Meet the Henry- High Earner not rich yet

Henry absolutely should be paying more tax to help support Ethel. I don't disagree. But people saying that Henry should just move up North so he can buy a house for 120k are missing the fact that that means Henry will take a big pay cut and be paying less tax. And the UK needs the tax he pays to support Ethel. Plus if lots of Henries identify an area where they can do that, and all start to do that house prices will sky rocket and Ethel won't be able to afford a house, and she'll complain.

Yes, speaking as someone whose household income is less than 100k and still lives a pretty nice lifestyle up north, actually it's very much in my interests that Henry and co stay exactly where they are, eat up the batshit housing costs and marginal tax rates.

If he were my friend, I'd tell him unless you really love London or are getting something out of it that you need and can't get elsewhere, get on your bike and look for work up here/do the job remotely. My loved ones deserve that advice. But actually, I wouldn't much like the consequences if enough of him did that and I suspect neither would a lot of the people suggesting it.

I know quite a few single female henrys who buy in poor areas in east London as they grew up near there and think its perfectly fine and want a house with garden for cats/dogs. They can easily afford to borrow 400k to 500k from the bank.

This has meant that rents for a 2 bed flat in these previously cheap areas have now ballooned to a similar level as my leafy nw london suburb. Families are now living in rooms rather than flats in tat area now. People on 30k now have to live in flat shares in east London where the neighbouring room has a nhs dietician with her husband and baby. Presumably she can move to a cheaper place up north if she gets a transfer to a nhs hospital there.

What is happening to the northerners then, would landlords prefer to rent to a single mum with 3 kids and part time income supplemented by uc when they could rent to a couple on nhs salaries from abroad (many landlords nowadays like to rent to nhs staff from abroad as they have stable incomes and very unlikely to stop paying as this will affect their chance of getting ILR). This is probably how people become homeless in very cheap Northern towns.

And (I'll stop soon :) ) on top of all of the arguing and bad feelings between Henry and Ethel, we have BRI(I)AN (Bloody Rolling In (It) And Noiseless) who is super rich, has a lot of political influence, has everything tied up in tax avoidance schemes meaning he pays a far lower proportion of his income in taxes than Henry and even possibly Ethel.

Plus whatever we can come up for for someone sitting on substantial house equity that has come from house price increases, but decides that they're poor because their salary income is only at Ethel's level (coming up with BRIAN took it out of me for now).

I can't work out if we're meant to try to live below our means in the areas we can control day-to-day or not? Many people on high headline incomes have a lot of fixed costs, including tax, mortgage, student loans and nursery fees, which can't be changed on a whim and are the direct cost of earning the high salary in the first place. So are we only allowed to shop at Waitrose? But then you'll say we need to cut our cloth and stop whining...

Henry absolutely should be paying more tax to help support Ethel. I don't disagree. But people saying that Henry should just move up North so he can buy a house for 120k are missing the fact that that means Henry will take a big pay cut and be paying less tax. And the UK needs the tax he pays to support Ethel. Plus if lots of Henries identify an area where they can do that, and all start to do that house prices will sky rocket and Ethel won't be able to afford a house, and she'll complain.

If Ethel is going to be saying that a single man on 100k at 34 is 'rich' then Henry shouldn't have to be considering a house share in order to save decently or moving out of London to a low cost income area. Of course he's doing decently, but rich should mean able to buy a decent flat/house a decent distance from your workplace, not having to worry about budgeting for groceries and being able to save decently provided you don't spunk it all away on designer handbags and fast cars. 20 years ago someone in the equivalent of Henry's role may well have been 'rich' in those terms, but wages have stagnated (except for the very very top paying careers where they've gone crazy), expenses have sky rocketed, and the tax bandings haven't kept up.

On £180k or £250k, they literally don't have to shop at aldi. Absolute tone deaf bollocks to say so. It's also super snobby because Aldi is great.

To be fair it could be my age (early 30s) but people I know on 30k don't have this and they don't have kids. It is the higher earners I know who have kids. I know a guy on 25k and he is single/ owns his 2 bed flat which he bought for 110k after many years of saving and also 2 years living with his mum (though she charged him an amount close to rent of a room). He is due to be mortgage free next year at 40 due to an inheritance from his grandparents (his father died prematurely and his father's share went to him).

Even so what he absolutely couldn't do without is nhs (esp in his later life) and also help with social care once the equity in his flat runs out (very easy if the flat is only worth around 100k). Right now the government will pay for that and that is ££££, care home space 70k per year even outside London! All this needs to be funded somehow and we are already struggling

Or her state pension. Henry probably can survive without the state pension because he will likely have accrued a decent workplace pension over his life time (even if not wow, his private pension will probably at least equal the state pension + pension credits). ETHEL probably needs the state pension to be able to ever stop working.

My HHI (married, one nursery aged kid) is £250k and shopping at Aldi/Lidl is material for us. We don't have to but we have significant debts that worry us a lot (mortgage, student loans, private student loans) and we want to save a material amount for our child/ren and retirement because we don't expect any kind of state support in future, as we expect more and more means-testing and limited state funds available.

This might be what PP means by "have to shop at Aldi". In theory these costs are discretionary but it will be expensive and/or risky in the long run to ignore them.

You'll all moan about "rich bankers who didn't bother to save for their own retirements" if we don't do the above...

You absolutely do not.

No, I don’t think it would be typical for a 35 year old man on £100k a year to be living in a flat share for affordability reasons.

And as I said - that you think that’s a reasonable situation for someone at this income level is kind of the point of the article. He’s in the top 4% of earners, he should be comfortably able to buy or rent his own place.

