If you are married to an orthopaedic surgeon (not private practice), how well off do you feel as a family, if you don’t work yourself?

Some of this is going to be basic maths - private schools are about £25k per year, and will likely be at least £30-35k by the time your as-yet unborn children are school age. If you have two children, his entire post-tax income will go on the school fees alone.

So if your “luxurious lifestyle” involves privately educating your children, then no that won’t be possible on his salary alone. You also presumably know how much your mortgage is, and how much your bills are currently - can you afford to pay those and still have a reasonable amount left from his salary for you both to live the lifestyle you want?

If your mortgage is £500 pcm maybe, if it is £3500pcm you probably can’t.

Another point is that it is not as tax advantageous to have only one >£100,000 salary as it is to have 2x £50,000 ones. Your personal allowance gets reduced for everything you earn after £100000 leading to a 60% marginal tax rate so what you get to take home is rather less than what you were expecting. If two people earn a salary that adds up to £100,000 then for the same household income you get to keep more of it
Thus it really is a great luxury to have a SAHP.

You can google consultant salary scales. Without private work to top it up you will have a comfortable life but not mega flashy. So nice house 2/3 holidays per year.

I think the days of doctors being top of the pile are long gone there are many more lucrative careers now. Plus life is way more expensive. I think a lot of the wealthy older doctors also had family money to help them out. The lifestyle you want - type of house, type of holiday, number of kids also has an impact.

School fees have always been a luxury!

My friend was married to an orthopaedic doctor with a private practice and he preferred to submit his patients to unnecessary surgery than give them the cheaper treatment they needed

Well there is a dispute at the moment, so there’s a lot of briefing against doctors, one way or another, on social media. I think this may be one.

Why do you want to be financially dependent on someone else.

Lots of women don’t want to work and bring up their children. What’s spoilt about it, if it works for them?

IIRC, It doesn’t go up much. If he just made consultant, he’ll be paid £110k + usual yearly incremental increase until he moves up to the next stage / spinal point. Probably tops out at £130-140k? Not 100% on maximum though.

I get he is against private practice on principle but it will pay him a very good chunk of money.

It depends on what your priorities are. Obviously if you lose £80k there are things you won't be able to do anymore, even if that thing is just saving.

Personally, I wanted to be a sahm badly enough to sacrifice a lot. But I don't feel like it's a sacrifice because I love it.

We would be very comfortably off on £110k. The minimum to still feel like it's easy for us would be about £60k but that's without a mortgage (we paid it off aggressively before having kids). We could do it on less but it would start to mean we couldn't do all the hobbies, daytrips and travelling we like and would have to lower our food quality. I'd still find that worth it. I do have friends who were sahms with an income as low as about £30k (although one was a vicar and had accommodation provided).

I work hard. Lots of cooking and cleaning - we don't have a cleaner, gardener or anything. Lots of playing. We didn't send dc to nursery to avoid the fees (dc did the free hours from aged 3).

DC is about to start school and I've started doing Airbnb with our spare room to increase our income.

It’s understandable that she might not want the pressure of working full time if she’s needing to take on a much greater proportion of the parenting load (sleepless nights, sick days, drop off and pick ups). Probably not has easy for a surgeon to take time off when your child has yet another fever from nursery.

Also if you grew up privileged how much do your parents help?

Only on MN would an 80k salary be described as a "top up"

Having never met an orthopod without a god conplex I'd not be rushing to relinquish my financial independence OP.

@Yunall if you want a luxurious lifestyle without working, may I gently suggest you raise your sights and find a better and more lucrative life partner.

In all seriousness, DH was piss poor when we met, admittedly with prospects despite his wc upbringing. I, on the other hand was brought up in luxury and had privilege. When we met, when I was 29, I also had a great career and bought my own house in London, with my own money. I was therefore able to marry someone I loved very much and had put enough equity behind us for me to be able to give up work when the dc were small.

