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

You are being rude. You don't have to swear to be rude. All those exclamation marks, capitals, multiple questions, interrobangs.

Property wealth is surely a huge part of that, especially in the SE? Round here you won’t get a three bed semi for less than a million, so even on a 90% LTV mortgage that’s £100k equity, and you would expect that to go up as more gets paid off. An aging population means a higher proportion of people with properties they have had time to pay more of the mortgage on (and therefor will have more equity), with pensions they have had years to pay into, etc.

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!

Well a very large proportion of public sector works will be on the civil service pension scheme which makes it very easy to accrue large amounts (although it's given as a set amount yearly not as a "pot.")

For example I worked for 4 years in a job with csp. Despite only earning about an average of £27k over those 4 years that pot is already worth nearly £5k a year - so if I lived for another 20 years after retiring that's £100k just from that one, not particularly well paying job. That's at today's money of course, I won't actually be able to claim it for another 30 years but its supposed to increase in line with inflation.

Equity in a property is the one enrage if it’s value that belongs to you, not the amount you have paid so far. It is what you’d have in your pocket after repaying any remaining mortgage if you were to sell it.

"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"

Yes.....that is how averages work!

Not to mention "people you know" doesn't automatically extrapolate to "representative proportion of the UK!"

What's more likely, that the FINANCIAL TIMES has completely fucked up/misrepresented their stats (bearing in mind the figure for 2020-2022 was £293k so the new one seems entirely in line and hardly anomalous) or a random MN user with a close personal circle of less than 0.00005% of the UK population isn't completely representative?!

I wish people would look beyond the ends of their noses and accept many people have very different lives to them, Just because something is YOUR norm doesn't mean it's THE norm

My understanding is that households are split roughly 1:1:1 rented, mortgages, owned outright. Given that the last group tend to be older and more likely to live in more valuable houses (bought when much more affordable) this figure sounds feasible. It’s somewhat immaterial though because it’s not a liquid asset.

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.

Sounds right to me.

I agree that house prices will have a significant contribution to this.

Also, it says the median is less than £300k. 20p is also less than £300k 😉

The final salary schemes pretty much all closed 20 yrs ago

@Bumblebee72 but why would you think the average public sector worker would have a pension well over 20k?

Just think, the full state pension by itself has a PMV of £240k per worker.

And that's one of the reasons we cannot afford it, the vast majority do not pay enough tax for the state pension & free healthcare.

Doesn't seem that much to be honest.

@SummerFeverVenice what makes you think I think I didn't understand that?

https://www.ons.gov.uk/visualisations/dvc1802/calculator/index.html

This may help in figuring it all out.

It’s not a lot of money, we are very average and our combined assets for our divorce are approx £600k (mostly pension and equity). I can well believe that when you include those that are renting it will be well under what we have.

Exactly. DB pensions are very valuable. If you have a DB pension of £20k the "value" of the pot is something like £500,000.

It’s household wealth too, not individual. I’m not surprised, it’s not a huge amount for a household when house equity and pensions are included. We’re mid-late 30s and have quite a bit more then that with those things added in and we’re not unusual in our circle.

If that £300k per household includes the value of people’s houses & pensions, it seems very low. There are literally tens of millions of over 50s in this country who own their homes outright & have substantial pension pots.

Easily with property and pension. Pensioners have all the wealth because they’ve paid off their mortgages and their house value has risen.

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

Not to be rude, but most people’s social circles are comprised of people in a fairly similar economic position to themselves.

Personally, I know very few households with anywhere near that little. My household wealth probably comes to about £4m (£1.5m house, £1m in DH’s pension pot, £1.5m in savings and investments) - and DH and I are definitely not at the upper end of our friend group. I know plenty of people who net upwards of £300,000 - after tax - in a single year.

The plural of anecdote isn’t data.

@LakieLady

i agree, I don’t personally know many with under apart from the dc who are in their 20’s just starting out. We like most of our friends own homes outright (around £500k) and have pension pots around the same, isas etc on top because we are all in the want to give up working soon age bracket, dh has. If you ask me in 30 years, assuming I live that long, I expect to be down to state pension, my small final salary pension plus a bit of savings left in the 10’s not hundreds of thousands. How much you have is very dependent on life stage, we are at max assets, now dropping since Dh retired