Good salary for couple with two kids?

[MovingtoUK]

My husband was offered a job at the UK branch of his company (now living in Belgium). We would like to live in the UK for a while, but do not know what salary you need for a 'normal' family? As I am pregnant of our second I do not expect to be employed the next two years. Would a salary of 58,000 pounds be sufficient for a family of four?

[bloss]

Message withdrawn

[BonsoirAnna]

Do you own a house? If you having mortgage/rent to consider £58,000 might not go far in London/SE.

[ravenAK]

Plenty, so long as you're not living anywhere too silly for house prices/rents.

Dh & I both work, have 3 kids (one at school, two in f/t paid childcare). We earn a bit more than that between us...we get by!

[bigchris]

we live down south, have a sizeable mortgage and have a combined income of 32K

[bigchris]

forgot to addwe manage but only just, with the help of overdraft facilities and a credit card

[callmeovercautious]

Outside of London with average cost of living (reasonable Mortgage on average 3/4 bed). You would manage. If however you both like new cars, smoke, drink, have a designer shoe fetish etc It won't stretch that far

[Podrick]

I think you really need to define what you mean by normal and what your lifestyle expectations are...obviously what kind of property you want to live in and if you are renting/ buying outright/ big mortgage/small mortgage

[Podrick]

this income is more than double the average wage so you won't exactly be struggling

[MovingtoUK]

We would move to Reading (or somewhere nearby) and either rent (should we stay only 2-3 years) or buy a home (should we plan to stay longer).

[MovingtoUK]

By "normal" life, I mean what we're used to now, which looks like this: we have a average family home (3 bedrooms) , one car (ford focus), go on holiday twice a year (1x car, 1x fly) (but remember Belgium is so small: a holiday to France is just a hours drive for us...), we have good public schools, so that doesn't cost much, we save a little and I guess spend average on family trips (zoo etc) and sports.

[Lilymaid]

We have lived fairly comfortably in the better areas of Reading and surrounding villages, in a detatched house, on a salary comparable to that, but we had a mortgage with a good amount of equity (over 50%)in our house.

[Northernlurker]

three bed houses in Reading - look and see what your dream house would cost you

[newgirl]

yes i think so especially in the reading area - you can live in a wide area surrounding reading and it would be easy for him to get to work

[MrsSchadenfreude]

What sort of salary does he get in Belgium? We moved from Belgium to UK nearly three years ago and found UK so much more expensive - even little things like going swimming or to the cinema were about two or three times the price of Belgium. And we seem to constantly throw money at stuff here and have nothing to show for it - council tax, heating bills etc eat a big chunk of your money.

I grew up near Reading, by the way...

[coolma]

Am amazed no-one has reared up at this! We earn around £36,000 between us for a family of four and manage perfectly well thank you! And that's in a very expensive part of the country, with a big-ish mortgage. childcare etc.

On 58K we'd be extremely happy!

[SlightlyMadSwineFlu]

Our combined income with 3DCs (outside London) is SIGNIFICANTLY less than that and we are doing fine. Although TBF we bought out house when prices were much much lower).

[hercules1]

coolma - what might be a big mortgage to you might be a small one to someone else!

[coolma]

Very true =- it probably is actually!!

[ruddynorah]

you'll be fine.

we're in west yorkshire. earn around £45k between us. one child, another on the way. 2 cars. average 3 bed semi.