DH's success after marriage was vicarious and wasn't why I married him.

I think you seriously need to catch onto yourself and deicide whether your do, who sounds principled, deserves you.

You can give up your 4kplus per month post tax income and live off your dh if you both agree to live in tiny property if you in south east .... have no children... etc etc
Unless the other part is how you inherited or were given a 5 bed lovely house?
Or you live in northeast ?

My husband noticed a Dr, works in tech. Would be on more than Doctors, not a flex, just a fact! I am currently on a leave of absence for a year. Have 2 kids. Eldest starting private school in Sept. We have had a lovely time up til now, able to go on several holidays a year etc but I think that will change now with private school fees 😭 but we made this choice. We will still get a holiday just not the long haul fancy ones! For what it's worth, I am loving being at home and my husband really loves it! It takes a huge amount of pressure off him but I do everything with the children. All school stuff, extra curricular activities, medical appointments (they both have different conditions so they do attend various clinics more than most children). I think its do able but you may need to cut back on some luxuries (but not all!)

Well my husband is a consultant (not doctor) we have one child and I work almost full time too. Our total income is appox £180k so very comfortable but not private jets / diamonds lifestyle.

Your question about lifestyle and children isn't really relevant though. Obviously children cost money and your lifestyle will change but the benefits of having children are not quantifiable.

Where I live a combined income of this only covers a mortgage on a small (90 sq m) 3 bed terrace, one child in nursery and moderate living expenses (but not holidays). You can live on it but not the sort of lifestyle people would have expected on this income in the past eg even accounting for inflation my parents earn’t less but had a higher standard of living. The take home income of one person with this salary will be less but might still be better off without the nursery fees if the other parent is a SAHP. Obviously should be much easier once kids are out of nursery as we won’t be considering private schools.

This thread is mind-boggling. People saying that £180k combined is “not an enormous” income, and suggesting they wouldn’t want to live off with £100k with kids…

I think 180k is a good income, most won't have more than that but 100k with dc isn't that much. It's largely because of house prices, if you are older with a small mortgage it will go a lot further.

Well 200k to one salary of 110k will mean a drop in lifestyle particularly when you introduce dc. But you could go p/t

My husband is not a surgeon but earns similarly. I still have to work and we wouldn’t have what you would consider a luxury lifestyle - state schools, second hand car etc. Of course, we’re very grateful but wouldn’t say we could afford ski trips or private education. This is probably all to do with having a house nearly identical to my parents’, except theirs cost £30k whereas ours cost £800k.

Not sure I see the problem with OP exploring options to aid decision making. Also nothing wrong with being a sahm if that's what she wants. Not what I've done, but personally don't see the problem. Each family make the choices that work for them....

I imagine being married to a surgeon (like many jobs) even if they don't earn millions will mean the brunt of childcare and household admin will pretty full and in this case sounds likevthat will be likely to fall to the OP. I think it's very difficult to have two full on careers without a lot of external help - nannies etc - so see why might make sense to have one parent stay at home (or work more flexible hours!)

This thread is hilarious.

I particularly liked this:

We are comfortable but do not have Netflix, take-aways and foreign holidays.

I'm guessing that because we can afford the £50-odd that Netflix and a takeaway costs that makes me better off than this person, even though neither of us really go on foreign holidays?!

Not meaning to sound rude but is there much call for private orthopedic work?

LOL half the elderly in the country are paying for private hip replacements as the NHS wait is too long.

In fact I only know people who have paid because otherwise they'd wait for years, in pain.

Depends on where you live, but I’m a consultant in London (not orthopaedic but NHS pay scales are the same regardless of specialty). I work 12PAs and we could would be absolutely skint after mortgage and bills if DH didn’t work.

A single consultant salary does not give you a “privileged” lifestyle anywhere in the southeast, and hasn’t for many decades. Partly due to pay erosion (we are paid 25% less in real terms than in 2010), but mostly due to cost of living/rising property prices.