Who are the people who are actually doing well financially in the UK right now?

[BeAlertBrickFinch]

I feel like I'm living in two parallel realities. Everyone I know — including dual-income households in London — is struggling. Struggling to pay rent or mortgage, worried about job security, cutting back on holidays, etc.
And yet... I see people who seem to be thriving. They’ve got two properties (sometimes more), their kids are in private school, they go on multiple holidays a year, and they don't seem particularly high-earning on paper — not doctors or bankers. Some even appear to have fairly average jobs or are self-employed.
So who are these people? Is it inheritance? Family money? Do they just hide their real incomes well? Or is social media creating illusions?
Genuinely curious — not bitter, just trying to understand the mechanics behind it all. Because in real life, everyone I talk to is barely staying afloat

Accountants are definitely struggling. There’s an awful lot of Financial controllers Financial managers and Financial directors out of work.
spoke to a CFO a couple of weeks ago who was on 450 grand a year in 2019. He’s now on 250 which I know everybody’s gonna get their smallest violins out but that’s a 50% dropping income for the poor bugger.
That’s going to have a knock on effect

Middle class professionals who didnt overspend on their house thinking interest rates would be 1% forever and who didnt run up big debts and who don’t live in London where everything is ridiculously expensive.

Yep, this is about right.

But if he was on £450k for even two years, if he has any financial sense (and he is an accountant after all) he will have saved half, paid off his mortgage and bought a rentable house outright.

Yes, this is me.

57, no mortgage for over ten years, healthy savings and pension as a result of earlier sacrifices. No kids. No loans (ever). Small-ish house (three bed terrace). Older car (2016, never really been bothered about cars, probably only had four or five altogether).

Could retire but haven't. Work employed one day a week on £22k, and freelance the rest. Hoping to take £15k of dividends this year (c£14k net). I also get random income from premium bonds. I don't take any income from my savings currently but that's about three k a year. Then around another two k from investments if I wanted to.

I'm doing OK, but I have certainly noticed the increased cost of living. My retirement plans are having to change as a result.

Financial services (some), the dodgier politicians.

I'd love to see a break down of a family getting 7k in benefits a month as I think you will find you are way off.

We are struggling and i am counting every pennies. 3 kids in state school and we would love to be able to afford private school fees. Both full time, demanding jobs, DH high earner.
we have a big mortgage on a house (“with potential”) in a really nice area, we have small holidays, we have two houses abroad which we have inherited (both in derelict state with squatters and huge financial cost to legally get rid of them). We are renovating all three. Any spare cash go straight to the builders or into buying furniture. Hopelly the two houses abroad will soon be ready to rent out and stop being a financial drain. Then we will be able to get that kitchen extension on our house in the uk. Then i hope we will be able to help the kids through uni (still expect them to get a PT job for their living costs). The whole plan is to have a comfortable retirement. We joke that the house we live in will be ready when the kids would have left… it is a bit sad and likely to be true. I am not 100% convinced that what we are doing is reasonable- it is a lot of stress!!

😂

Middle class professionals who didnt overspend on their house thinking interest rates would be 1% forever and who didnt run up big debts and who don’t live in London where everything is ridiculously expensive.

I don't really understand this smugness. I fixed for 5 years and have a good LTV so won't get too stung when the fix ends. But lots of people younger than me don't know anything but low interest rates and even if they did stretch themselves it was likely the preferable option to the cost and insecurity of renting. I also know lots of people older than me who took very reckless house borrowing decisions eg high LTV, interest only, self certing income etc but if paid massively for some.

Assuming that life hasn’t shafted you outright (eg unforeseen events, onset of disabilities), then how well you do depends mainly on your choices. As evidenced above, you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to make bank - tradies can be dong extremely well equally.

Some choices that are made will be:

• do you buy on credit or wait until you have the cash
• are you partnered up (in a legally binding way)
• did you limit your total kids to the number you could afford on your income
• are you willing to move locations to take up better paid/more useful in the long term roles
• are you happen to buy second hand
• do you use the word ‘no’ liberally - no, you don’t need a pair or fancy trainers, no, we can cook and don’t need take out, no we are not going to pay for Sky tv…
• do you ignore the Joneses

People with expensive tastes who live on credit and buy too much house for their wallets, end up working forever and wondering why. Even lottery winners end up in that position when they are spendthrifts.

Also as I've got older I appreciate the security of my public sector job particularly regarding sick pay & ill health. That also makes a big difference.

We are "doing well financially" :
> High incomes and second incomes
> No mortgage
> No kids
> Non-extravagant lifestyle
> Diverse investment portfolio
> Compound interest working very well for us

It has always been so, BeAlert. I could have written your post thirty or even forty years ago, The 1980s and for a little over half of the 1990s ere horrendous for my family and many others, including a recession. Yet there were some who did OK, always the way.

All I can say is, things do improve eventually and it is lovely.

Now I am elderly and can say that many elderly (obviously not all), are doing very well. They can give a helping hand to the next generation who are struggling and so it goes on.

