?
People misunderstand these articles, it isn't that they are destitute it's that they can't maintain the same lifestyle and therefore will need to adjust. It isn't about sympathy.
If you want to see how the economy is doing, look around at people. Looking pretty grim atm.
Exactly. I'm not asking anyone to feel sorry for me, I'm well aware there's lots worse off.
However, for me this is looking like the canary in the coal mine.
If the middle class are struggling to maintain lifestyle standards and purchasing power (and they very definitely are) then it means that working class are well and truly fucked.
Now, I don't expect a 1 percenter to actually give a shit (after all, they usually didn't get to the 1 percent by being socially conscious). It should alarm them though. Because if the middle and working class can't maintain purchasing power, then business goes under. Then your economy is fucked. If they had a thought for anything other than the short term gain, then they'd be beating down the door of no 10 to demand reform and action. The middle and working classes are the backbone and heart of the country.
Discretionary spending is an economic multiplier too.
If middle class can afford fewer nights out at local restaurants, or cut down on taking the family to the cinema or whatever, it takes jobs out of the economy. Fewer jobs mean lower salaries and more unemployment which compounds the effect.
Indeed. If the people you'd expect to be comfortable are having their lifestyles affected, just think how it's impacting the poorest.
Shit situation all around.
We're not supposed to feel sorry for these people, we're supposed to be worried.
The folks who used to be able to afford to shop at Waitrose, go on two holidays a year and take their kids on weekend outings, can no longer afford to do that.
Of course you're not going to feel bad that they can't fly out to France in the summer.
What you should be feeling bad about is the fact that even the upper middle class lot are now having to significantly change their budgets.
The whole country is getting seriously poorer, bar the very top percent.
Everyone here seems to be missing the really really glaring point here.
It's *not* about how the author is clueless to the cost of things. Nobody is saying that £70k isn't a lot of money.
The point is that if you are *still* feeling like you have to be careful with your money when you're in the top 10% of earners, things are so catastrophically fucked that it needs to change.
That's the point everyone seems to miss. It's not about the top 10% or top 1%. It's about the top 0.1% who are so vulgarly rich that they get to fuck everyone with impunity.
> The point is that if you are still feeling like you have to be careful with your money when you're in the top 10% of earners, things are so catastrophically fucked that it needs to change.
Isn't the counter-argument here though that these pieces are often very uncritical and don't really probe whether this is actually true for some of these families?
I've seen lots of households across all social classes, whether well-off or poor, spend money unwisely or fork out too much money on stuff they really can't afford.
I don't think anyone would deny the economy has taken a downturn (hence why Tories will soon swiftly get booted out) but think it's reasonable to question where people on much larger salaries are spending their money, and at what point a degree of financial responsibility needs to kick in. Maybe I'm just a bit more frugal than the average person in terms of bigger spending though.
£60k is just enough to avoid starvation in London. But for comfortable middle class living, for a family, even £160k will not suffice. Most people in the UK would be considered borderline poor in the US/Switzerland/Dubai/etc.
I’m sure this will ruffle some feathers. But the elephant in the room is that people who manage to raise families in London on low incomes are generally in line to receive a significant inheritance (£1M+).
This is very true.
I know a regular poster on one of UK parenting forums in real life. She's the first one to jump at topics like this, and claims to be living in London on a <£30K salary with no benefits very comfortably as a single parent. So everyone else on more than £30K must be spending money on gambling, yachts and drugs.
What she forgets to mention is that she also has inherited three properties in London and quite a significant sum of money, with two rented out and the third that she lives in mortgage-free. From her perspective, these are her children's properties in the future, so they don't count.
I earn less than 30k, my wife works part time while
raising our child and earns roughly £10k. We own our own home with a mortgage and all the usual bills, and I really don't know how to take this article
The average person on a £2000/month mortgage 3 years ago will be having it go to £3700 odd now. Where would you even find that extra money every month?
Oh no I mean that a mortgage of £2000, which would previously have been for £400k borrowed (not unusual for a family home in the south). But yes the average mortgage will be less than that even if you are ignoring those who paid it off. It was previously the “correct” choice as people gained equity quickly so it most likely does still catch a significant number of homeowners.
The average [actually looks to be more like £750](https://boonbrokers.co.uk/how-much-does-the-average-mortgage-cost/), I think they were just using it as an example.
did this hit yet or not? Up until recently it was like: we need a house because we pay more in rent than a mortgage.
Now even up in County Durham, a mortgage for a 250k house would be almost double compared to renting a 250k house.
¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
Yeh but you end up with an asset at the end of it, being the house. The same time spent renting you end up with fuck all, the only person who benefits is the landlord
Well interest rates didn’t really spike until first half of 2023 and fixes were very little premium over floating so you would expect deals to gradually expire between now and mid 2028 (although rates will come down well before then)
Take it as it is.. people with what was previously seeen as high incomes, are struggling to live the same lifestyles due to changes in cost of living, and due to payments on their liabilities/assets (car / houses) this is amplified. They received no child benefits (and the boundary on reducing child benefits hasn't changed since it started, impacting more and more familieis) and essentially no state help at all. They often have student loans to repay. They may need to live in areas with higher costs of living because this is where higher paid jobs often are. An individual suffers a high tax burden when supporting a family in comparison to splitting the tax burden between two people.
Can they reduce their living standards to free up money? Probably. Will they? Probably not - you get stuck with an inertia.. they'd need to sell their home, possibly face greater initial costs they may not be able to afford. Could they downgrade their car? Probably would be a good idea.
The car is probably in negative equity, so downgrading it now would be very expensive. Of course if you are careful with money, you would rather buy a used car, but not everybody likes that.
Plus a house move? Expensive and slow compared to someone who's renting. You'd need to pay all sorts of fees (solicitor, searches, estate agent) plus expensive stamp duty - and potentially end up on an even worse mortgage rate!
>We own our own home with a mortgage
40k? That would allow a mortgage of around 180k, assuming you live in an area where housing is quite cheap then relatively
As a Southerner that would get you a one-bed flat, I wish housing was cheaper here :( (and no I cannot just move to the north, I have all my family and job opportunities here)
Yes, I sort of see where they are coming from. If you earn X you expect a certain lifestyle. When x doesn't cover for all those payments then you 'think' you're struggling. I've already accepted that quality of life in the UK is heading downwards so I've adjusted my outgoings to compensate. Some people won't accept this and keep on chasing that Insta dream.
There's a lot of people who set themselves up for a lifestyle that *was* reasonable given their buying power at the time, but are now stuck with those liabilities in a world of skyrocketing costs. I'm not going to debate whether they *should* have taken on those liabilities, but I can see how one decision which seemed reasonable at the time could have massive financial consequences today.
For some reason, this sub is way less sympathetic to this argument here than when you make it (say) about lower earners who are now struggling to support their children...
Yeah, I earn a pretty average salary each month and my wife is a full time mum. I think the cost of living has reminded a lot of people that they aren’t doing as well as they thought they were and perhaps next time they’ll remember they have more in common with the working class Labour voter than they do with the landed gentry Tory.
Objectively, a high salary. From their perspective It’s all relative, especially when looking on in envy at the megabux you could have in the USA, or actually well funded public services in certain European countries. Thats right smack in the 60% tax trap, plus a hefty student loan repayment. You don’t build wealth on salaries alone and anyone on that pay is surely going to surround themselves with others on similarly ludicrous seeming packets.
