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.

Thanks! Very useful!

the car is actually bottom of my list! Currently driving 2008 polo….DH wants a bigger fancier car 🙄

@Morepositivemumme neither! Just came across this thread while googling coupons to get a free coffee today 😂

Combined income of around £150k. No mortgage and we live in a cheap part of the country in a four bedroom house. Kids are adults and moved out so zero costs at all for them. We go on three holidays a year and have a few weekend breaks in the UK. We don’t drink coffee (or tea, yes we are strange 😂) but eat out at least once a week, usually Sunday because it’s not worth the hassle making a roast for two of us. We do both have nice cars but neither one is worth £60k, to me that is expensive and I begrudge the extra charge for tax if it’s worth that much. I don’t really spend much on my hair but do spend a bit on makeup and prefer more expensive brands. Clothes mainly come from the high street shops, again I see it as a waste of money to pay for expensive designer brands and I don’t like having the logo’s plastered on my clothes. I work in a supermarket but unfortunately not M&S but we do shop there, mainly because nothing beats their crisps! Our income hasn’t always been this high and my Dh is the higher earner and earns three times more than me.

This is impossible to answer, because all of your requirements are very subjective. Even just the first line - holidays.....do you want 3 star or 5 star hotels, AirBNB, camping? The costs will vary hugely.
M&S food shop.... including alcohol, cleaning stuff, toiletries?
Dinner out? Where?
Good Christmas? For me, that's 2 of us at home, no celebrating, no fancy food. Or do you want to entertain 20 guests?
"Nicely" decorated house.....personal taste is hugely subjective....

And don't forget that people put a lot if their expenses on credit cards!

@Morepositivemum

I'm the same, can’t justify coffee partly the cost but mostly it’s often so weak and lacking in quality too, I drink black coffee and it is night and day between homemade and 95.% of coffee drunk out

We could have this lifestyle on less. You don’t mention savings/ investments/ pensions. I pay around 800 a month in LISA, S&S ISA and my pension. Not sure about dh. We have separate finances.

Maybe think about other costs- the time, energy and stress that often come with the salary needed for this lifestyle may not be worth it. I know everyone makes different choices but if work meant a cost to my mental health, energy levels or free time, I'd rather go without lots of the items on your list.

DH main earner - absolutely loves the job, thrives in high stress. Even has to ‘do’ things on holiday!

There’s just 2 of us and we recently crunched the numbers re me quitting work (he’s older and retired last year) we spend £2500 a month on average on normal household expenses, going out, meals, gifts, clothes etc then spend about £10k on holidays, short breaks, events and hobbies. Long haul about every other year, spend basically all my 5 weeks annual leave away optimising with weekends.

We have income about 180 + bonus and our life is pretty nice!

Little more info…

4 or 5 star holidays

happy to buy cleaning stuff / toiletries in home bargs

dinner in local restaurants currently around £150 for all of us

good Christmas roughly 3k

Useful thanks

Shopping for 4 in m&s, that would easily be 1k a month!

Has there already been a large inheritance? Otherwise, a fully paid off mortgage and £60k car by your 40s is going to have required a much higher than £100k salary in your 30s to achieve this lifestyle. Probably at least £250k to get there by your 40s.
And how are you planning all these lunch and coffee dates while also working to fund them?

We have privately educated so cannot directly compare but taking out the £65k net income that pays for that leaves DH salary alone and he earns around £200k gross. We still don't have that lifestyle of eating out every week etc. It has taken us to 50s to have mortgage paid off, but only 1 annual holiday up until this year, now the mortgage is paid. If we had traded school fees for mortgage, eating out and holidays, we would still have needed north of £250k to be mortgage free a decade earlier and there are not many people out there earning those kinds of salaries in their 20s and 30s.

We’re older but no mortgage, no children expenses and live this lifestyle. We expect to take about £80k net pa - so £120k ish? But we probably do two long hauls a year so that will add on £10k.

We both run 5/7 year old cars though. If we wanted new, we’d lease I think which, for a 60k car, would probably add £6 pa?

