To think it’s unlikely £300k is the median household wealth in the UK

Justacigarette · 2025-11-16T18:09:29+00:00

saw this on Facebook: apparantly the telegraph are saying that median UK wealth is £300k per household. From who I know personally, i find this so unlikely. Sure; some people do have wealth over this amount; no doubt about it. But I know many many more people who have a lot less

Zanatdy · 17/11/2025 05:51

If including equity and pension, I guess so. I rent at the moment, buying next year as relocating but I do have a good pension.

Bjorkdidit · 17/11/2025 05:50

Many civil servants (not most or all but I think 30/40% are AA/AO or EO so earn under £30k) are in very low paying admin grades and obviously many only work in the civil service for part of their career so that seems reasonable.

As I'm stuck under a cat, I'm unable to check but our pension statements used to include a notional percentage of the lifetime allowance when it existed. Mine was slightly over 50% which made the value of my pension pot over £500k. That was due to about 30 years service, most of which I earned £30-40k so slightly above average but not a high earner.

bottledboot · 17/11/2025 04:21

"For women the average pension is now £7,502 a year, and for men it is £13,513. The overall average Civil Service pension in payment is £9,874 a year"

bottledboot · 17/11/2025 04:16

@latetothefisting Again, I am not sure what you think I am misunderstanding? I'm well aware of what some can accrue in a public sector pension. Or can you post some statistics that show what the average public sector pension is, maybe I am wrong & is it 25k plus? Although my original point referenced the under 50s.

bottledboot · 17/11/2025 04:05

It doesn't have to be for the numbers to work, Even in the average public sector pension is £10k that a £250k plus a bit of property, a car, doesn't make £300,000 look unreasonable.

@Bumblebee72 but what does the above have to do with my post about public sector pensions? I never claimed 300k was unreasonable, I actually posted upthread saying I thought it would be higher.

My post was responding to the claim that anyone with a DB would have a "pot" much higher than 500k?

DarkNovemberBringsTheFog · 17/11/2025 03:38

RogerBakewell · 17/11/2025 02:28

Let's not forget that, using the mean, the average person in the UK has one testicle.

While noticing the joke, it’s 1 to the nearest whole number, but the mean isn’t usually given like that. There are more women and girls than men and boys, see here, and some males have 0 or 1 testicle.

The modal number of testicles is 0.

RozGruber · 17/11/2025 03:28

NeverDropYourMooncup · 16/11/2025 18:29

Don't forget that by being slap bang in the middle, this means including the phenomenal levels of wealth held by a very small number of people - somebody with a net worth of £30,000,000 is going to to shift the arrow higher than 6 million people in social housing with fuck all except for a sofa from IKEA and £350 in the bank until payday.

That’s not how the median is calculated.

RogerBakewell · 17/11/2025 02:28

Let's not forget that, using the mean, the average person in the UK has one testicle.

DeepRubySwan · 17/11/2025 02:09

It includes the family home so therefore probably correct

DarkNovemberBringsTheFog · 17/11/2025 01:56

TotHappy · 17/11/2025 01:32

Why pick out the median to get a feel for the nation's wealth. Wouldn't mode be more useful?

No, I don’t think so.

Modal class might be useful, ie put the household wealth into equally sized bands, eg 0 to < 25, 25 to < 50 and so on, and then pick the band with the most people in it.

Plantatreetoday · 17/11/2025 01:46

According to AI ( yes I know I know )
For individual wealth
the median is £125,000
the mean is £305,000
figures for 2020

OP I’ve spotted your figure for household wealth so yes this seems correct as of 2020

TotHappy · 17/11/2025 01:32

Why pick out the median to get a feel for the nation's wealth. Wouldn't mode be more useful?

Starseeking · 17/11/2025 01:07

Justacigarette · 17/11/2025 00:51

@Baital this is the message I was replying to

You probably should have posted the whole message to be clear, rather than cropping as your original “I find this so unlikely” related to wealth. Libellious posted about their personal wealth of circa £4m, and also mentioned that they happened to know people who net £300k as salaries, which wasn’t unusual to them, they didn’t mention this in isolation.

To think it’s unlikely £300k is the median household wealth in the UK

wisbech · 17/11/2025 01:00

NeverDropYourMooncup · 16/11/2025 18:29

Don't forget that by being slap bang in the middle, this means including the phenomenal levels of wealth held by a very small number of people - somebody with a net worth of £30,000,000 is going to to shift the arrow higher than 6 million people in social housing with fuck all except for a sofa from IKEA and £350 in the bank until payday.

No - you are confusing average with median.

A few rich people and many poor = the rich people shift the average up. But they will have almost no impact on median.