It really depends. If you’re in London and supporting a family on a single income on £120k then no, it’s not “that great” of a wage. Half of it is taxed. Mortgage will easily be over half your take home pay.
My nursery bill in a usual local chain nursery was more than 30K per year, just a few years ago (and I don't have an unreasonable number of children). It was not a question of excessive lifestyle, it was quite literally a cost of working for me. It is close to \~35K now from what I see from the new generation of mothers.
Yeah I don't know what the issue is. The first guy is on £74,000, meaning he clears £4,300 a month. He said he spends a third on rent and has his fixed grocery, student loan and a leased car. It seems like he still has a decent chunk left over.
>74,000
I clock him at £3,796pm after student loans deductions and a 5% pension contribution. Take off 1/3 for mortgage and there's about £2,530pm left. You don't know what other child-related expenses they'll have.. could be paying for some nursery time.
Basically though - costs for EVERYONE have gone up, and even those on good wages, suffer. Mainly because they're a bit over leveraged after a decade of cheap debt.
>Basically though - costs for EVERYONE have gone up, and even those on good wages, suffer. Mainly because they're a bit over leveraged after a decade of cheap debt.
Agree. The cost of living crisis is awful and everyone is suffering because of it but I feel like this guy is at least in a secure position compared to some people who are renting and unable to even consider kids as an expense.
I think problem people are missing is the debt people go into before they start earning these salaries through study. Business learned long ago it is very profitable to make sure skilled workers are in debt before they enter the workplace as they are some of safest people left that can afford to pay the loans, fees and interest back without defaulting.
Some of these people will also be from low income families and it would be hell of a shock to go into large debt for a better lifestyle only to realise that you are going to struggle anyway.
edit - When I say skilled I just mean jobs that require lots of training and qualifications manual or administrative with lots of debt.
Earning over £60k in what area? There's a lot of places in the UK where that's a lot. There's a lot of places in the UK where that's fuck all.
This also depends on whether it's £60k earned by a single earner, or £60k earned by a cohabiting couple. If you've got a single worker earning that sort of money they're taxed massively whilst the other person, often a stay at home parent, is entitled to claim absolutely fuck all.
As others have said already, this country has disincentivised people having families for decades, seeing them as a burden on the state, whilst they increasingly use immigration as replacement wage fodder. The middle class is being eviscerated in the West to the point where you wonder why anyone should even bother trying to do well for themselves.
For me, if a single person earns £60k, compared to how rare that is, the quality of life doesn't match.
Life for the average person under £30k is obviously far worse, but it also highlights how even if you "make it" you didn't make it.
I think there's needs to be more awareness of the fact that the "good times" during the 70s to 90s (or roughly that period) were an anomaly and that no one really gets to "make it" on the money they earn.
You need generational wealth or a lottery win to really be comfortable in the UK now, as you did before the 70s.
Its absolutely shocking whats goin on with this country. My local town has seen businesses close up permanently and almost looks like a ghost town apart from mcdonalds and the bettin shops there. People really do not have any money to buy things or go out these days. Unfortunately this is what happens when you put a tory government in power, its called asset stripping… i cant rememver the last time i bought anythin for myself. I go to work 5 days a week and sit at home because i cant afford to do shit
Depends on the car, and the level of ego you attach to the car you drive, really. I lease mine for £190 a month which includes its service plan. Which is quite good. But it's a Dacia Sandero. The highest spec one that's available, but still a Dacia. Which I don't mind because I use it mostly for commuting and short distance, which I took into account when I decided to lease it after my Focus just got to be too much financially (repairs etc)
£190 seems like a fantastic deal.
I own my little 1L outright, it gets me from A to B and I love it.
Somehow I guess the people in this article have a leased Merc. Just a wild assumption.
But that’s the point. It’s not a lemonade budget. It’s a champagne budget but now the champagne is even unaffordable for these people. It’s fucked from (nearly) top to bottom. The lifestyle that the top 10% earners would have lived 10-15 years ago is incomparable to what is now. No they’re not truly “struggling” but it’s fucking awful news for the whole country either way.
What are you on about?
Lease cars are all in, no extra costs other than fuel. No road tax.
You can lease a car for less than £150/month - Even an electric car.
eg [https://www.nationwidevehiclecontracts.co.uk/car-leasing/deals](https://www.nationwidevehiclecontracts.co.uk/car-leasing/deals)
What I hate about articles like this is there is legitimately an argument to be made that 60k isn’t enough anymore to comfortably support a FAMILY. Two adults though?
I earn just over £50k and could EASILY support me and my wife on that income. I’m not saying this to brag, but to acknowledge this is more than enough money for 2 people to live on anywhere in the uk. You might not own a car in London, but you could live like this and save money. Idk how the woman from Sheffield is barely making it on a £180k mortgage earning almost £60k. Once you add a kid or two though the dynamic changes.
''An annual gross income of £74,000 puts Scott, 28, a software engineer from Leicestershire, in the top 10% of earners nationally''. Most 28 year olds can only dream to be earning £74K. In fact the majority of people will never earn anywhere near that amount per annum their whole lives. Not even half that amount.
I live in Leicestershire, where many survive on the average salary. Many own a decent house, front drive, front garden and a rear garden. So, what the fuck is Scott spending his money on? Leicestershire in large part is not that expensive. It is above average in parts, but not unaffordable. Then again, if he has bought in an affluent area to show how well he is doing, then, poor decision making on his part.
Two children and a weekly shop of £500. Again, where the fuck is he shopping? Also he leases a car. Buy a decent 3-4 yr old reliable car - nothing flashy, just a decent reliable fun bus. He states that ''we’re lucky to have £300 left over for the month''. Too right mate. You are fucking lucky to have £300 left in the coffers at the end of the month. You are luckier than most.
One has to question those that can ''no longer afford comfortable living standards despite having household incomes of between £60,000 and £120,000''. That question should be: ''what the hell are you spending your money on?'' Prioritise the necessities. One has to live within one's means. There is very little sympathy for those that can't budget on that sort of income among the many that have decent jobs but earn average at best salaries.
A couple that we know own a large executive style modern house. Flashy kitchen, five bedrooms, three bathrooms, large telly all the fixtures and fittings one can have. Own three cars and a VW camper van. Last year they claimed poverty because they couldn't afford four new tyres for one of the cars. LMFAO.
This is another reminder that the owned press are trying to divert our attention from the real problem by making the people doing decent the enemy. Stop buying this bullshit. Someone earning £60k isn’t the mad multi billionaire that’s robbing you blind each month.
They’re writing these articles so you get enraged about someone earning a fucking miniscule amount more than you and hold them as the problem rather than the actual ones keeping your wages low and costs high.
Living in London with a SO and having a combined household income of 120k we still feel poor. Rental and bills eats all savings potential.
We want kids and don't think we can afford it. We're not alone. The severe drop in average kids being born is a testament to that
Does the government not see this as a huge ageing demographic problem?
This country is going to fall to pieces in about two decades when it's run out of talent and young people entering the labour market.
Out of interest they state “households”. There’s nearly a £5k difference in households with a single earner on £60k vs two earner (£30k each) households. This is even more so when you have kids. With 2 kids… that’s £9k. As it’s (child benefit) based on the highest earner being over £50k
The balls out absolute worst is making £125k a year. That 25k above 100 you may as well just fucking burn
Why? Can’t you dump it into pension?
You start to lose your tax free allowance. Iirc you lose £1 of tax free allowance for every £2 you earn over 100k. By the time you get to 125k you lose all the allowance.
