What is your household income, how much is benefits, and how are you coping?

A ‘ better lifestyle’ ??
Mmm.. getting hair dyed and having holidays, is the stuff dreams are made of, for many I’m afraid!!

Your car is SEVEN years old. That’s not old!

I grew up in a council house with 2 siblings and a single mother, who worked part time. We were poor, real poverty not relative poverty.

I find that it’s actually made me more aware and grateful for what we have. We’re fortunate to afford to live where we do, we’re fortunate that we can put good food on the table, and we’re fortunate to be able to have surplus and unnecessary bills without ending up at £0.

£500 is a lot to have left after everything has been paid and the kids have been fed. Sounds like neither of us had that growing up.

I think we’re better off seeing that, than feeling hard done to that we don’t have more.

£153K combined.
We are ancient though!

No wonder people are losing hope.

Exactly

I guess it’s all relative, but I grew up in poverty with a single mother who didn’t work and relied on benefits in the 90s. Assumed with a degree and professional jobs, on 90k household income, I’d be richer than needing to buy clothes second hand, box-dying my hair, forgoing holidays and panicking about car bills like she had to

There's something in this. My parents lived on 1 income which was considerably less than mine, and despite having to support 4 people on it, they ran 2 cars, we had foreign holidays, days out, ate at restaurants regularly etc. I could only dream of that and I've a household of 1. Something has gone wrong somewhere.

A household income of £160k is not the top 1% of households.

You are wrong.

DH wage is around £34k. I get carer's allowance of just over £80 a week for DS (now an adult so his PIP etc goes directly to him) and earn about £6k a year doing admin from home while he's at his SEN college. We get child benefit for our youngest DD.

Our outgoings are lowish and mortgage is around £600 month (our second biggest bill is gas/electric at £300 but DS is severely physically disabled so has electric everything). We seem to manage ok day to day but don't have loads of savings and I don't have a personal pension.

We are on about 23k combined and struggling all of the time.
It's so depressing, I'm miserable from it. Of course we get some UC but it never stretches far enough. The whole house needs new carpets (to the point it's completely worn down to tracks) but at £500 a room it's just so unaffordable.

I think this is a really interesting post, demonstrating a big problem that we have, namely that a large income doesn’t lead to a great lifestyle any more.

The old deal was that if you worked hard you’d be rewarded with a good life. Now you can have a household income of £90k, topped up with another couple of grand in child benefit, and because of the CoL you still have to scrabble around each month. No room to save, no money for a rainy day.

Increasingly the only way to achieve financial security is to inherit substantial wealth. Otherwise you will be scrabbling around forever. Only the highest earning few will achieve security through income/work.

And of course it will be worse for our kids, many of whom will be paying 9% additional tax forever in the form of student loan repayments.

No wonder people are losing hope or opting out.

@Gabrilla I've never had my hair dyed in a salon . Because it's too expensive.

And yes - it's got to be a joke that with your household income you're allowed to claim child benefit. Bloody ridiculous.

We were in this situation @Gabrilla a few years ago. Similar joint salary, live in SE, 2 kids (not 4!). All my wage went on nursery, my husband paid mortgage, bills, food. No clothes, no holidays (unless his parents took us away), no savings. I went to work so that I could stay in work and help us to be in a better financial situation once nursery fees ended.

Now both kids are in school, our salaries have more than doubled (a privilege of our career paths), and we can afford holidays, new stuff etc. We don’t have to worry and budget about food so much. Our mortgage did increase by about £1000 when we had to remortgage recently - something that would have been totally inconceivable before but now is annoying (sorry, sounds flippant, not the right word). Things will get easier as the children get older and although life is not easy or luxurious, you are in a good position.

How old is your DC now?

Surely it won't be 4 years until school?

Do any free hours apply to you at any point?

DH kids aren't a luxury. Paying a premium to be close to them isn't a luxury. It's just being a decent parent.

£8k take home between us. Only major bill is our rent which is £2k a month, would like to buy but houses prices here, SE, high and it feels less likely to happen as time goes on.

You still have £500.00 after bills?
That's a lot of money, our monthly float is about £280.00 & we don't live like penniless hermits.
(2 working adults & 1 7yr old child)

ok fine- I stand corrected. Posting in a rush in my lunch hour.

Personal income and household income are different.

The £160k figure is from 2018.

The difference in household composition is calculated via the IFS calculator.

Combined income of £160k. Monthly outgoings: mortgage & bills 3k, commuting £400, car payment £500, dog care £200, a few international holidays per year, no benefits. No kids yet but pregnant with first child so things will probably change soon.

I do see why larger households on £90k would be unable to afford luxuries in this economy unfortunately. It’s not unreasonable, OP.

But that's a different statistic.*

😆

Joint 150k- no benefits.

Mortgage is £700, other bills about the same i think, DH pays them so im not sure.
I spend £600 on groceries, 4adults and 3 greedy cats! We split saving £900 a month for holidays. I give my mum £160 a month to help with her bills. Try to save £200 a month for emergencies.

I love Vinted for clothes!!

Some one on 90k takes home 5.2k net...

@HerOopNorth you confused gross & net 🙄

@HerOopNorth Total net income on £90K is around 7,500 pm.

No it’s not 😂

But that's a different statistic.

I was looking at household income.
What are you looking at to find the 18% stat? If it's looking at households with children then it's different to looking at all the households.

I'm not saying it's not a relevant or interesting stat, but the one I cited is not wrong.

I don’t think that mortgage is astronomical. If you have a £500k mortgage over 20 years at 4% that’s £3k a month. If you live in the south east £500k + deposit isn’t going to get you far.