But you don’t mention pensions here. In our last ten years of working we were paying in about £2k per month pensions and saving about £1k - that’s why we’re so secure now. As soon as mortgage was paid off and kids were gone, we started planning.

What about uni costs for dc & house deposits?

We earn about £100-150k and while we don’t have those things (like 3 big holidays a year or a new car or regular salon appointment) because we wouldn’t want them, we definitely could, especially if we had no mortgage. We bought our house at 40 (for £800k) and will have it paid off by 50.

inherited enough to buy the house and to put x2 kids through uni.

saving the rest as a small pension pot for myself.

DH works flexi - I work part time

We are fortunate enough to have this lifestyle except not mortgage-free yet and we own two good cars outright though neither of them is especially ‘nice’ as I think fancy cars are a waste of money. Likewise M&S food shop… we mostly shop at Aldi. Household income around £165k.

Why would you only aim for a small pension pot? I don’t understand

Not aiming for a small one - this is where we currently are

How much was your mortgage though?

So many different things in your wish list that depend on location and taste; a minimalist might want everything white/easy to replace/off the shelf bits, whereas a maximalist might need antique furniture and a lot of expensive fabrics.

If you are in London all of that would likely mean, if mortgage free £100-150k per person? Elsewhere it will go down but you might decide to private school as schools may not meet London standards to you. Also flights and petrol going up looks like a long term rather than short term thing, so transport costs will factor more than they may do in a city and for the holidays.

Many many guestimates Incoming. Also I haven't gone for the cheapest imaginary version of everything as I didn't think that's what this question implied. But I've also not been super generous everywhere either.

3 holidays a year - one long haul two smaller European city breaks type - £1500 per city break and £5k ? Long haul, so £8k minimum, I reckon more like £10k?
1 nice car bought outright - nothing majorly expensive around the 60k mark - so that's gonna last say 10 years, so £6k per year,
coffee out for both adults x5 a week - £40 PW, £2000 per year
lunch out for both adults x2 a week, £30 PW, £1500 per year
dinner out every Friday - whole family two adults two kids - £160 pw, £8000 per year
good Christmas every year - £3k per your statement
money for regular hair appointments for whole family: let's say 10 per year at £20 for the gents and 5 per year at £50 for the ladies, so £1000 or so? That is a guess, obviously highlights or whatever would add to it and I'm fairly sure there are cheaper men's places than that.
enough money for both kids to do sports and music out of school - £200 per month, so £2.5k per year
nicely decorated house - like £100 a year for paint? Depends if you pay a decorator
monthly shopping treats for all family members maybe £50 each - okay, £200, £2.5k per year
Food shop from M&S - £800 pcm ? So £10k per year
clothing to be mainly high street with the odd designer item thrown in for whole family. - say £2k per year?

What's that adding up to: £48.5k ? plus council tax (£250?), gas (£100), electric (£100?), petrol (£150?), boring crap (£200 - by that I mean MOTs, tyres, new washing machine, repairs etc), insurances (£100?), subscriptions (£200 - internet, phones, TV licence, car tax) etc.

What's that's gonna be, another £1100? Per month.

So that's about £5.2k a month take home net, plus whatever you need to save for big things like the boiler or a new roof or moving house, and retirement.

So not £100k by a single earner, but two lots of £50k probably just about doable if you don't have a mortgage. It would stress me out to spend that high a proportion of my income though. And if you wanted my estimates generous throughout I think you would easily be adding an extra £20k per year pre tax income before you put any extra savings in. And if it's a single earner you're gonna get got by the £100k personal allowance farce, so probably at least £125k

I think the other thing that's interesting is where you can make the biggest difference on costs: buy a 3-4 year old car and run it for 12 years and you'd halve the cost of that. And would it really give you any more joy to have a newer car?

Change dinner out every Friday to dinner out every other Friday and breakfast out on the other weekend (£60 instead) and that's £2k saved.

Or flip a long haul holiday to short haul every other year.

Etc etc etc. Obviously you would want to pick the things that bothered you least to "miss out on" but I reckon you could have 90% of the joy at 70% of the cost by picking the things that mattered most.

You should maximise the fact you are mortgage free & be stuffing that cash into investments &
pensions.