What household income supports this lifestyle ?

[Drealifegoals]

If your lifestyle looks anything like this please share with me what yearly household income you have!

please share mumsnetters, this is where I want to end up for my 40s and there are people around us living this kind of lifestyle but I can’t ask them how much they earn IRL!

dream lifestyle is:

3 holidays a year - one long haul two smaller European city breaks type
1 nice car bought outright - nothing majorly expensive around the 60k mark
coffee out for both adults x5 a week
lunch out for both adults x2 a week
dinner out every Friday - whole family two adults two kids
good Christmas every year
money for regular hair appointments for whole family
enough money for both kids to do sports and music out of school
nicely decorated house
monthly shopping treats for all family members maybe £50 each
Food shop from M&S
clothing to be mainly high street with the odd designer item thrown in for whole family.

no mortgage, no childcare fees, both children in state school.

Without mortgage payments £4K a month maybe? We live on less than that and (apart from car, 2 cheaper cars and multiple motorcycles, and supermarket choice) can afford this and more. I personally don’t waste on crap coffee shop coffee as I make far better at home.

No mortgage in your 40s would mean a large inheritance or other windfall.

Without a mortgage and childcare costs I'd say about £80-100k

"nothing majorly expensive around the 60k mark"

My brain has got stuck at this part. I simultaneously know that there are lots of cars more expensive than this and that our cars are at the lower end, and still think that if you want them owned outright that that's still not 'not majorly expensive'.

We earn around 7.5k per month (after tax and pension) and have a similar’ish lifestyle but we have a mortgage and save 2.5k per month.

How old are you? e.g. have you got 10+ years to work on a career etc?

i was also going to say about £100k

Majorly depends on the rest of your outgoings doesn’t it? We’ve a 4/5 bed house, with a mortgage of about £1400 pcm, nursery and WAC fees of av. £1200 pcm, and pension contributions / regular outgoings of utilities etc. Household income is around £175k, and I wouldn’t think twice about all the things on your list when it comes to spending money.

I think PPs have underscoped tbh

The car is the tricky one as unless you want to add 60k net onto the annual income this needs to come from savings etc

if a high standard of holiday in school hols with multiple rooms etc that’s already probably 20-30k a year

coffees are £200 a month

lunch if actual restaurant about £500/month

dinners at least the same maybe more yea

house again it’s upfront but if an ongoing project just cosmetic maybe 5k a year

kids activities if private classes or equipment etc could be a few hundred a month each

etc etc then add on the extra to go from net to gross!

We earn far more and certainly think twice and more again before buying five coffes a week and contemplating dinner out once a week for four. That's probably £200 pw spaffed up the wall. We could but wouldn't.

It also depends on expenses, our mortgage was repaid decades ago but the running costs of a large house are significant: utilities for more than 3.5k square feet, cleaning, gardening and maintensnce, council tax, etc.

About 100k for everything else but not sure how to fit the car in. How long are you prepared to save up? It's not far off my lifestyle on around 200k but I have a big mortgage. If you saved my mortgage payment every month you could save enough to buy a 60k car in about 2 years. Honestly you're probably better borrowing though - I make more interest in my ISA than you'd pay for a car loan.

I would say income of £150k plus

We net £8000 a month (about £130,000 gross per year) and we have most of that lifestyle except the M&S food shop and weekly dinners out which I couldn’t justify, but without a mortgage payment (ours is about £1800) that would be feasible. But we’re about to have to put large chunks aside for university so holidays might reduce a bit for us, so keep that in mind.

North of £100k (assuming some savings go towards the car)

How do you know the details of other people's finances? Cars might not be owned outright, houses may well be mortgaged. People don't always tell the whole truth, especially to their neighbours.

60k for a car is expensive op imo. I can’t even imagine this lifestyle, surely everyone says eg ill treat myself to a coffee today as opposed to it being 5 days a week? (I don’t know why the coffee bothers me more than anything else😅😅😅)

It very much depends on where you want to live too. London you would need to earn at least £250k I would say to have that sort of lifestyle. Other parts of the country where housing, transport is cheaper you could get away with half that income for the same lifestyle

Without mortgage or rent you wouldn't need anything like that amount - 60k if no mortgage or childcare costs would do it easily.

However the OP doesn't mention savings - admittedly there wouldn't be much, if anything, going into savings (either personal, family aside from holiday fund nor for children's post 18 nest egg for uni or to launch with a deposit or driving lessons and a car or for a wedding or whatever) nor into a private pension.

5x coffees out a week for each parent seems a really odd priority to me (depending where you live that'd be up to £170 a month on coffee shop coffee) but I guess each to their own...

This is useful thanks!

Not in London!

No housing costs she said - or rather no mortgage/rent - electricity, gas and so on aren't wildly different in London to elsewhere.

Just to clarify-

mortgage free - not a large property but has sentimental value to me so never want to move.

will still need to pay utilities, council tax property maintenance

children’s university fees are already taken care of.

I have this lifestyle apart from the 60k car. I wouldn’t spend my money on that. Dh and I both bought our cars outright second hand (about 12-14k each). Will drive it till it packs up.

Between us we earn 120-125k, one teen and a dog. We paid off our mortgage 6 years ago (I was 38). This was possible as we sold up in London and moved to a cheaper city (my home city). Current house worth around 400k.

we also don’t tend to do long haul (apart from USA every few years) because we wouldn’t leave dog that long. Been on 4 European holidays this year, plus NYC and another trip booked at half term.

We live in an area with lots of nice little coffee shops! Find it a great way to see friends, do a bit of work or relax a little! We both love it and don’t want to give it up.

both adults in the house do this Monday to Friday when the kids are in school

Without a mortgage you could get away with less income if based in London I think. Transport is considerably cheaper. closer to a huge airport for those long haul trips and more competition for activities which can bring the price down. Housing is stupidly expensive in London but I think day to day living is not.