Original poster

Justacigarette · 17/11/2025 00:51

@Baital this is the message I was replying to

OP posts:

Original poster

Justacigarette · 17/11/2025 00:49

Baital · 17/11/2025 00:45

Earning £300,000 is income.

Your original post said wealth.

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The “earning £300k after tax” is a response to Libellious mentioning that she knows people who earn £300k after tax: she was referring to income and that’s what I was replying to.

Yes, the original post is referring to £300k wealth which is completely different to £300k income. I’ve not confused the two at all.

OP posts:

Baital · 17/11/2025 00:45

Justacigarette · 17/11/2025 00:15

Yeah, absolutely. I’m just explaining my point of reference: where I am in Scotland, house prices are fairly low comparatively. I’m not sure I know many people earning £300k after tax.

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Earning £300,000 is income.

Your original post said wealth.

Original poster

Justacigarette · 17/11/2025 00:38

I'm not confusing income and wealth on this one: @Libellousness had mentioned that she knows people who clear £300k a year net; that is referring to income rather than wealth

OP posts:

Baital · 17/11/2025 00:24

Justacigarette · 17/11/2025 00:15

Yeah, absolutely. I’m just explaining my point of reference: where I am in Scotland, house prices are fairly low comparatively. I’m not sure I know many people earning £300k after tax.

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You are confusing income and wealth.

Baital · 17/11/2025 00:23

Justacigarette · 17/11/2025 00:15

Yeah, absolutely. I’m just explaining my point of reference: where I am in Scotland, house prices are fairly low comparatively. I’m not sure I know many people earning £300k after tax.

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But it's not about earning. It's wealth.

I probably have about £300,000 in equity in my house, with a mortgage of about £130,000.

I don't earn anything near £300,000 pa. I would love to! I could pay off the mortgage in a year.

I also have a meagre pension pot.

I earn enough to pay my bills every month, and have a little left over for emergencies.

My 'wealth' will only kick in if I downsize, and then will go into the lack of pension.

Original poster

Justacigarette · 17/11/2025 00:15

Libellousness · 17/11/2025 00:11

London alone has nearly twice the population of Scotland. Scotland makes up less than 10% of the UK’s population. So it’s hardly surprising that London and the wider South East dramatically drag up average wealth figures.

Edited

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Yeah, absolutely. I’m just explaining my point of reference: where I am in Scotland, house prices are fairly low comparatively. I’m not sure I know many people earning £300k after tax.

OP posts:

Bellyblueboy · 17/11/2025 00:13

This thread has gotten out of control!

it’s clear a lot of people aren’t used to looking at statistics. Don’t go back to the source when they see an article and assume it must be wrong because it doesn’t match their experiences.

people are still debating whether the office of national statist could be wrong and speculating about what might and might not be included. Instead of looking up facts, some people are throwing numbers around and just making stuff up.

OP acknowledged they didn’t really research this at all, just assumed it must be wrong. Now they have looked at the source they see how this is actually true (so no need to sack the statistician or journalist

Libellousness · 17/11/2025 00:11

Justacigarette · 16/11/2025 23:37

Im in Scotland; so for the majority of the population, equity in their house would be a
lot lower than it is in the Southeast or London. For example the average house price is less than £200k. And many are not home owners (or have paid their mortgage off)

salaries of £300k are very rare: possibly the top 5% of the population: so you’re seeing this from a completely different angle

one thing I hadn’t considered was the pension pot of those on defined benefits (for example, my husband has a DB pension), so I wouldn’t have even included that in our net worth.

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London alone has nearly twice the population of Scotland. Scotland makes up less than 10% of the UK’s population. So it’s hardly surprising that London and the wider South East dramatically drag up average wealth figures.

Zezet · 17/11/2025 00:11

Justacigarette · 16/11/2025 23:56

the overuse of upper case and exclamation points gives the impression you are very much not relaxed.

plenty of people have disagreed on this thread, but don’t appear to be so worked up about it as you appear to be from your writing style.

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Yes, quite.

Original poster

Justacigarette · 16/11/2025 23:56

latetothefisting · 16/11/2025 23:48

Calm down?
Literally what about my post wasnt calm? Did I shout at you? Swear? Call you names?
I'm horizontal in my pjs right now if I were any more relaxed I'd be dead!

If you can't provide a reasoned or intelligent response you can just say nothing, you know. There's no reason to pretend the other person is irate just because you can't think of a rebuttal!

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the overuse of upper case and exclamation points gives the impression you are very much not relaxed.

plenty of people have disagreed on this thread, but don’t appear to be so worked up about it as you appear to be from your writing style.

OP posts: