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?!

Because talkin for a start it isn't £60k in real terms. A Ferrari is expensive in absolute terms because a house isn't a car. If you made a comparison about wages refusing to take account of reality you could easily say no-one in the UK was poor. You would have to ignore the real value of their wages though.

really cannot understand how people with incomes of 60K plus cannot afford things like new clothes and a holiday. I can only imagine they are either useless at budgeting, have large debts or have overstretched themselves in terms of housing or perhaps private schooling.

Of course 60K is alot of money...nothing 'relative' about it. I earn more than average although no way near the 60k mark and consider myself damn lucky. And even though I'm a lone parent with 5 kids i can afford to clothe and shod us all and afford a holiday.

offred
real value of their wages though
Please explain, I'm only a thick accountant have have no idea what you are on about.

And I'm thinking specifically of my past life, pre-diagnosis, earning enough to buy a lovely 3-bed house with a large garden and in a nice enough area, with no worries about your handbag getting robbed while you push your DC on the swing. No worries about bills, no problem running a car, could ring for a takeaway when we wanted one, had UK holidays, blah blah blah.

When my Ex was here and earning £16k, after 17 years in his trade, it was totally different. Even with Tax Credits.

No holidays, no nice house, lived in an area you can't leave your DC's bikes locked in the shed without them getting stolen, parks a no go area, open drug taking around my DC's, regular stabbings, not able to pay all the bills, the list goes on and on.

In the same town, an income of £45k 9 years ago bought far far more opportunities for a better life than £16k+Tax Credits did 18 months ago.

If you compare like with like, two families of 4 living in the same town, their BASIC living expenses must be the same. I would hazard a guess at £22kpa here.

Anything that comes into their household over and above £22k becomes by definition, disposable income. To do with what you choose.

If your household income is less than £22k in this town, for a family of 4, including all state top ups, then you are in poverty and have no disposable income, and are actually not able to cover your basic living costs.

If your household income is £22k, in this town, for a family of four, then while you do not have any disposable income, you are not in poverty either.

If your household income is £32k in this town, for a family of 4, then you have £10k disposable income.

If your household income is £42k in this town, for a family of 4, then you have £20k disposable income.

If your household income is £52k, in this town, for a family of 4, then you have £30k disposable income.

If your household income is £60k, in this town, for a family of 4, then you have £40k disposable income.

Having £40k disposable income is more than double what some people have total income. If that doesn't make you wealthy, then you need to reexamine your priorities.

If you have chosen to use that £40k disposable income to buy a nicer house, and to run a car, it still doesn't leave you in the position of the family of 4 who haven't even got enough coming in to cover their BASIC living expenses. It just doesn't. And to say that it does is VERY insulting.

If you can't see that, then you are very crass.

Some people spend to their income..

we are on less, have a nice little house, 2 kids, a car, 2 holidays a year and savings... could do with a new kitchen, decorating the house, nice driveway, returfing the garden, big TV, ad infinitum... but we choose not to so we can live comfortably....

I also support my mum who has nothing - the minimum pension with her council rent/tax paid for. She says we are rich.... (I suppose we are) we say the £60kers are rich.... hey ho...

I define 'well off' as £100k basic or over. I define 30-80 as 'average' and 150k+ as 'lucky' or 'not spotted as probably awful yet' depending on role. 5-30k is 'working hard towards next bracket....' Or 'argh, need more £ pls'

I live in London tho. I'd have a massively different perspective if lived anywhere else.

Couthy has made the point I was trying to make earlier, but much better and clearer!!

But couthy these are just your assumptions. Your assumptions which I do not agree with. People with an income of £60k do not have incomes of £60k for example and do not get help with childcare and do not necessarily live in nice houses and have nice cars and often live in cramped and damp conditions and/or can't move and/or are dependent on insecure income from a job where wages are being squeezed and redundancies being made etc. You can't compare things with your past experiences, our neighbours bought their identical house 7 years before us and paid £100k less, our house is an ordinary end of terrace with a small yard in the centre of town in an LSOA which is one of the most deprived in the country (if we rented we would pay more than out mortgage) where we have a lot of crime and anti-social behaviour, we have one old car, we have free holidays at my family's holiday home in wales which is a privilege of my parents' wealth, we buy second hand clothes, our house is 160 years old, damp, drafty and desperately in need of a new roof, gutters, render, flashboards, new rooflight, bay window roof, our kids share bedrooms, I am priced out of the job market so if we lose our CHB or gas prices go up 11% as is threatened then we will really struggle. We also only have £49k from dh's salary the rest is an annual bonus we don't always get. On the jrf calculator we need £55k to cover our actual costs so if we get a good bonus then we have a decent amount leftover, some of this goes on paying overdrafts accrued during the year while his salary has not been covering our costs. We aren't poor and I wouldn't claim we are but it is actually crass to tell us we are rich and so is everyone else on £60k because we live in the northwest and living costs are lower here than a lot of places.

It is a well known fact for example that people's real incomes i.e. how far their money goes, have been falling. Plenty if people are struggling now landlords and owner occupiers, from the housing bubble bursting leaving them in negative equity with a high mortgage payment and this affects rents. We could fortunately afford to buy a house and are not in negative equity but it isn't because dh now earns £60k some years. It is because when he was single and earning £100k he saved £30k. If he'd been working up to the salary he has now then we would be renting.

