To think that 60k is a lot of money to earn a year?!

[MinkSlink]

I think it is a lot of money to earn per year but it seems a lot of people on mumsnet don't think so, am I in the piss poor minority here or what?!

www.telegraph.co.uk/property/3361042/Britains-richest-towns-10-1.html

Actually, I've been thinking about this overnight. Hope the link above works, cos it's not my strong point. I live in town number 2 on the list and although this list is largely about house prices, they are, surely, linked to salary (inheritance, coming into money also being factors). I think that living somewhere like this, where the majority of people that I come into contact with are earning 60K+++ skews your perception. Clearly I'm not naive enough to think that most people are on this amount, I know it's only a tiny proportion. But in this financial pocket it's perceived as not being unusual. That's probably not a good thing. Am I responsible for it? No. Is it fair? No. What should happen? I don't know This thread has made me think though, that's for sure.

Am surprised Winchester isn't on that Telegraph list.

Yes it SHOULD be - we earn about that. We live in London in a one bedroom flat (2 DC). It's cramped. We pay around £15K a year in childcare. We do get to take a weeks holiday in UK every year, but don't manage to save much beyond this. I can pay the bills without worry, but our real issue is accommodation.
Our flat is shared ownership and I feel really stuck. To move we will have to move way out into the suburbs, changing schools, child minders, be further away from work/school/nursery etc. i.e. everything will change.

We don't live in a 'posh' area by any means, but the only way we could afford a 2 bed flat (house not an option at all) around her is to be on double the income, or be socially housed. There is no middle ground.

It's a depressing puzzle for me.

It is all relative. Me and my husband bring in over 60k between us, but we have a big mortgage, he has maintenance to pay. We don't have a lot of spare money but if we earned less we would have a smaller house and smaller bills.

MinkSlink why did you ask this in the first place? Why choose 60K in the question is it relevant? True what other peeps have said, someone earning 60K pays more tax, prob. has more outgoings etc. etc. so in the great scheme of things its all relative.

Yes, of course it is.

AM I READING A DIFFERENT THREAD? Where does op talk about combined income? £60k isn't particularly a lot of money if two people are earning it, it is not that much more than 2 x the average.

Where does it say it is not combined? It just says that the op thinks its a lot to earn in one year.

snort at "if we earned less we'd have a smaller house"

I don't say those on low incomes shouldn't get benefits. What amazes me however is that we tolerate wages so low that they have to be topped up with benefits or people can't afford to have a home or eat. How is this a sustainable situation? How come Starbucks for eg can pay a low wage and very little tax?

I appreciate that £60k is a lot of money. I suppose what I am objecting to is all the vitriol and being told I have to shut the fuck up because I am so rich and lucky. I have to take the next two months off work. If I don't work, I don't get paid, I have no private health scheme, am a sole trader.

If it were not for the fact that my pensioner mum will raid her savings for me, I would lose my house. Yes, I appreciate I could move me and my daughter into a bed sit and pay less. We live in a pretty modest two bed terrace. Yes I appreciate that is more than a lot of people can ever hope to aspire to.

But the corollary is NOT that I am a rich over privileged cow who shouldjust shut the fuck up because I am blinkered and don't understand.

Smething is very very wrong with a country that allows big business to avoid taxes whilst at the same time paying it's workers wages so small they cannot eat without state subsidies.

If it is not combined then the person earning it would be paying more tax than two people earning 30k iyswim.

You have to earn £43k to pay the average rental in London now.

"Saying £60k is not a lot in London is insulting to the 95% of Londoners who live on less than that."

That's not true. The average salary in London is around £40K. I imagine that the percentage of workers on £60k in London is much much higher.

Shall we ask her?

MinkSlink can you clarify your op? Do you think a salary of £60,000 is a lot of money to earn in a year, or did you mean that you think a combined household income of £60,000 is a lot in one year?

Please could you let us know. Ta.

The amount of tax paid is irrelevant. £60,000 a high salary. £60,000 household income not so much, but still higher than average.

You also pay income tax on pensions above your tax free allowance, which would skew the figures.

DP and I each earn around this amount so our joint income is over £120k. We are based in the expensive South East. I appreciate we are lucky and what we earn affords us a certain degree of freedom and choice that others simply do not have - ie. we live in a nice 3 bedroomed house in a decent area, each have our own cars (nice but nothing too fancy), eat out once a week or so, both have a few hobbies that we pursue and can afford a couple of nice holidays a year. We are also able to save something every month. Admittedly we don't have any DC yet so things may well change in the future. So yes in that sense I think £60k per year is a lot compared to what a lot of people have.