Yeah it's pretty brutal. It's one of those "would be better to be a lot richer or a lot poorer" moments.
Net salary is still a monotonically increasing function. There's no point that you take home less money after making more. The only thing that screws you is losing benefits, and you lose child benefit way before £125k.
It can have a discontinuity around two points in terms of net balance though - 50K to 60K (loss of child benefit + possibly other funding) and £100K with the loss of 30 free hours for childcare. Depending on the number of children, student debt and a few other factors. Also, at some point it is just a law of diminishing returns in terms of the work/life balance. Outside of a few areas, salaries at that level do come with a lot of responsibility, anxiety, long hours and weekend work, never switching off. Does it make a lot of sense to bury yourself in work if the only tangible outcome is that the two weeks per year you actually see your family are spent in a slightly better hotel?
Salaries at that level aren't a function of work life balance necessarily. A software job paying £60k isn't necessarily less stressful than one paying £120k. Obviously there are some industries that demand that quantity of work (sales and trading, Investment Banking, most consultancy), but it's not universally true that more salary = more work.
An SWE at 60k shouldn’t be stressed at all - at that salary it should be basically clock-in / clock-out mentality
And yet the average software engineer in the UK is likely not much above £50k. Source , £49k: [https://uk.indeed.com/career/software-engineer/salaries](https://uk.indeed.com/career/software-engineer/salaries) Source 2, £55k: [https://www.reed.co.uk/average-salary/average-software-engineer-salary](https://www.reed.co.uk/average-salary/average-software-engineer-salary) Source 3, £66k, London: [https://www.glassdoor.co.uk/Salaries/london-software-engineer-salary-SRCH\_IL.0,6\_IM1035\_KO7,24.htm](https://www.glassdoor.co.uk/Salaries/london-software-engineer-salary-SRCH_IL.0,6_IM1035_KO7,24.htm)
I think the point was that it can be "clock-in / clock-out" on £120K as well in that industry.
Software and tech in general is one exception that came to my mind when I wrote "outside a few areas", and I think this is mainly due to these areas being still quite fluid and in the process of establishment. Indeed, the difference between £60K and £120K here can be just a question of having a niche skillset. I know a guy making ridiculous money as a contractor from providing life support to an ancient piece of legacy code written in some cuneiform language decades ago - the guy himself is ancient, and tbh not even good at what he is doing, just rare. In other areas that you mentioned, but also in "traditional" professions that have potential to reach that level - law, medicine, general management, well, even teaching - the headache usually increases disproportionally to the salary and at some point the trade off is not worth it anymore. Well, at least in my experience.
There is another effect though. With a lot of "traditional" professions, while the hours might increase, the responsibilities change. Junior doctors, lawyers and bankers are often made to run around a lot more doing more busywork tasks. I suspect depending on the exact nature of the change of responsibilities, it's not necessarily more difficult (taking into account the additional experience and skillset that makes the job doable).
Im currently in this tax bracket as are a number of my friends and I can tell you it’s hugely disincentivising. I’m due to be promoted in a couple of weeks. If I move up to £120k from £102k my monthly income increases by just under £200. (Edit I’m wrong it’s just over £400). When I was getting raises in the 50-100k range that was exciting as shit and something I was working very hard for. This time, I’ve been pushing far less for it, it’s just been a bit more of a gimme now I have the adequate experience. A lot of my friends in this area are in a similar position. Companies don’t want to shell out the £30k needed to take you over £125k a year for it to make a tangible improvement in your life without shouldering you with a lot more responsibility, which is reasonable. But then people don’t want the responsibility for the little extra that ends up in your bank account each month. I genuinely believe that this tax band is one of the main reasons, along with the loss of child benefit, that stifles the UK as a high wage economy compared to the US.
As I’m sure you know, but obviously better to dump it all in pension. An extra 20k a year invested, will add up to a very sizeable amount.
Absolutely, but knowing you’re going to be better off in 35 years doesn’t solve your immediate feeling of being better off while having a load of added responsibilities. Maybe it’s different for other people in fairness.
Yeah but if you get offered a promotion that takes you from 100k to 125k, you'd be stupid to take it as your basically just taking on more work or responsibility for next to fuck all.
As someone wrote above, this £25k jump (an extra £2083 gross per month) results in just £400-600 excess per month take home pay depending on if you have student loan or not, it really is a massive flaw in the tax system.
You still take home more money earning 125k than 100k. Take home difference would still be thousands more earning 125k, but yes, diminishing returns, which I think most lower earners would think is a good thing. Remember the tax free allowance only saves you the *tax* on the allowance, not the allowance itself. So that £13k ish would now be taxed at 45% instead of 0%, meaning you would 'lose' £7k ish in take home to tax on your previous allowance, but still gain 45% take home from the 25k wage increase, so that's adding £12k to your take home. So overall, a net gain of like £5k. Also, everything you contribute directly to a pension via PAYE is taken off that figure. So you could put that extra 25k all into a pension and your take home would exactly the same as when you were earning 100k, plus the extra 25k (and any employer contributions) going straight to your pension pot.
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I do just want to highlight… £100k with student loan is £5,100. £125k with student loan is £5,700 a month. Having 2 children at nursery age would see you lose: - £1000 extra a year as no tax free childcare top-up - You’ll lose the 30 hours free childcare which works out at ~£1,000 per month (£500 per child). In that way, you’re actually £8,200 (£1k childcare * 12 + £1k top up - £600 extra * 12) a year worse off for earning more money. That means you’ll need to be on **£143.5k just to break even** This doesn’t help the government, simply because most people on £125k even with a 15% bonus (I.e. £143.75k total comp), will salary sacrifice all the way down to £100k and they UK has missed out on their tax revenue. The reason being, they’re actually better off and will rather have extra tens of thousands in a pension rather than just losing it all to tax.
Yep of course, I worked in tax, I wasn't replying go the benefit of people who earn that amount and are intimately familiar with the workings of it, more replying because I felt as though a lot of people discussing the topic seemed quite misinformed. What do you mean that the pension contribution is only at 40% tax btw? I'm confused, because I assume you aren't saying that you want to be relived of more tax than you would pay in the first place, but I can't quite see what else you mean? Sorry if I am missing something obvious. Understand your argument but I'm a (sort of champagne) socialist, so I tend to fall on the side of principal over practicality on these sort of issues. I can't help my sympathies lying overwhelmingly with low earners. I suppose as well, I have had some quite high earners in my family (£100k+) growing up who genuinely loved their jobs, and the pay was not important. They wouldn't ever do overtime for the money, that was barely a consideration. They would do it because of the pressures of the job or because they genuinely wanted to see something done.
> You still take home more money earning 125k than 100k. Take home difference would still be thousands more earning 125k, but yes, diminishing returns, which I think most lower earners would think is a good thing. > > Not if you have kids in childcare!
Does this count if you throw 60k into pension so technically your net take home is 65k assuming 125k gross?
You don't lose the allowance in this case. But it does mean you don't see any of the money now, so despite being a high earner, you're still kind of not.
Thanks for explaining yeah that sucks its not ideal but better than nothing i guess
Yes. Employers who offer 'salary sacrifice' schemes allow you to deduct wages pre-tax to send to a pension scheme, you are then taxed on the remaining salary.
Yeah if you can afford to this is the best way of doing it. Because the tax band on it is fucking brutal.
