What is considered rich these days??

I’d personally call you rich and not begrudgingly

Well on £250k you don’t “live a modest life” that’s just ridiculous.

You may not be rich but you are not comfortable. I wouldn’t even classify myself as comfortable and my financial situation is no where near your households.

You sound somewhere between well off and HENRY, the stage after being wealthy before reaching rich.

It's rude of your sil to keep commenting unless you are shoving this in her face but hopefully not.

£250k income plus bonus? Without the bonus I'd say you were well off rather than rich.. but the bonus must be retry chunky to pay the school fees so it's more like £350k

We were in a household income of £250k living rurally 5 years ago and I'd say we felt pretty well off. 2 x day school fees, holidays etc.

But in the last 2 years work has been hard to find, household income has dropped to £180k, costs have gone up and to pay the school fees we had to ditch the holidays for a couple of years. But certainly at one of our schools we were the poorest people. One of my friends has an annual staff cost of circa £150k (nanny, cleaner and groom) and school fees paid from trust funds. So everything is relative.

I'd caution the Range Rovers though. Where we live no one has them and they would be considered very Nouveau.

No we just think that many people in a position the same as your DH, who worked equally hard as your DH, and did all of the same things, won't have ended up anywhere near as well off as he did.

Hard work can lead to success and when it does that person will have earned it, but it doesn't change the fact that some luck was involved.

If 100 people all work equally hard in the exact same way they will end up on 100 different incomes in a large variety of lifestyles. It doesn't diminish the work put in by the one who ends up best off to acknowledge their luck.

Your SIL may well be rude but you do also come across as smug.

Of course it's down to luck too - lucky that you're genetically capable of achieving academic success, lucky to have found a husband who is supportive and clever etc etc. It's all well and good spouting on about hard work, but Mary down the road works exceptionally hard as a carer but unfortunately she's not intellectually as able to achieve qualifications. She had a traumatic childhood and has also struggled with some health issues. She is also a carer to her parents and unfortunately her husband had a car accident and is no longer able to work at all. Her capacity to earn the same level of you is nothing to do with her not working as hard and yours is also based on a platform of luck that you are not in the same circumstances as Mary.

I agree with @MotherofPufflings it’s such a cliche when people say this. Makes me cringe. Like they’re saying they’re more deserving of money & success than anyone else, even though they have no clue about anyone else’s background. Good for your husband, but I know loads of people who had similar childhoods and worked their arses off and couldn’t afford to go to university. Some even that did go to university and worked their arses off, got a first, and still don’t earn a lot. A lot of career success is down to pure luck.

I consider myself to live a modest life. I rent a 3 bedroom flat and never go hungry, and can just about afford to keep myself entertained with very careful budgeting and buying things on deep discounts / waiting for sales. I do have a fair amount (5 digits) of energy bills debt that I'm slowly chipping away at.

But, hypothetically, if you gave me just 10% of your income, you would more than double what I live on yearly. So yes, I do think you are a bit out of touch.

Despite my earlier comment (yes I do think you’re out of touch & have no idea what it’s like to worry about money) that does not mean you have to justify your life to anyone. Constant comments from you SIL must get extremely annoying. Like, what are you supposed to say? I don’t think you should feel guilty about your life, lucky, yes, but not guilty. Instead of replying with things like “but my second range rover’s 5 years old”, which just prove her point, I’d say something like, “Yes I’m loaded, that’s not going to change, however I’m also a nice person, a good, kind SIL and we get along well, so how about we focus on that instead”.

Whether you call it ‘rich’ or ‘well off’ is somewhat irrelevant since those terms are subjective. The test that I apply is what would you do if your washing machine suddenly broke down? If (like me) you could have a new, better one in place within 48hrs without any stress or financial hardship (which I suspect you could), you should be mindful that you are in a position that a substantial number could only dream of.

So you think my DH who was born who lived in a tiny flat in a ex-mining village to an alcoholic mother and a violent father, was rejected from university the first time he applied and now earns more than the OP's DH was lucky?
Oh and he's dyslexic too.

Or do you think that he just worked really, really hard (60 hour weeks in his 20s). Consistently made really savvy choices financially, built lasting relationships with co-workers who he went out of his way to help.

There were definitely more opportunities for young people 30 years ago. But being offered one wasn't a lottery.

