A Decent salary

[ILikeyourHairyHands]

I always see on threads people talking about a 'decent salary', or a 'high earner', and then see threads where posters are derided for asking if £100 a week after all outgoings including food is enough and are blasted for being so privileged as to ask such an insensitive question.

So genuinely, what constitutes a decent salary, what tips that over into high-earner territory and what discretionary level of spending is considered to be comfortable?

I ask because I'm interested in perception of income levels. I was brought up very comfortably, I've always lived very comfortably, and it stuck me today that my perspective is probably very skewed and even though I'm not a complete idiot, I've volunteered at foodbanks and other charities, I think I've got a warped perspective of how the 'middle' live, (although I consider myself to be middle income I'm probably way off the mark).

Personally I think somewhere around £38,000 is a pretty good salary. It very much depends on other factors though...young single person living with parents...not expected to pay rent...with no children, overdraft/ debts. £38,000 would go a lot further than a single parent with 6 kids, huge mortgage n debts!
Also, who i would class as a high earner does depend a bit on age for me. 25 year old earning £40,000 I'd class as a high earner but not a 35 year old.

£80,000 would definitely be a high earner for me.

I saw something on here about a decent salary as being the same as your age; it made sense to me!

If you want the actual data there's some interesting stuff in here:

www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/earningsandworkinghours/datasets/agegroupbyindustry2digitsicashetable21

Decile incomes, by age, sex and industry.

Makes you realise just how skewed perceptions can be, that's for sure.

I think I have a decent salary. Well I think I’ve got a rather good salary really. I’m 34, work day shift, no weekends, healthcare and earn £23k for 27hpw. I’m good with that.

A ‘decent’ salary where I live (S Wales) would be circa £50-55k although the majority of my friends in the same area earn around 6 figures doing niche roles for their industries.

Thanks Nacreous, I'll have a look at that tomorrow, I'm on my phone at the moment so sheets are a bit painful.

Yeah, it is rather. Full time employees data dug out for you here.

I knew I was well off for my age. I too try to do some volunteering and stuff. But I m ultimately have lots of friends doing equally well paid jobs and it had skewed my perception regarding just how fortunate I am to be in my current position.

You can be considered a high earner and not really feel comfortable. That's where we are.

We do not have a luxurious lifestyle at all, but we have big outgoings, such as student loans and pay shit loads in tax! We live in a normal 3 bed semi and go on holiday once a year and nowhere fancy.

Our household income before tax sounds like a lot, but we're normally down to our last couple of hundred at the end of each month.

It was similar data I was looking at today Nacreous that made me question my perceptions. According to the figures I saw today we're in top 100,000 households in the UK. I know we're well-off, but I don't feel that rarified. My friends are all over the income scale and the only people I know who seem 'not like me' are those who are in the 100's of millions level. I have friends who are on benefits as single mothers, friends who are nurses and teachers, friends who are professionals up to clinical director and partnership level, friends who work in tech and advertising at senior level, and we all seem to have a broadly similar life. Obviously some have larger houses and better cars and go on more holidays, but we have more similarities than differences. We're all a broad spectrum of the middle class I think.

Although there was a thread the other day about a husband who'd been made redundant and kept spending and they had two children at Indies and loads of lifestyle spends and I was thinking, 'How the fuck can you do all that on 10 grand a month?', which also made me think I might be a bit of a twat.

I think that the difference in the amount you can spend without it seeming like a huge gaping lifestyle gap is enormous, right?

Growing up, I think you'd have said my family was middle class. We didn't have much money at all, but you wouldn't see that from the outside? Dad would paint the walls, and mend the cars. Holidays involved major major bargain hunting, so we might find a cottage in France plus a ferry for say £700. We wouldn't eat out at all, so the rest of the costs were just a bit more than living at home. Lots of our stuff was nice quality, but bought second hand. Cars were bought for maybe £3k, but carefully vetted by dad and then driven for another 80k miles, with them only visiting garages for a big repair or an MOT.

Compare that to running a new lease car at several hundred pounds a month, plus if you pay people to do your DIY that's hundreds of pounds a year. Decorating may only need doing once a decade, but that's thousands for a whole house's worth. Holidays could be thousands different each time. But both families would have "been abroad". If you then apply that to every single thing - being really really careful Vs thinking "oh I won't worry" you can soon eat up a vast difference in income.

Add in two in private school (£2k a month minimum?) And that's then another £40k of gross salary eaten up.

I think it's really easy to spend to your means, especially when often jobs that pay well eat a lot of brain power so you don't have it to spend on canny-ness. I used to help search out holidays and because I was just at school and had holidays etc I didn't mind wiling away evening after evening googling and researching and finding the best, cheapest deals. Now I work full time, I don't want to spend precious annual leave doing that, and it's appallingly easy to go "eugh, I can't spend the time on that' and just throw money at the problem instead of using time to get the same result for less money.

Sorry, I've got somewhat off topic.

I've also not given a number for a "decent" salary, partly because it varies so much depending on where you live.

In my current town, you can rent a 2 bed for £650 a month. Where I lived during my uni years it would be £1300. That means if you're one person you can afford a house with a spare room, holidays and a car on maybe a £25k salary. You feel pretty comfortable. At £1300 you have to be earning circa £40k to be able to do that. That's a huge variance.