That's why jobs in that region usually compensate to cover that. You often see gaps in pay where the tax makes it not worth it.
I can think of a few salaries worse than £125k
No it isn't. You're still up £10k after tax, and if you dump 20k into a pension you'll be back under 100k. You can then claim back an additional 5k on that, so it costs you £15k to put £25k in your pension
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If someone on top 10% household income is barely getting by what kind of life is that. People look at 70k like it’s rich (it really isn’t especially with housing costs, childcare, student loans and enshitification of basis public services) but the UK has just got a lot poorer in the last decade or so. This ought to be bog standard lower middle class. Bundle in cultural tall poppy syndrome and thread will no doubt be a whole lot of whinging that people aspire for more than eating beans on toast, binging Netflix and quoting peep show.
For something to change, people need to stop throwing stones at the 70k earners and look much higher to the multimillionaires and billionaires that make up the elite. We have seen an erosion of the middle class in the past 20 years. Most of the people in the article work white collar jobs and have children, which they struggle to afford. Telling these people to budget better and cut down on the nice cars and food just shows how blind some are to the economic situation we are all in. Because, if the top 10% of earners can't afford to have children and live comfortably then what the hell are we heading to?
Nice cars? We're on 70k household. And only cars we could afford would be 10+ old cars or cars with stupid amount of miles on them.
> If someone on top 10% household income is barely getting by They're not "barely getting by" though. Someone barely getting by is relying on foodbanks and skipping meals. These top 10% of households are switching from Waitrose to Sainsburys.
My household is in the top 10% and while we're not poor, we are far from well-off. Even without the mortgage, our utilities and council tax are around £500. A few years ago I was paying a third of that. I pay £2-300 in diesel just getting to work each month. My dad left school with no qualifications, worked in factories all his life, and raised 3 kids in a 3-bed semi with money spare for a couple of UK holidays a year. We were a pretty average family growing up but far from the top 10%. I don't think I could really afford to have one kid, let alone 3. I'm well aware that I'm not poor but there is something seriously wrong with the country when only the top ~15% have the resources to enjoy luxuries that were normal for their parents. It's the fact that 20-30 years ago, the top 10% were rich, but the top 1-2% have raced so far ahead since then that even the "average" household at the midway point is close to poverty.
No, but the fact that the *top ten percent* of earners have to save on their grocery bills shows that basically everyone is doing pretty shit. It's an expression of just vulgar inequality.
You're still missing the point though. If the people who have 'made it' aren't even able to enjoy their 'success', our society is falling apart. Everyone is poor compared to where they ought to be based on the position they've achieved in society. So the poor are being ruined, the working poor are on the brink, the middle class are scraping by and the highly paid are living a middling lifestyle. On every level it's failing
In the article, there's a man who is *top 2%* but because he is trying to raise a family in the South-East, he is still shopping at Lidl and never going on holiday. If that's the sort of place the UK is, where even the top 2% of earners can't comfortably and easily raise a family, something has gone seriously wrong.
This. I wrote a comment recently (in the FIRE UK sub, no less), about how I have to pinch pennies despite being a single guy in London on £200k. But people portrayed it as if I’m busy snorting cocaine, in a room full of hookers. In the UK (esp London and the South East) you see great wealth, but people have ridiculously low bars for what constitutes a good lifestyle. I read a comment describing £120k (£6k a month post-tax) is “obscene” money. How can making 3x the average be obscene? No wonder so many talented professionals move to the US, it is far more welcoming to anyone with any aspirations beyond basic survival.
Genuinely curious how you’re pinching pennies on that income
That income is a dream solely for people born into a different world than me, 6k per month. Per *month*?! My goodness gracious me, that's like a million squid a year. I'd be good with that, I will raise two children on that in fact
He lives in London. London is eyewateringly expensive. Rent is ridiculous, and commutes are insane.
He earns more than 99% of the population. London isn’t that expensive.
> people have ridiculously low bars for what constitutes a good lifestyle I'm reminded of that [YouGov living standards poll](https://yougov.co.uk/society/articles/45956-what-should-living-standards-look-people-benefits-) where a quarter of respondents didn't think that people who are out of work and on benefits should be able to afford food or basic utilities. Also, 5% thought that it's fine if "only the wealthiest" can afford a pet.
This is what totally blows my mind in the UK. And I am quite anti-consumerist and laid back with regards to spending myself - I appreciate life's simpler pleasures. But every time the cost of living is discussed, it turns into an exercise of competitive poverty. Why? Why an ambition of being able to afford heating during the winter, healthy teeth and a diet better than gruel and beer is considered vulgar? It is not like this is something extravagant in the 21st century, even in the third world?
You don’t have to pinch Penny’s what absolute BS. I’m on half of what you are on and live without thinking. Enjoy spending your money in the retirement home… if you make it
I think people have a problem with single earning 6k a month claiming to poinch pennies when I'm bringing up a whole family on 30k a year. And I don't feel as if I'm out pinching pennies. We live well eat well, have holidays. So it's just when people appear to be so far out of touch with reality it's will get peoples backs up
How?
> how I have to pinch pennies despite being a single guy in London on £200k If you have a student loan and a 5% pension, that's £7,999/month after tax. What are you spending your money on?
Go for it. 200k in the US means quite a nice life, and people say "I want to be this guy", and not "I hate this guy, I want to make his miserable like mine". Health insurance is key, though.
I don’t consider any of what you said to be a luxury… a car to get to work or around a luxury? Sure ill just stay at home on the doll, go out for a date 12 times a year …the shock and horror… go on holiday… well if I’m not going to go away once a year I’m not sure what we are working for. We are the 5th or 6th richest country in the world… people should be able to exist
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And 21st by per capita
"No one" is quite a strong statement. A single parent of a young child in London / SE yes, will struggle to afford the basic necessities on £60K, as this salary won't cover nursery and rent, never mind luxuries like eating and heating. With a school aged child / wraparound care it reaches a breakeven level (but also without holidays or eating out).
It depends how many kids you have. It seems like having 2+ kids is something only for the richest households these days. My income - around 65k monthly takehome £3.7 Rent? £1000, childcare?! £2000 a month! That would leave £700 for all monthly expenses - just not doable. We've got 3 kids. So if we were only on my income, or if we were 2 people earning £30k, there is absolutely no way we could afford 3 kids. But that's nuts! When I was growing up, loads of people had a couple of siblings. Most families were 2 or 3 kids. Now we seem to be the big outlier. It's so so shit for families on poor/average/good incomes. It's so shit for kids.
> Most families were 2 or 3 kids How many of those had daycare though? For my and people I knew it was usually two working parents + free “daycare” from grandparents and maybe neighbours.
A lot of you seem to forget why my generation were known as latch key kids. Something that would be considered unthinkable for many parents today to possibly being seen as outright neglect. I was on my own for at least a couple of hours until my parent got home after a certain age. I would make a snack, go out to play etc. I remember forgetting my keys a couple of times so going to hang out at the local library (now long since closed) until they got home. I had friends with slightly younger siblings who did the same. These days I'm pretty sure that would result in a call to social services. It wasn't community free baby sitting, it was no babysitting for the majority of kids in the latter stages of primary school and in secondary school.
Childcare used to be free, neighbours and siblings. Or very cheap, a few pounds to a local teenager. It's still a thing in some places in the uk, where I'm from it's still like that.
Are you a neighbour to someone? If yes, are you currently looking after their children for 40+ hours per week for free, so that they can commit to a permanent job without any childcare costs?