I wasn’t intending to be “smug” or to target any particular age group. The people I am criticising here are people who are high earners but have put themselves into financial problems by (for example) earning £200k pa as a couple but then choosing to buy a house for £1 million when a 700k one would have done fine for them, without properly considering that 1% interest rates were not sustainable. I have only modest sympathy for “never knew anything but low rates” because no matter what interest rates are everyone when they take out a mortgage has an internet full of advice warning them to be careful about what happens if interest rates rise. Where I do have sympathy for first time buyers today is that house prices are so high.

We are pootling along merrily. And found that amongst our friends we are doing OK financially
... if you don't find private education, a big remodelled house and an ever changing car to be important.

We just live in our 2 bed+box room, one bath mortgage-free house, old car doing what we want when we want. I always followed my mum's adage that
If when the car broke down on the same day as the washing machine you could get both fixed - then you've got enough, you are doing well financially. There is comfort in that for me.

Late 30s here, average size mortgage, 1 car, work train fare, 8 and 11 year old dc, 1 dog. I wouldn't say we were comfortable but we get by- outgoings are ridiculous between the mortgage, train fare, bills and food- we are hitting over 3k a month in this respect. We bought in 2014 after funnelling all our money in to a house deposit for 3 years. Thank god for that decision. There was the benefit of meeting my DH when we were young, but it's taken 20 years of hard graft to be in this position, and tbh we thought we would be in a better financial position than we are now, 2 professional jobs etc -I took a paycut for 5 years while the kids were small- but it's been desperately difficult while they were small with the childcare fees. The cost of everything is so much higher than it was 6 years ago.

It really takes a good deal of financial planning early on to be financially secure in later life, and tbh the financial education in this country is woeful. Children need to be taught how money works, about mortgages, isas, credit and interest rates, IHT, pensions,care home fees etc.

This is why you can't afford independent shhool: "big mortgage on a house (“with potential”) in a really nice area, we have small holidays, we have two houses abroad which we have inherited (both in derelict state with squatters and huge financial cost to legally get rid of them). We are renovating all three"

Without all of the above you could afford independent schools. You chose not to. That's fine but it has been a choice. "we would love to be able to afford private school fees" well WE can only afford school fees precisely because we chose to only have a small house and don't have 2 others to renovate! We live in a 150K house in order to afford school fees!

My child is at private school and I’m sure lots of the families have grandparents bankrolling their lifestyles .

The other ones have jobs that are higher paying eg lawyers, senior doctors, business owners (tech companies)

I have only modest sympathy for “never knew anything but low rates” because no matter what interest rates are everyone when they take out a mortgage has an internet full of advice warning them to be careful about what happens if interest rates rise. Where I do have sympathy for first time buyers today is that house prices are so high.

But no one predicted they would creep up so quickly & what is forgotten is how much difference 1% makes with today's house prices. Hence all the posts about "we had 15% interest rates in our day" which actually aren't that dissimilar to 5% today when looking at the cost of houses.
Plus it's the cost of everything that has increased, utilities, food etc all against a backdrop of inflation & wage stagnation. Someone earning 200k in 2020 would need to be on 260k now to keep pace with inflation. I have sympathy. Just like I have sympathy with those who lost their homes in the 90s due to over leveraging themselves. 🤷🏻‍♀️

This is why you can't afford independent shhool: "big mortgage on a house (“with potential”) in a really nice area, we have small holidays, we have two houses abroad which we have inherited (both in derelict state with squatters and huge financial cost to legally get rid of them). We are renovating all three

You can't know that! That poster still needs a home & private school for 3 dc would be 90k plus a year.

We live in a 150K house in order to afford school fees!

I would have to leave family & jobs for a house that cheap! 😆

It really takes a good deal of financial planning early on to be financially secure in later life, and tbh the financial education in this country is woeful.

The issue is most don't have the spare cash to invest every month for a number of years. If you do, you really can make money.

It’s mostly grandparents paying for private school fees or it’s second husband’s with the new wife.

This is pretty much the crux of it for us. DH and I both work in professional WFH roles (him in IT security, me in IT governance) in the north. We chose to only have 1 DC who we send to private school, run 1 car and live in a fairly modest 3 bed detached house with a mortgage we can comfortably afford. Our disposable income is therefore very high, but we save and invest it rather than splurging on expensive holidays etc. We also have passive income from a few rental properties we own. Neither of us have ever received any financial support from our parents.

@pennypans I totally agree - my son is incredibly knowledgeable at 27 about all these things but given the fact he doesn’t have spare cash are kind of irrelevant - his choices at moment are live in London with GF and £40k job and a housemate too - GF also has an ‘in presence ‘ job in London paying £36k that’s very London specific - there are similar jobs in provinces but very few and far between and people don’t leave them

move out to a cheaper area and then still pay high rent plus significant commuting costs for both of them- ( pointless)

go somewhere else a lot cheaper and get typical local jobs paying £18k a year less between them and she is very responsible for her unwell London living mum too .

he also actually likes living in London. If leasehold changes they will buy shared ownership

People who don't have a mortgage,people who are still on a low mortgage rate ( friends are still on 1.7% for the next 4 years) people who have had a big inlheritance.

Bankers, accountants who work for Big 4, lawyers, IT consultants. My friends daughter is on a graduate scheme and her salary is now £80k in year 3 of it. 80 fucking grand and she's 24.

Retired people on final salary pensions, people who have sold a second home they've had for 40 years, people who have downsized.

Loads of people are OK.