LaCiccolina
Half of the population of London earn less than £23,600
your perspective is VERY VERY skewed
as you are only thinking about your friends rather than considering the incomes of all of those with whom you come into contact every week.

offred
the price of houses has NOTHING to do with whether £60k is a high salary.
It affects disposable income, but not ACTUAL income.
And the well off do get help with childcare - its called childcare vouchers through their work.

The fact that people took out unsustainable borrowing (secured to a house or otherwise) is entirely their choice. The writing was on the wall about the bubble from mid 2005 onwards.
And only artificially low interest rates have not caused a tidal wave of repossessions and a house price crash.

£60k is a LOT of money to have coming INTO the bank.
How that money goes out is down to lifestyle choices.

Only if you actually have a childcare voucher scheme talkin and I thought we'd already had this point that in terms of relative distribution it is a high income, if that is the argument that is being put forward let's stop all this people on £60k have nice houses crap.

Whether you bought or not you would still have to pay for housing and rental costs are linked to house prices, as I said if we had not been able to buy our rent would have been higher than our mortgage is.

talkinpeace is talking sense.

offred
Only if you actually have a childcare voucher scheme
Incorrect.
There are lots of independent ones that you can allow your employee to use no matter how small the company. Remember I'm an employer as well.

I pay for housing - but I bought my house before the bubble so my 4 bed semi costs me very little each month. And I chose NOT to move when prices started rising.

A lot of this thread is like talking to someone who insists that unless you work 9-5 each day, you're unemployed. I don't understand how anyone closes their eyes to the reality of millions who earn less than that in this country, or the existence of postmem/women, taxi drivers, people working shifts in hospitals, people working shifts in the emergency services' call centre, people staffing 24 hour supermarkets.

£60,000 may not be enough for you, but how can it not be "a lot" in a country where the majority earn less?

Talkin that is really just a privilege of age rather than canniness, being that I am 28, dh is 35 and we only got married almost 4 years ago (and before that I was a single parent on benefits) we didn't have the luxury of needing to live in a house before the housing bubble.

I only read this thread up to 25/10/12 so forgive me if this has already been mentioned...,

Those HMRC statistics are enlightening. But think about how they were compiled. Are they made up of incomes earned by people working in the named county (living elsewhere) or by people living in the named county (working elsewhere).

When looking at my own salary for the county I live in, I'm way above average. But comparing it to the area I work in I'm considerably below. Factor in £280 of commuting a month and my above average salary for my home county suddenly isn't so great.

So the debates earlier up thread about some Londoners managing to survive on much less than £60k might be true, but I would question whether they earn less but say can walk to work/get a bus. Those who earn more are more likely to live a train ride away which then reduces take home salary significantly without even taking a mortgage or child care into account.

To answer the OP I think £60k is a good income for me in my current situation and if DP earnt this I'd be TTC like a rabbit rather than trying to save for my maternity leave.

However as with all statistics, consider how they have been compiled before banding them about as hard fact.

I live somewhere very similar in structure to Offred, I think. Except it's a flat, and thus co-sleeping is a necessity, not just a lifestyle choice!

Jessie - depends how you measure it, it is enough for us but we live in the NW and we aren't rich on it. If you are talking about in relatives terms on the income distribution scale then yes it is in the top ten percent of incomes. If that's what you are measuring it by it says nothing at all about how far that goes in real terms in different places or different family arrangements. It is the attributing of values to the income distribution that I'm objecting to. People on less with families normally get extra help (not normally enough i agree) and people on pre tax incomes don't take home £60k comparing wages isn't actually fair.

Random teddy there!

What I'm trying to say is not "oh poor me we are terribly worse off than anybody ever".

I am simply saying it is inaccurate to describe a family income of £60k as "huge" across all geographical areas and in all family circumstances and I think for most people with children housing costs are what determine whether it is a decent income or not.

Jobcar
You are making the same mistake as offred persists in doing:
Money arriving in the bank is INCOME
What is left after paying bills is disposable income

Anybody whose income is £60k is doing better than 93% of the population.
The fact that they may have high living costs associated with that comes down to choices and demographics

Offred
I fully accept that UK house prices are offensive.
DH and I bought our first house a year after graduating - three bed terrace in Kent, for £30,000 - he was earning £10k at the time, I was earning £6k
those ratios are unimaginable today
it scares me for my children

And I think all this "you have xyz because I say you do" is as stupid as "benefit claimants with flat screen tvs".

Actually talkin because of housing costs lots of people are now using income after housing costs as a valid measure. Income can be defined many ways. Disposable income is probably most accurately described as what you have left over after housing, food, fuel and utilities have been paid out of your post tax income.

And much of our costs are not choices; how many children we have, that we need housing at a time when it is expensive, that dh has a longish expensive daily commute which can only be done in the car.

Believe me, I'm aware we are lucky but it is because dh's job is in Watford (although he has been able to get them to agree to 4 days in a more local office 23 miles from our house) and pays Watford wages and we chose to live in the NW where things are cheaper.

most people on 60k with say, 2 children, who are crying poverty must have expenses that aren't necessary

But most people objectively speaking have expenses that aren't necessary; whether it is too much food, chocolate, soft drinks, electrical goods, take always, mobile phones, tv subscriptions, cars, holidays, birthday parties, alcohol, cigarettes, there are very, very few people rich and poor in the whole world who have only what is absolutely necessary.