So you decided you needed to “simplify” for the sake of this thread-smacks of you thinking people here couldn’t possibly understand an equity partner role 🤣. Weird thing to change when plenty of industries have this set up. It’s all a bit humble brag/Hyacinth Bucket!

“But our SECOND Range Rover wasn’t even new, it was FIVE years old” 🤣🤣

@Soccermomsavestheday you do realise most people’s one and only car is more than 5 years old when they buy it? If this is the kind of stuff you’re saying to your SIL to ‘prove’ you’re not out of touch, I can totally see why she says you are.

You do sound out of touch to be honest.. ! You can easily google various statistics on average household income and demographics.

I think you’re not unreasonable to be offended by SIL’s comments and well within your rights to tell her to give it a rest, but you ARE ‘rich’. Yeah, not Elon Musk rich, but if you can afford to be a SAHM and send your kids to private school you obviously don’t truly have to worry about money so you may need to take a pause and think whether you are making insensitive/thoughtless comments yourself? It’s easy to do and sometimes it’s just wiser to say nothing if SiL comments or just to say ‘yes, we’re very lucky’ and change the subject.

My DH and I are seriously MN rich, too. I grew up with a deprived childhood (free school meals, uniform grants, social services involvement) so understand poverty - but, along with DH, I have also worked hard. However we’ve also been lucky - with respect to the property market when we were first buying flats, job prospects when we left school/uni compared to anyone in the last 20 years etc - as I know many others have worked hard too and have less to show for it. I am not sure many people work as hard as my DH, if I am honest, but I wouldn’t say so to anyone else. It’s not a pissing match is it?

@Soccermomsavestheday yes so this makes it even more about envy- shes a single parent trying to make ends meet yet you 'seem' to have everything you've ever wanted, be it money or just lifestyle. Personally id just try and be mindful of this. You're in a very good position. Not everyone has this.

I have exactly that ( own my home on an acre) but not in UK and unable to work. Selling our second car ( nothing flash) to pay bills.Zero income

OP this a good video about luck and hard work. Success is always both.

I was a SAHM for a long time to support my husband's career (we moved country regularly for 13 years). We were/are a partnership - he was only able to do what he did because I was doing everything else. I returned to paid work when the kids were in secondary school and we stopped moving around. Now they are grown and flown I am really enjoying the challenge of working. However, my salary is nowhere near my husbands due to our decisions when the children were little! So, yes it is very much OUR money.

I wouldn't confuse budgeting with not being rich.
Budgeting is just being sensible with the money you have whatever amount.
E.g.
Budgeting is choosing to put money into a pension and buying a Range Rover rather than a Bentley.
But that's a different kind of budgeting to someone who's choice is heat or eat.

Your family income is in about the top 1 or 2% of uk incomes. I would class you as very rich. I would regard the top 26% of uk. Incomes as rich and you're way above that

'worked really hard' but you don't even actually work.

.

OP, I completely understand what you’re saying. For context, DH and I earn around £200k each and even so we don’t feel particularly “rich” day to day. I’m very aware that puts us in a very fortunate position and we know many families are managing on far less, but it doesn’t necessarily translate into feeling like money is unlimited.

We still budget carefully, keep an eye on spending and try to live fairly modestly. We can’t just spend freely without thinking about it, especially with mortgages, school fees, savings etc. It’s easy for people to assume that once you reach a certain income everything feels effortless, but that hasn’t been our experience.

MN can sometimes be quite quick to judge on threads like this, but there are definitely others in a similar position to you. It’s possible to be comfortable and grateful for that, while still being mindful about money.

I did seven years of university education (3 year undergrad, 1 year MSc and a 3 year doctorate) and work as a clinical psychologist for 48K. It’s a tough graft so I would say that although your husband may have worked hard it’s so disengenous to say that this means your not rich. Of course you are!

Soccormumsavestheday.. thank you for your lovely reply. .. I possibly have mis judged .

Yes, you are "rich" compared to the vast majority of people in this country (and in the world).

Yes, YABU to think you deserve it because of all your "hard work" - many other people work just as hard but earn only a fraction of what your DH earns, and you apparently don’t work outside the home at all, so I don’t understand why you think you "deserve" this lifestyle. You studied hard for a few years - so what?

Yes, your SIL is right. The fact that you’re asking this question and justifying yourself shows that her comment that you’re out of touch is correct. But she is rude to make such comments and I would ask her to stop.