To be so annoyed at this woman's financial incompetence

But she won't be on nearly 5 times your wage once tax and NI are taken into account. More like 2.5 - 3 times min wage. Appreciate it still a lot of money and still more than your net salary, but I find on Mumsnet especially, people look solely at headline gross salary and not what net income result will be.

I had a friend who used to be very vocal about how much more than her I earned (she saw the ad published for my job with salary). We were both single parents of two children. But her part time salary, topped up with tax credits and housing benefit meant my so called big salary was £50 a month net more than all her income. I had the pleasure of working 39 hours a week against her 21. It was what it was. I chose to do the job I did and long term it has paid off well for me but it used to grate when she went on about how much money I had because of my big salary.

I think 'boo fucking hoo' sums up my attitude to that article. Can't say I'm particularly annoyed about it, more rolly-eyed and a tad amused.

Utterly mortifying though, to parade your complete financial illiteracy to the world in that way 😳

£2100 per month if she bought a sensible car, didn't have dogs/a cleaner and took in a lodger.

YABU.

Her point is absolutely valid: it is more expensive to live independently as a single person than as a couple.

So, she's supposed to give up having a dog? Even though she lives on her own and a dog is a good companion and an aid to safety (I have a dog who would guard me from intruders).

Ad I imagine to pull in the salary she earns, she doesn't have much time for domesticity, and no partner to share the load - so a cleaner is probably necessary to enable her to earn what she does.

And because she's single, she should take in a lodger? I know, let's force all of you on benefits to take in a lodger and get rid of your pets. Because, really, what are you complaining about?

She's paying for your benefits, by paying far more tax than a married couple.

People in couples have no.idea. Really you don't

True. I have my doubts that this article is genuine, but I'm delighted that there exist people who pay cleaners and dog groomers, and I want them to continue doing so. I know people who do both jobs, that's their living and it matters!

If she’s spending on dog care, cleaner, gardener etc she’s spending on employing people in her local economy - something which ought to be lauded instead of despised. 100k doesn’t go as far as it should. This woman pays 1000s in tax and then spends the rest in our economy - if she stops spending and sticks it all in her pension it will have a detrimental effect on her local economy and her taxable income would be less. We should want high earners to feel they can spend unless we want to live in a country where we all only spend the bare minimum at large faceless corporations and anything left is squirrelled away ‘just in case’.

You were manipulated into reacting to the article, which was exactly the author's intent. It's alarming if you are unable to see that.

You're not easily influened to spend money, but you're easily manipulated into reacting how trashy tabloids want you to.

Yeah that bit sounds odd. Hello Fresh makes meals for 2. Unless she freezes meals I can't see how it works for her anyway. Its been a while since I used Hello Fresh, but I paid c. £30 for 3 x 2 portion meals per week. So 6 meals. That is c. £120 for 24 main meals. Not a bargain, but where is the rest of it going???

The dog bit is easy. Doggy daycare, stunningly expensive if you use it often. I checked recently here just out of curiosity. £25 per day for one dog/day
Food maybe £50 pm per dog, insurance, vaccinations =expensive animals, dogs.

@tropicalroses I think the point of the article is £100k a year is a lot of money, no one on that sort of salary should be having to budget or cut corners.

This is completely naive though, every income has a budget.

She's tone deaf to real poverty, which is fairly typical of people on larger than average salaries.

Her doggy daycare, food bill, cleaner, gardener for grass cutting, person to do her ironing means she can only afford a few holidays a year. Fine, her choices.

Wondering if just a story to drum up business for her legal work.

Good points about tax differences but £500 on food - that my spend on 4 people. Hello fresh? I could live like a king on £150 and put the rest in a pension.

£100k brings in £5713 pm assuming no pension contributions or student loan. A basic of £159k is needed to hit £8k pm, again assuming no student loan or pension contributions. That’s a big salary to achieve a relatively modest lifestyle.

I would focus on getting that therapy OP rather than getting yourself in a tizzy about a DM article written with the sole intention to get easily influenced readers such as yourself in a tizzy

I think it is a case of the more money you have coming in each month,the more things you find that are 'essential' to spend it on. I mean,if you've got in the region of 8 grand a month coming in,then you're probably going to spend £250 a month on a cleaner,buy expensive food from Waitrose and go on expensive foreign holidays every year. Then when the cost of living starts creeping up (as it has lately) then slowly but surely,those luxuries become unaffordable.

Yes. I haven’t had a holiday since 2017 because I simply can’t afford one.

No worries @Everanewbie .

Apologies for my assumptions on your post. The person in question does seems to have let her expenditure run away with her to a degree, and I've confused by general point with talking directly about the subject of the article.

But what I see, generically, £100kpa is not the dream life that people may imagine. If I were to shed tears, it would be for the homeless, or those struggling with disabilities, not a single woman on £100k struggling to pay her gardener. But the cost of living, the £100k trap and the freezing of thresholds has meant that £100k doesn't run a family as well as you might think it would. Many people, especially those that are perhaps in their 60s and beyond, don't appreciate how hard it is to hit the heights that they did given the financial climate. I mean, if i hear one more boomer talking about 15% interest rates - it was for a few months on a loan 3-4x the average salary at a time that you were getting inflation busting pay rises!!! The average house price is now 8-10x the average salary with interest rates at 5.5%, sustained, with no immediate prospect of significant cuts.

My stepson spends about that

I get it. I'm single and earn min wage so I don't know how she thinks I (just about) cope when she can't on nearly 5 x my wage

Sadly, I'm an accountant and feel the same. Some people just won't listen to reason. There's so much financial incompetence, and education/intelligence doesn't come into it. I've had some very senior/intelligent/educated clients who can only be described as financially incompetent/illiterate, including some very high earning IT consultants (who should be Mathematical wizards given their job and earnings) who not only don't know how to handle money, but don't show any interest when advice is offered and despite earning shedloads of money seem to waste a huge proportion of it due to financial mistakes.

@Everanewbie
How've you leapt to that conclusion? In my line of work, I'm painfully aware of how difficult life is for young people and the ones I know wouldn't be running to the press to tell how they can't afford to live on 100k. They're trying to survive on the £834 you describe as 'only'.
This woman isn't a 'young family'. She's a middle-aged self-employed divorcée with no kids, a 3 bedroom semi, huge garden by the sea and 2 dogs who hasn't managed to make sensible decision about her own future and expects sympathy. Not exactly Cry me a River is it?