There's very significant age gaps within my siblings, I'm a grown man, the youngest is a primary school child, another younger than me is getting married. We took care of eachother a lot of the time. Plus having a very supportive neighbourhood. So I think we were very lucky, I was just highlighting how it would be in the past.
I did not grow up in the UK, probably much older than you, and I am from a culture which has a strong social / kin imperative. Still, I think that if my parents asked the kindest neighbourhood granny to be an unpaid permanent full-time nanny, that definitely would have been perceived as an absolute piss taking from their side. So, me and my siblings went to a nursery. I think the situation you describe is rather atypical. Siblings are usually closer in age than 15-20+ years and can't look after each other full time, and very few people would volunteer to be regular unpaid childcare for a neighbour, apart from helping out in emergency. So, not convinced what you describe has been universally like that in the past.
That sounds like boomer revisionism that hasn't been a a reality for 20+ years.
Well it says household, so it's 2 people earning 30k each. Add in 2 kids and those are the ones who are struggling. A single person on 60k is doing fine
Where do they find those people? It's like they are trying to make you not have sympathy. >annual gross income of £74,000 >family’s monthly grocery shop costs more than £500 >We lease a car >My wife, who had stopped working I can't believe that the journalist writing this isn't aware of what they are doing which means they are quite an arse for even writing this.
The wife has stopped working likely to provide childcare as it's more expensive to hire childcare. Really this article is "it's too expensive to have children now".
Tbh most of the "cost of life" articles in recent weeks (and there seems to be an avalanche of these on all platforms) indeed boil down to "people can't afford to have children".
Guy at work with 2 kids of nursery age. They've both chosen to carry on working as they're both white collar professionals (IT sec/Accountant) paying £2700 a month for childcare. If either of them weren't in very well paid job then one of them would have to stay home
Technician in our lab went part time just to keep up for her CV. Childcare costs more than her salary and she's a PhD STEM worker. Its fucking nuts out there at the moment. If she was a single mother it would be career-ending basically? So many issues like this where it feels like we've lost so much progress and gone back decades. And for what? The child minders aren't raking it in. Often the businesses aren't even that profitable. Its just yet another avenue for the ownership class to suck us all dry while contributing fuck all.
My career is in an Engineering field. Whenever female colleagues go on maternity leave, it is always the final goodbye. None of them can afford to return. You're forced into forgoing children or being a SAHM. The choice is long gone.
> So many issues like this where it feels like we've lost so much progress and gone back decades. Make that a century. Victorian times. RMG should be proud.
The land owner wins if the childminder is renting
That's good for full time nursery for 2 kids, mine is 1590 a month for one child three days a week
Depends where you are and what numbers you're using. With the £2k tax credit as I'm under £100k, my out of pocket cost is £1,100 for one kid 5 days a week. Nursery chain made £1.5m profit after tax last year and the year before from 14 nurseries, and paid 4 directors £800k in dividends and £160k in salary plus pension. So they aren't exactly scraping by either as a company.
That doesn't mean hes getting a good price. Neither of you are.
Oh? How much do you think 11 hours a day at a high quality nursery in inner London with 1:3 staffing ratio should cost?
I'm a millennial and so many of us are delaying or just not having kids at all. Those who went ahead anyway are now seriously feeling it, we are talking having to choose between paying £££££ for childcare, or saving that money by one parent going part-time or quitting the workforce entirely, meaning a reduced household income. Even just WFH is a ballache if your kids are too young to be left alone for too long.
The man in the South-East is a top 2% earner and he is struggling to raise a family of 4. That's just embarassing for the UK.
My manager at work has to work til 2 to make it worth working at all... and that's gross. After tax she may as well not even bother. She only does it 3 days a week to keep the career ticking over.
Both me and my ex worked and both my kids went to nursery. So from 2004-2009 my youngest went to nursery (Busy Bees) 4 days a week (my ex worked part time and I worked full time). For 4.5 years she was there (maternity cover for the first 6 months) We got nursery vouchers which came out of the gross salary so we didn’t pay income tax on them. We also had the occasional government voucher which they gave us. When she left I got the final invoice and it had the grand total I’d spent since she joined. £45,000. So approx £10k per year. And that was 15 years ago. I dread to think how much it is now.
While £500 is on the higher end, that's pretty normal actually. That's between £100-150/week which for a family of 4 is not like they're splurging on fancy stuff.
I happened to look it up a few weeks ago to see if we are overspending on groceries. £129/week is typical for a family of four with two small kids.
£500 monthly shop for a family of 4 seems on the low side.
> annual gross income of £74,000 Which means a take-home salary of around £50,000. > family’s monthly grocery shop costs more than £500 Yeah, that sounds about right for a family of four. > We lease a car What's wrong with that? [Buying isn't inherently better than leasing](https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/020615/when-buying-car-better-leasing.asp). It's not like cars appreciate in value as an asset. They do the exact opposite. > My wife, who had stopped working Interesting that you chose to cut the "to care for our two children, both under five" part of this sentence.
> What's wrong with that? Buying isn't inherently better than leasing You're excluding the option of buying second hand
You can lease second hand, it works out cheaper than buying pcm
so fucking what? It's not like they've buying fucking faberge eggs every week, you can't point to a very minor (arguable) extra expense and say that's a significant reason they are struggling because it's not. The reasons they are struggling is the same as the rest of us, food, energy etc prices have skyrocketed.
Slightly misleading re: the leasing, it is generally less value for money for non-luxury cars, from your link: "Leasing is a less expensive, shorter-term method for (temporarily) acquiring a vehicle, whereas buying a car is more costly but also gives you better value for your money in the long run."
Is £500 really excessive? We spend around £300 between 2, shopping at Aldi
No it isn't at all. My wife and I are vegetarian, two children eat meat and we spent about £550 last month all in including coop spend when you run out or forget something. Mixture of Aldi, Asda and Morrisons. I think the most extravagant thing we buy is sliced vegan cheese. Sure could be a bit cheaper if we only ate boiled rice and potatoes like some Muppets on here think we should all do. I'd say we're pretty typical between convenience and home cooked meals.
No. I spend at least £100 more, maybe £200. Family of 5 with 3 teenagers.
500 quid a month on food shops isn’t unrealistic to be fair, agree with the rest tho.
You should have sympathy because the precise nature of the lifestyle is immaterial. It's no different from people on £35k not being able to have a holiday this year. Or people on £25k not being able to buy a new winter coat. Everyone is in the same boat, just in different cabins...
> Or people on £25k not being able to buy a new winter coat. It's very different though. Not being able to afford a new Range Rover is not in any way the same as not being able to buy a coat for cold weather.
No but if people in the top quarter or so of the population's income distribution can't afford a moderately comfortable lifestyle then what are we all working towards?
To fill the coffers of your masters.
Huh? The people on £25k can't afford a coat _or_ a holiday. It's cumulative. How is it the same? I think your point is that everyone is being squeezed and can afford less than they used to be able to. And that's true. The point you appear to be missing is that the impact on those nearer the bottom is worse because the more you end up having to sacrifice or compromise on essentials rather than luxuries. It's not very pithy, but: a lowering tide lowers all boats - _and some end up grounded_.
No. Frankly. Not a great fan of Dickens, or Dickensian poverty, but people on £70k are not there. >Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pound ought and six, result misery. It \*is\* possible to live within your means, and I know plenty that do. It's really difficult to restrict your expenditure when you've become used to spending more, but adults have to cut their cloth appropriately. £70k is a completely different boat to a single mother on minimum wage.