I do appreciate that we are in a much better position than a lot of people, including a lot of our family and friends. However, by the time we have paid our mortgage (over £2k per month), paid for our train season tickets to work (£300 each per month) and paid to run the cars and for all our other outgoings it does not feel like we have much left at the end of the month! So I can see why people who earn a lot sometimes feel like they are not so well off. However, I accept that we have made the CHOICE to have the kind of lifestyle we do, live where we live, have two cars etc whereas a lot of people simply would not have any choice so in that sense I do think we are well off. I would never complain about being broke, especially not in front of members of my family / friends who earn a lot less than us as that would be down right disrespectful.

I would also add that we do still have to be careful with our money, always look out for offers, we haven't turned the heating on yet to save money - so we are very careful about what we spend. £60k per year does not make you so rich you can go out spending money willy-nilly!

And we work ridiculously long hours as well, so what we have in money we sacrifice in time (although I do appreciate lots of low paid workers work long hours as well).

Ok, so I 'only' earn about £50k, so can't have all of these things

4 bedroom detached home
Holidays
A cleaner/gardener
2 new cars
Gym membership
Dc going to ballet/piano lessons
insurance against possible redundancy
Etc etc

But I don't have any of those things. Our biggest extravagance is a big semi in zone 4. Paying the mortgage, council tax and bills takes about £1800 a month, then childcare about £500 a month, if it's a good month and we don't have to have too much. The student loans company takes about £260 a month, and I won't pay them off for another five years. My in laws bought our car for us. We can't afford holidays. Or a cleaner/gardener. Or gym membership. I teach the kids to play piano myself. What's insurance?

If we moved a lot further out, our mortgage would be much less, as would our council tax, but then I would spend even longer on the train and see my kids even less. I have no transferrable skills at all, so am stuck working where I work, which is in central london. I could retrain to do something else I suppose, but I'm actually good at what I do. So until I manage to kill off my boss and steal her job (and salary) we're scrimping along paying our massive mortgage and running up credit card bills every time something shit happens (MOT, funerals, OH's work laptop dying).

MummytoMog, so where does all the other money go? I presume you have a partner who also earns a reasonable wage as you talk about OH's work laptop. Genuinely confused

I think that this - research.dwp.gov.uk/asd/asd1/tbm/tbmt_2009.pdf is the problem. It's the results of research where they look at different family situations, and plug in the numbers for a massive range of income. Scroll down to p63, p96 or p108 for example graphs - basically, because of the way that benefits work, lots of family types earning £500 a week aren't better off than identical families earning £90 a week (that's £4680 a year vs £26000 and for familes with 3 children it can be up to £33000).

You can absolutely see why people get really fed up if they have taken on harder/more difficult/more technical work to earn more money (with Uni debts perhaps), but they aren't compensated for it in real terms. On the other hand, heaven help us all if there isn't a safety net for those of us who fall on hard times. I wish I knew what the solution was!

DH & I earn about that between us (65k) and the bank says we can 'only' get a mortgage for around £250,000. Where we live, that wouldn't get a 4 bedroom house. 3 bedroom maybe but not a particularly big house. I'm not saying it isn't alot of money, it is, but it doesn't necessarily buy you the lifestyle some people would imagine.

Will these 60k plus earners miss their CB from next year ?

60k is a massive salary to us!

DH earns 21k and I am on about 10k and we are lucky enough not to have childcare costs as I work evenings and weekends and my husband works mon-fri 8-5.
We have 3 children (6 and under) and own a 4 bed detached house in a nice part of our town (west midlands) we own a 54 plate moderate car (only DH drives) and have enough left over each month to be able to be decorating the house a bit at a time, we dont have an annual holiday but have a few weekends away (in the uk mainly)each year and always have enough food on the table and dont have to worry if we can afford to put the heating on for an extra hour each day.
We very rarely buy the kids new clothes though (ebay bundles instead) only have a basic wardrobe ourselves, dont go out for meals and/or nights out, dont drink or smoke and dont buy things unless we have the money saved up (apart from the mortgage obviously!)
Life would be amazing on 60k a year so to say it isnt a lot of money is madness!

Hammy02 - where I live £250,000 would get you a one and a half possibly two bedroom flat. But that doesn't change the fact that £60,000 is still a high salary!

sorry just to add that DH and I consider ourselves very lucky to be in the position we are and know that many others of our age are not so lucky so really cant understand how those earning even more can feel hard done by!