AIBU to feel deflated after payday despite a decent salary?

I feel exactly the same, my salary is £3k and by the time mortgage and bills are
paid I am left with nothing. It’s ridiculous and I am being as frugal as I can be but the food bill is £700 minimum and then there’s the other bills and commute costs, childcare. I feel I should be able to have fun on e in a while with that money but every time I contemplate if I should spend £3 on a chocolate bar, and I end up not

Surely the point is that’s you’ll still have c40% left. That’s still more money than if you hadn’t earned it?!
Those earning more are still actually left with more, even after all the deductions (agree it gets a little bit more complicated if it gets into the territory of losing childcare allowance- this is problematic but it’s temporary).

Honestly people act like they’re losing the entirety of their earnings.

I have nothing left at the end of the month and only earn roughly 1800 so yes Yabu.
I often go into overdraft just to buy things for my dc, speaking of he needs new trainers I can't afford this month.
Threads like this make me feel ill.

Assuming she gets to take it.

She won’t though.

Post financial year the tax office will simply do an updated calculation and she has likely included that.

Last year on my bonus I was taxed in the month of receipt and then a few months later once they reassessed my amount for the year I received a bill for an extra 2k. She would only get some back if income for the year was negligible but for her it isn’t.

Are you that tone deaf? Or do you assume everyone on Mumsnet is a yummy mummy with masses of disposable income? Or are you just an awful human?

That said even with the 62% tax trap you should still have more than a quarter left so you should check you are taxed correctly.

Ignore what I wrote. I see it includes student loan but I think that’s different. That’s simply paying back money you borrowed.

On any of the hundreds of posts on Mumsnet where people are moaning about minimum wage/universal credit etc.

Or make your own?

Same. I tried to reduce the tax by shoving more into my pension but will still hand more than 60% to the tax man.

You wonder what the point is.

It's all completely relative and I expect most people feel exactly the same right now - irrespective of what the salary actually is.
Excluding anyone on 150k a year spending above their means.
Doing more and getting less sigh

60% income tax, 2% national insurance and 9% student loan = 71% deductions.

I won’t get any of it back because my total annual income is well over the top rate threshold. It’s irrelevant when it is paid to me.

Oh. I got paid today (£2500) and will put all of it in our joint account, as my husband does, and then we pay ourselves "pocket money" weekly for day-to-day spending. I do feel frustrated about the rising COL and the causes which are so far out of our control, but I feel very lucky to earn that wage. The job I do is very flexible and low stress, I work mostly from home, and I get on well with my colleagues. If it was a horrible job, I'd probably feel like you no matter what I earned.

yeah, just about to say the same thing
What about us who are on minimal wage, on which thread we are allowed to moan

According to his publicly released tax return, in the 2022/23 tax year Rishi Sunak received an income of £2,200,000. The tax he paid on that was £508,308 - meaning that Rishi is taxed at an effective rate of 22.8%.

I just checked my March payslip and my tax rate works out at about 38%.

This is the discrepancy that annoys me. Our system is designed to ensure that people who derive their income from reserves of wealth (often family wealth they’ve not had to earn themselves) are taxed far more lightly than those of us who have to go out and earn every penny. And so the Rishi Sunak’s of the world, with their tiny tax bills, get to sit back and watch that wealth grow far quicker than they could possibly spend it.

These people get to stroll through life with pebbles in their pockets while ordinary wage earners are dragging a giant rock behind us.

Ultimately if you get to join the club, life gets so much cheaper if you are wealthy. And how do the vast majority get to join the club…by having wealthy parents. Good luck to anyone else, as social mobility is almost non-existent.

I know it sounds trite to say 'count your blessings' but this is a count your blessings kind of situation isn't it. Sit in the sun and reflect on what you have, you'll be better off for it

just wow I got very similar take home and I love seeing it go into my bank account. I’m very aware that there are an absolute ton of people out there who work much harder for much less.

it’s a glass half empty / glass half full thing I guess.

to complain that you have £1700 to play with and choose to save half of it seems very unaware of the wider population.

In our house, we don’t see bonuses as for spending, they go straight into pensions or investment back into the employer. We stopped spending in 2008, we have definitely not felt like we have ‘money’ since then. The game has changed completely from what it was like in the ‘90’s/early naughts.

Our parents can’t understand why we work so hard but also why we are driving around In 10 plus year old cars and not taking holidays. We are comfortable but nowhere near we we expected to be at this stage.

BUT I grew up abroad where I was exposed to extreme poverty, violence and injustice so I do appreciate how good we have it in comparison to most. who knows what the future holds but I am convinced time are going to get a lot tougher.

When I got my first full time payslip (age 16) I was disgusted at the amount of tax and NI had paid. Until then I had a part time job in the chip shop and was paid cash in hand. I kept that job off and on for several years - whenever I wanted to earn a bit extra. on the side. Taxes are too high. Thats why we have a black economy because people see that money being frittered away on vanity projects and looking after the boat people.

Kindly, it's your feelings that are the problem here, not your reality.

You know you're fine but you don't feel fine. This isn't a money issue is it

What do you actually want more leftover for..? I have a similar salary, save plenty and allocate £400 "spending money" to spend or not (any leftover can go towards a big purchase if I fancy it). That feels plenty! Monotony is just life, if you want things to be different you have to do something about it. What are you saving for? Unless you're catching up on building an emergency fund or saving for a deposit, do you need to be putting away so much?

Should the bonus have been in the highest marginal tax rate band, i.e. between £100k and £125k, then the marginal tax rate of just income tax and NIC is 62%. Even if not in that band, the marginal tax/nic rate could have easily been 42%, then another 9% student loan repayments, takes you over 50%, then there'll probably be a few percent workplace pension deductions of between 3% to 5%, plus maybe other deductions such as paying into employer sharesave schemes etc. (that may or may not pay out as they can be risky investments).

Yep. I think food and fuel right now is just burning through our money.

Why are you buying clothes monthly? Are you seriously complaining about that money having to cover holidays??

Where’s the 14.2k gone? Tax?