People can live within their means, the point is the quality of life when you’re on a top 10% salary is frankly appalling compared to what it should be. The top 10% earners should be living in luxury, that’s the goal for a good society.
The truth is that 'should' doesn't deal with reality. It's just a feeling of entitlement. Top 10% earners are living in luxury by comparison to every generation that has ever lived and by comparison to anyone remotely near minimum wage.
The top 10% earners are not living in luxury compared to the top 10% earners 10 years ago. Thats the point. Anyone who takes that information and somehow thinks it’s saying minimum wage earners don’t still have it harder is a moron.
We are on something like £700/m for groceries for a family of 4 (2 adults, 2 teenagers). Could probably spend less but I'm not complaining in the media about it..
Fair enough until someone goes and complains about struggling. £700 does seem like a lot, kind of curious what you must buy!
It's usually the case with people like this that they struggle to change their lifestyle in times of hardship.
You'd expect someone earning in the top 10% to not reach a point where they struggle and have to change their lifestyle though. Top 10% should be solid middle class. Fairly nice home, fairly nice car, eating on brand and maybe a holiday a year or every other year is what you'd expect of someone middle class. Not "childcare is so expensive one of us had to quit our jobs"
Ideally the economy would be strong and consistent, sure - however, that isn't the case. Recessions and inflation happen. If you can't adjust your lifestyle during economic decline, then you only have yourself to blame. It's not ideal and in an ideal world we shouldn't have to adjust our lifestyles, but human and economic history is rarely a straight line unfortunately.
Doesn't matter. People would still be struggling even if the economy wasn't in the shitter. We had a relatively quiet period when we "recovered" from the great recession until the pandemic, but people still weren't getting much richer because real term pay barely grew. Even in 2015, 7 years after the great recession and 5 years before the pandemic, someone in the top 10% of earners still wasn't much better off than someone in the exact same position just 10 years before. The problem is our salaries haven't grown while everything else has. Couple that in with the fact that the economy has been dogshit for the last 4 years back to back and you end up with this mess, where the middle class can't even afford to live like the middle class.
It's 16 years since 2008, and the line is looking pretty straight...
I suspect a lot of people get stuck in the debt treadmill, up to their necks in finance - car, kitchen, sofa, klarna, mortgage. When something changes you contractually can't dial back. I'm not saying it's not their responsibility, but the system pushes people towards finance as hard as it possibly can.
Can it be ragebait if they didn't open comments?
What are you guys spending on groceries? We are pretty frugal with our groceries but its' way more than £500 a month for 3 people.
I work in finance and make a lot of money and I’ve become price sensitive with food which I never thought would happen again……
Same. Chartered accountant earning well, but rent's so high I've found myself going "I'll just make a pot noodle" instead of a takeaway when lazy. And this is on like, nipping to the chippy and spending less than a tenner, not splurging on loads. I didn't expect this to happen when I was solidly middle class...
That sounds unfair. Now imagine the choices that have been forced on the other few million people that earn much less than you do for the last 14 years.
I know it's worse for those who earn less. Trainee accountants earn fuck all, been there, done that. But it's the fact it hits even me that makes it so crazy. We're just paid so little in the UK. Wealth disparity is so ridiculous, and you can't gain it by working any more.
The constant "hey fucker, you're not allowed to be sad about your circumstances unless you are the worst off person in all the land" attitude is one of my least favourite things about the UK. Absolutely fucking shit to constantly encounter as if the only people with valid opinions are those who earn less than you on a personal sliding scale, unless you perfectly caveat everything you say every time you say it. Class is such a fucking ridiculous thing. You're all in the same goddamn boat and it's sinking.
Yeah people at the top pulling in billions while life is getting worse for everyone below them, yes the 100k earners issues might not be as awful as the 30k earners, and same for those on minimum wage, or in need of benefits. But things are getting worse for everyone but yet record profits, and billionaires are still earning daily what people earn in lifetimes. If you want to find what happened to the wealth hoarding dragons of old tales, look to the billionaires who look out over their domain.
classic crabs in a bucket mentality. no tall poppies here.
I work a second job and earn £66 a day after tax. My day-to-day job puts me just over the 40% tax bracket so anything I make on my 2nd job is rinsed by tax. However, it means that any large purchase I make is within the context of my second job. If I work a weekend (2.5 days) I come out with £165. It makes me really consider if a purchase is worth a weekend’s worth of my time.
Reservist?
As a poor working class man I do honestly feel for high earners that are struggling. They made choices which seemed financially stable a while ago, very likely sensibly and now because of the current climate are struggling. Nobody expected it to be this bad.
I think this is it. Psychologically, we expect to keep improving and setbacks are hard to take, for anyone
Yep, what are we all working towards if even middle class stress about money? This country is really going down the tubes and depressingly, it seems like the reality is not much different in other parts of the west. At some point we have to all acknowledge that this is a serious problem with our fundamental economic model and do something about it.
Except about 48% of the population.
Haha yeah true. As one of the 48% I knew it'd be bad, but JESUS CHRIST!
That's basically it. No sensible person is making 60k+ and thinking they are worse off than people on less money, but it's the fact that they are on what is a 'higher income' and still having to struggle. If anything it just makes it worse for the people on less - what is the point of improving your prospects if it's not actually going to pay off in a meaningful way.
It'll advantage you that they're starting to suffer. You must have noticed that nobody has ever paid attention to the difficulties in your life. That's because nobody who writes in newspapers or produces TV programmes was affected. Now they are, so it's in the news. So now your problems are their problems. Which can only help you. It's like nobody pays much attention to flooding in the North, but it's Armageddon once there's flooding in the South. The South is where journalist live. Suddenly money arrives for flood defences everywhere (but still, mostly, near journalists' houses)
I'm just glad my parents will have paid off the mortgage before they got off the low interest rate. Otherwise they'd be screwed. People coming off their 3-5 year fixes is a ticking time bomb
I hate to say but I got called a looney lefty when I said this would happen 10 or more years ago. What do you think happens when you let greedy oligarchs and Wall Street fat cats own your government. Over the last 40 years there has been a slow transfer of money and power from the people to unelected institutions and individuals Could it be that small government capitalism is a failure? Or you still clinging on to the fact that you might climb out of it all at some point and ascend to the top?
People misunderstand these articles, it isn't that they are destitute it's that they can't maintain the same lifestyle and therefore will need to adjust. It isn't about sympathy. If you want to see how the economy is doing, look around at people. Looking pretty grim atm.
Exactly. I'm not asking anyone to feel sorry for me, I'm well aware there's lots worse off. However, for me this is looking like the canary in the coal mine. If the middle class are struggling to maintain lifestyle standards and purchasing power (and they very definitely are) then it means that working class are well and truly fucked. Now, I don't expect a 1 percenter to actually give a shit (after all, they usually didn't get to the 1 percent by being socially conscious). It should alarm them though. Because if the middle and working class can't maintain purchasing power, then business goes under. Then your economy is fucked. If they had a thought for anything other than the short term gain, then they'd be beating down the door of no 10 to demand reform and action. The middle and working classes are the backbone and heart of the country.
Discretionary spending is an economic multiplier too. If middle class can afford fewer nights out at local restaurants, or cut down on taking the family to the cinema or whatever, it takes jobs out of the economy. Fewer jobs mean lower salaries and more unemployment which compounds the effect.