People under 35 will have chunky student loan repayments for most of their careers - it’s crazy to think even high earners need to be living in flat shares to keep costs down (and I disagree that he can only afford a flat share by the way - it’s a fine income for a single man, if not delivering a lifestyle as good as one might expect).

Also…would ETHEL be pleased to see the end of her child benefit, child tax credits, free nursery hours, and housing benefit? HENRY funds those in addition to the NHS.

The point is to get people like you and I clicking on the article, an article that isn’t that meaningful because they’re framing him as typical of his age and salary. The reality is that someone like him, who has to pay a ton of tax each month as well as chunky-sized student loan repayments, would be very likely sharing with his partner or housemates, paying much less on rent and utility bills than what he does now.

It’s always been expensive to live alone in London - 20 years ago rents were £1K a month for one bedder.

But Ethel's lifestyle is literally supported by Henry. Ethel can have a good life on a lower income by living in a cheaper area, being smart about her shopping etc but a lot of this relies on the fact she doesn't need to pay for healthcare.

This all falls apart if she has to pay for healthcare at some point in her life and there is no nhs. Heslfhcare is extremely expensive, if you need to pay for scans MRI etc. Bupa has paid out up to 30k in 1 year for dh (health insurance through work and earns less than henry). Poor Ethel is likely to end up dead or bankrupt.

Henrry would always have private health insurance for as long as he is working, jobs at that level almost always do..

Hi Henry. Meet Ethel. (Earn Thirtyk Have Empathy Loss).

OK henry is stupid and aldi cleaner is smart..

Henry literally pays for 60% of all tax revenue in this country. How smart would aldi cleaner be at budgeting if there was no nhs (have to pay for all healthcare), no state pension, no universal credit to top up her earnings. You need to earn 45k in order to pay more in tax than you consume. Henry would probably be fine without nhs services as he is young and hopefully healthy and most 100k jobs come with private healthcare.

Dh pays £400 for his medication every month (£300 to adjust his dose) and this year bupa has paid out around 15k in healthcare costs for him so far. He earns less than henry (though our mortgage for 2 bed flat in London is half Henry's rent) but am sure henry has similar medical coverage. The nhs waiting list was 3 years long and that is with the contribution of many HENRYs. Imagine if henrys opted out or moved away cos everyone called them dumb. How is aldi cleaner supposed to afford healthcare privately.

Nhs isn't free, it's paid for with the money from taxpayers and aldi cleaner's salary is 50% tax free. Henry pays 2k a month in tax which is more than what what aldi cleaner even takes home .

If you mean me then yes we get Child Benefit although we pay more tax on earnings then we receive so it isn't an extra but instead is a decrease in tax paid. It comes in handy and the money is used on my child (last month most went on 2 upcoming school trips) but we wouldn't be going to a food bank without it.

We have never claimed free nursery hours although we would have been eligible.

FWIW as a low income family I don't want taxes raises for any PAYE worker. I would rather see the money we already have spent better.

If you don't think that a top 2% salary earner should be able to have that lifestyle (no flatmates, no lentils) - who do you think should?

People with generational wealth already? Since apparently we're excluding people who've earnt their own money...

I mean - that’s the point of the article isn’t it.

Someone earning £100k which is ‘rich’ and they should be living in a house share for affordability reasons?

Exactly. Assuming it doesn't go on care fees / any of our parents looking to piss all their money up the wall enjoying life (which we encourage them to do!), DH and I stand to inherit around GBP1m. Because of the way the different pots all work out, there will be very little if any inheritance tax paid on any of that.

We're very lucky and this is not something we are in any way counting on (and I try my best to tell my mother in particular to spend it on fast cars and holidays not horde it), but that's an insane advantage out of pure chance of birth. Of course I could independently decide to give it all to charity, but that's not human nature and of course I (with my own priorities) will use it for what I want to use it for. But the government should be working on levelling the playing field.

I am a high earning professional and so also work with other high earning professionals. The difference in actual wealth is amazing and it comes down to generational wealth. It's becoming more obvious actually as I get older because you see the clear differences in lifestyle for people you know are earning the same amount. It works both ways, I was often wondering how on earth some of my colleagues could afford the houses they had or the cars they drive until they happened to mention some family circumstance and I realize quite how much non-salary income they have. Then there are others who probably think the same about me.

The other big differentiating factor is how young you were when you met your partner (or if you never did / are divorced). There's a big difference depending on when people could afford to buy their first house, or what house they could buy then, which seems largely dependent on whether they were buying on one income or two.

The next ‘step up’ is huge isn’t it? 2 bed flat to 3 bed house is £££

Yeah that's more than £10k per month so suggests huge outgoings.

I know the early childcare years are expensive but they are also temporary.

As soon as I saw the headline, I knew he’d have one huge cost be it childcare, a big-ish mortgage, or he’s living alone in one of the most expensive cities on earth. It is unusual for people in London that are his age and earning his salary to be living alone, so he needs to go back to house sharing. Ultimately if you don’t live within your means, you’re screwed, whatever your income.

I always say it but it's incredible how these thick idiots get to earning six figures. Henry had £1500k a month spare at one point, but feels like he could never own a house anywhere in the UK? You can get two up-two downs, up north, for under £120k. As said, he spends as much on socialising as in Aldi. There's much lower paid workers with better budgeting and thinking skills. He needs to grab (not literally) the Aldi cleaner and she'll sort his life out for him, bless his cotton socks. Wasn't we told by Boris that we are all in it together? There's sections of society who need to get their heads around that they, to have to do without and budget. If they are struggling, there's many, sink-estate-bright-but-never-had-the-same-opportunities WC who'll swap with them and they'll be much more capable than poor Henry.

PP gets government subsidies that you don’t qualify for, @MidnightPatrol .