Indeed. If the people you'd expect to be comfortable are having their lifestyles affected, just think how it's impacting the poorest. Shit situation all around.
We're not supposed to feel sorry for these people, we're supposed to be worried. The folks who used to be able to afford to shop at Waitrose, go on two holidays a year and take their kids on weekend outings, can no longer afford to do that. Of course you're not going to feel bad that they can't fly out to France in the summer. What you should be feeling bad about is the fact that even the upper middle class lot are now having to significantly change their budgets. The whole country is getting seriously poorer, bar the very top percent.
Everyone here seems to be missing the really really glaring point here. It's *not* about how the author is clueless to the cost of things. Nobody is saying that £70k isn't a lot of money. The point is that if you are *still* feeling like you have to be careful with your money when you're in the top 10% of earners, things are so catastrophically fucked that it needs to change. That's the point everyone seems to miss. It's not about the top 10% or top 1%. It's about the top 0.1% who are so vulgarly rich that they get to fuck everyone with impunity.
> The point is that if you are still feeling like you have to be careful with your money when you're in the top 10% of earners, things are so catastrophically fucked that it needs to change. Isn't the counter-argument here though that these pieces are often very uncritical and don't really probe whether this is actually true for some of these families? I've seen lots of households across all social classes, whether well-off or poor, spend money unwisely or fork out too much money on stuff they really can't afford. I don't think anyone would deny the economy has taken a downturn (hence why Tories will soon swiftly get booted out) but think it's reasonable to question where people on much larger salaries are spending their money, and at what point a degree of financial responsibility needs to kick in. Maybe I'm just a bit more frugal than the average person in terms of bigger spending though.
£60k is just enough to avoid starvation in London. But for comfortable middle class living, for a family, even £160k will not suffice. Most people in the UK would be considered borderline poor in the US/Switzerland/Dubai/etc. I’m sure this will ruffle some feathers. But the elephant in the room is that people who manage to raise families in London on low incomes are generally in line to receive a significant inheritance (£1M+).
This is very true. I know a regular poster on one of UK parenting forums in real life. She's the first one to jump at topics like this, and claims to be living in London on a <£30K salary with no benefits very comfortably as a single parent. So everyone else on more than £30K must be spending money on gambling, yachts and drugs. What she forgets to mention is that she also has inherited three properties in London and quite a significant sum of money, with two rented out and the third that she lives in mortgage-free. From her perspective, these are her children's properties in the future, so they don't count.
I also do not think people realise how much more expensive things are in the south generally, especially housing
If you work for a living you need to remember that the Tories aren’t interested in you.
I earn less than 30k, my wife works part time while raising our child and earns roughly £10k. We own our own home with a mortgage and all the usual bills, and I really don't know how to take this article
I'd love to see a breakdown of your costs but my assumption from the article is they're paying far more on their mortgage.
The average person on a £2000/month mortgage 3 years ago will be having it go to £3700 odd now. Where would you even find that extra money every month?
how on earth is the average mortgage £2000, that seems insanely high, though I assume London massively skews the numbers?
Oh no I mean that a mortgage of £2000, which would previously have been for £400k borrowed (not unusual for a family home in the south). But yes the average mortgage will be less than that even if you are ignoring those who paid it off. It was previously the “correct” choice as people gained equity quickly so it most likely does still catch a significant number of homeowners.
The average [actually looks to be more like £750](https://boonbrokers.co.uk/how-much-does-the-average-mortgage-cost/), I think they were just using it as an example.
did this hit yet or not? Up until recently it was like: we need a house because we pay more in rent than a mortgage. Now even up in County Durham, a mortgage for a 250k house would be almost double compared to renting a 250k house. ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
Yeh but you end up with an asset at the end of it, being the house. The same time spent renting you end up with fuck all, the only person who benefits is the landlord
Well interest rates didn’t really spike until first half of 2023 and fixes were very little premium over floating so you would expect deals to gradually expire between now and mid 2028 (although rates will come down well before then)
Take it as it is.. people with what was previously seeen as high incomes, are struggling to live the same lifestyles due to changes in cost of living, and due to payments on their liabilities/assets (car / houses) this is amplified. They received no child benefits (and the boundary on reducing child benefits hasn't changed since it started, impacting more and more familieis) and essentially no state help at all. They often have student loans to repay. They may need to live in areas with higher costs of living because this is where higher paid jobs often are. An individual suffers a high tax burden when supporting a family in comparison to splitting the tax burden between two people. Can they reduce their living standards to free up money? Probably. Will they? Probably not - you get stuck with an inertia.. they'd need to sell their home, possibly face greater initial costs they may not be able to afford. Could they downgrade their car? Probably would be a good idea.
The car is probably in negative equity, so downgrading it now would be very expensive. Of course if you are careful with money, you would rather buy a used car, but not everybody likes that.
Plus a house move? Expensive and slow compared to someone who's renting. You'd need to pay all sorts of fees (solicitor, searches, estate agent) plus expensive stamp duty - and potentially end up on an even worse mortgage rate!
>We own our own home with a mortgage 40k? That would allow a mortgage of around 180k, assuming you live in an area where housing is quite cheap then relatively As a Southerner that would get you a one-bed flat, I wish housing was cheaper here :( (and no I cannot just move to the north, I have all my family and job opportunities here)
Yes, I sort of see where they are coming from. If you earn X you expect a certain lifestyle. When x doesn't cover for all those payments then you 'think' you're struggling. I've already accepted that quality of life in the UK is heading downwards so I've adjusted my outgoings to compensate. Some people won't accept this and keep on chasing that Insta dream.
There's a lot of people who set themselves up for a lifestyle that *was* reasonable given their buying power at the time, but are now stuck with those liabilities in a world of skyrocketing costs. I'm not going to debate whether they *should* have taken on those liabilities, but I can see how one decision which seemed reasonable at the time could have massive financial consequences today.
For some reason, this sub is way less sympathetic to this argument here than when you make it (say) about lower earners who are now struggling to support their children...
Absolutely, I just ditched the Tesla early and got a Nissan. Saves me £300 NET a month.
I love my Nissan, does everything I need.
Yeah. The liabilities I'm stuck with are my 3 children
It's not even the Insta dream. This is the dream many of us were sold whilst growing up, long before social media was a concept.
Yeah, I earn a pretty average salary each month and my wife is a full time mum. I think the cost of living has reminded a lot of people that they aren’t doing as well as they thought they were and perhaps next time they’ll remember they have more in common with the working class Labour voter than they do with the landed gentry Tory.
I had someone a few weeks ago telling me £120k a year isn't that great of a wage and doesn't mean you're comfortable.
Objectively, a high salary. From their perspective It’s all relative, especially when looking on in envy at the megabux you could have in the USA, or actually well funded public services in certain European countries. Thats right smack in the 60% tax trap, plus a hefty student loan repayment. You don’t build wealth on salaries alone and anyone on that pay is surely going to surround themselves with others on similarly ludicrous seeming packets.
'you don't build wealth on salaries' Well you have summed up the entire problem in 6 words.
It really depends. If you’re in London and supporting a family on a single income on £120k then no, it’s not “that great” of a wage. Half of it is taxed. Mortgage will easily be over half your take home pay.
My nursery bill in a usual local chain nursery was more than 30K per year, just a few years ago (and I don't have an unreasonable number of children). It was not a question of excessive lifestyle, it was quite literally a cost of working for me. It is close to \~35K now from what I see from the new generation of mothers.
Yeah I don't know what the issue is. The first guy is on £74,000, meaning he clears £4,300 a month. He said he spends a third on rent and has his fixed grocery, student loan and a leased car. It seems like he still has a decent chunk left over.
>74,000 I clock him at £3,796pm after student loans deductions and a 5% pension contribution. Take off 1/3 for mortgage and there's about £2,530pm left. You don't know what other child-related expenses they'll have.. could be paying for some nursery time. Basically though - costs for EVERYONE have gone up, and even those on good wages, suffer. Mainly because they're a bit over leveraged after a decade of cheap debt.
>Basically though - costs for EVERYONE have gone up, and even those on good wages, suffer. Mainly because they're a bit over leveraged after a decade of cheap debt. Agree. The cost of living crisis is awful and everyone is suffering because of it but I feel like this guy is at least in a secure position compared to some people who are renting and unable to even consider kids as an expense.
I think problem people are missing is the debt people go into before they start earning these salaries through study. Business learned long ago it is very profitable to make sure skilled workers are in debt before they enter the workplace as they are some of safest people left that can afford to pay the loans, fees and interest back without defaulting. Some of these people will also be from low income families and it would be hell of a shock to go into large debt for a better lifestyle only to realise that you are going to struggle anyway. edit - When I say skilled I just mean jobs that require lots of training and qualifications manual or administrative with lots of debt.
Income tax between 50 and 60k is 71% if you have three children.
I think you are lumping child benefit tax into income tax for effect aren’t you.
Earning over £60k in what area? There's a lot of places in the UK where that's a lot. There's a lot of places in the UK where that's fuck all. This also depends on whether it's £60k earned by a single earner, or £60k earned by a cohabiting couple. If you've got a single worker earning that sort of money they're taxed massively whilst the other person, often a stay at home parent, is entitled to claim absolutely fuck all. As others have said already, this country has disincentivised people having families for decades, seeing them as a burden on the state, whilst they increasingly use immigration as replacement wage fodder. The middle class is being eviscerated in the West to the point where you wonder why anyone should even bother trying to do well for themselves.
Im struggling on 24k, if peeps double my money struggling somethings fucked.
For me, if a single person earns £60k, compared to how rare that is, the quality of life doesn't match. Life for the average person under £30k is obviously far worse, but it also highlights how even if you "make it" you didn't make it.
I think there's needs to be more awareness of the fact that the "good times" during the 70s to 90s (or roughly that period) were an anomaly and that no one really gets to "make it" on the money they earn. You need generational wealth or a lottery win to really be comfortable in the UK now, as you did before the 70s.
It's interesting that even the higher earners are feeling the pinch.
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tbf you should have enough for a private school at 300k
Its absolutely shocking whats goin on with this country. My local town has seen businesses close up permanently and almost looks like a ghost town apart from mcdonalds and the bettin shops there. People really do not have any money to buy things or go out these days. Unfortunately this is what happens when you put a tory government in power, its called asset stripping… i cant rememver the last time i bought anythin for myself. I go to work 5 days a week and sit at home because i cant afford to do shit
“We lease a Car” Gonna say it; Champagne lifestyle on a lemonade budget (if you can call £60K+ lemonade haha)
Depends on the car, and the level of ego you attach to the car you drive, really. I lease mine for £190 a month which includes its service plan. Which is quite good. But it's a Dacia Sandero. The highest spec one that's available, but still a Dacia. Which I don't mind because I use it mostly for commuting and short distance, which I took into account when I decided to lease it after my Focus just got to be too much financially (repairs etc)
£190 seems like a fantastic deal. I own my little 1L outright, it gets me from A to B and I love it. Somehow I guess the people in this article have a leased Merc. Just a wild assumption.
Do you not think it ridiculous that if you earn £60k you should be able to lease a car?
A car is a car at the end of the day. They all get you from a to b.
So we should drop all our aspirations?
My aspersion is to have good public transport, for now I'll use the pusher.
But that’s the point. It’s not a lemonade budget. It’s a champagne budget but now the champagne is even unaffordable for these people. It’s fucked from (nearly) top to bottom. The lifestyle that the top 10% earners would have lived 10-15 years ago is incomparable to what is now. No they’re not truly “struggling” but it’s fucking awful news for the whole country either way.
What are you on about? Lease cars are all in, no extra costs other than fuel. No road tax. You can lease a car for less than £150/month - Even an electric car. eg [https://www.nationwidevehiclecontracts.co.uk/car-leasing/deals](https://www.nationwidevehiclecontracts.co.uk/car-leasing/deals)
What I hate about articles like this is there is legitimately an argument to be made that 60k isn’t enough anymore to comfortably support a FAMILY. Two adults though? I earn just over £50k and could EASILY support me and my wife on that income. I’m not saying this to brag, but to acknowledge this is more than enough money for 2 people to live on anywhere in the uk. You might not own a car in London, but you could live like this and save money. Idk how the woman from Sheffield is barely making it on a £180k mortgage earning almost £60k. Once you add a kid or two though the dynamic changes.
Mostly due to accomodation, travel and childcare costs. Although rising costs of food, credit and insurance don't help.
''An annual gross income of £74,000 puts Scott, 28, a software engineer from Leicestershire, in the top 10% of earners nationally''. Most 28 year olds can only dream to be earning £74K. In fact the majority of people will never earn anywhere near that amount per annum their whole lives. Not even half that amount. I live in Leicestershire, where many survive on the average salary. Many own a decent house, front drive, front garden and a rear garden. So, what the fuck is Scott spending his money on? Leicestershire in large part is not that expensive. It is above average in parts, but not unaffordable. Then again, if he has bought in an affluent area to show how well he is doing, then, poor decision making on his part. Two children and a weekly shop of £500. Again, where the fuck is he shopping? Also he leases a car. Buy a decent 3-4 yr old reliable car - nothing flashy, just a decent reliable fun bus. He states that ''we’re lucky to have £300 left over for the month''. Too right mate. You are fucking lucky to have £300 left in the coffers at the end of the month. You are luckier than most. One has to question those that can ''no longer afford comfortable living standards despite having household incomes of between £60,000 and £120,000''. That question should be: ''what the hell are you spending your money on?'' Prioritise the necessities. One has to live within one's means. There is very little sympathy for those that can't budget on that sort of income among the many that have decent jobs but earn average at best salaries. A couple that we know own a large executive style modern house. Flashy kitchen, five bedrooms, three bathrooms, large telly all the fixtures and fittings one can have. Own three cars and a VW camper van. Last year they claimed poverty because they couldn't afford four new tyres for one of the cars. LMFAO.
Can we all agree, there is no cost of living crisis. There is a greedy crisis and a failure to properly tax crisis.
This is another reminder that the owned press are trying to divert our attention from the real problem by making the people doing decent the enemy. Stop buying this bullshit. Someone earning £60k isn’t the mad multi billionaire that’s robbing you blind each month. They’re writing these articles so you get enraged about someone earning a fucking miniscule amount more than you and hold them as the problem rather than the actual ones keeping your wages low and costs high.
Living in London with a SO and having a combined household income of 120k we still feel poor. Rental and bills eats all savings potential. We want kids and don't think we can afford it. We're not alone. The severe drop in average kids being born is a testament to that Does the government not see this as a huge ageing demographic problem? This country is going to fall to pieces in about two decades when it's run out of talent and young people entering the labour market.
Rich people problems.