The average salary in the UK?

[Banoffeepiefan]

It struck me that I have no idea what this is, in terms of (if I'm right with this) the modal average - the mean, I think, is about £26,000, but that is not a good reflection on what most people or families live on. Are there any stats to show what this is across the UK?

Interested because I'm job hunting at the moment, trying to plan ahead, and also because of the surge of threads on Mumsnet about how many people are struggling, and that number who are struggling seems to be climbling steadily this last few years whether it's to buy a house or to buy food. I wonder is the average (whatever it might be) enough to be comfortable on, and are the people who are really struggling (apart from crises such as health or debt etc) those who earn significantly less?

Well, I'm a single mum currently on a £6.50 an hour job.I do get housing benefit and tax credits, I think my income with all of this is around £15k. Perfectly reasonable for me and dd to live on. I'm quite thrifty though and do live in a cheap area. Not many luxuries like meals out and foreign holidays, but we are fed and clothed. :)

Well I don't know much about london but I always thought public transport was good so surly even if you worked in an expensive area you wouldnt have to live there.

Its about 200k for a 2 bed flat around the town centre here (not the nicest part) so we just don't live there. When I worked there I just travelled in by bus.

Well my nanny earns £33k and I am living in constant fear of her being poached by someone willing to pay more only half joking

Nannies earn so much because a good nanny enables a working mother to earn more.

Kim, £33k for a nanny in London is very reasonable.

My friend pays hers £49k

There needs to be a totally separate area on mumsnet for money discussions for Londoners, and then another one for money discussions for everyone else. That is how different it is, and it is futile to expect one to understand fully the other.

No maybe there needs to be a separate board for well off MNers who can moan then with impunity about how much they are struggling.

There are plenty of MNers who live in London who are not on very high wages.

£46,800 is the average household income in London. And the median salary is £34,126. 50% of people in London earn less than £34,126.

Everyone understands that living costs are higher in London, even those who live outside of London. But some MNers look around at the people they mix with, and assume that the standard of living and income amongst them and their friends, is the average. If you earn £100k plus, you are very far from the average, even in London.

The company I work for did an interesting piece of research which showed that people's perceptions of their own wealth are completely skewed by their immediate peer group. So the richest person on a council estate would say they feel wealthy, whereas someone who earns 20x as much, but whose friends all earn 30x as much will say they don't feel wealthy.

No I really don't think living in London is like living in a different country at all, why do we need a special board at all? Living costs are higher here mostly because of housing costs, a lot of other costs are very similar to elsewhere. If you struggle on 100k plus in London, you need to readjust your discretionary costs eg the school fees, the nanny, the holidays etc. You can't live the life of Riley in London with a bunch of kids and only one six figure wage (I'm assuming gross income here) but you certainly can't claim not to be comfortable. Most people live on way less than 100k in London.

I still think that £2700 after housing is a lot of money. Not an extravagant lifestyle, I understand more than people think. As I've already said, if that was before housing I'd understand better. I may never have paid London rents but I can read and do basic arithmetic.

I live in a cheap area in relative terms, childcare costs are a lot cheaper, I've calculated about 65% of the figures quoted here. However our household income after housing is only 18% of the figure quoted. So yes I do think you are better off than me and 1000s of others. You're better off than I can ever hope to be even before you take into account childcare costs don't last for ever and mortgages get paid off while rent never will. There are people making decisions about whether they can eat at all or not. I don't think it's me who's incapable of understanding.

Yes it is a lot. It won't give you a celebrity lifestyle, but it will give you much more disposable income than the vast majority of people in the UK.

Thats the thing, its all about lifestyle.

Dp earnt alot more 10 and even 5 years ago than he does now. I think he misses having that extra disposable income.

10 years ago I was on minimum wage, a LP, also going to college who couldnt afford to heat the house and had to watch the food bill so im happy with being well off enough to pay all the bills without it being a worry. Even if we don't have much disposable income.

only 1% of taxpayers pay 50% tax which starts at 150k and only 14.7% pay 40% tax which starts at £42,000

anyone with an income of 100k is richer than 95% of the population so I think without a shadow of a doubt they are rich maybe not the super rich jet set/ millionaires but nevertheless when you have so much more than everyone else you do need to admit you are rich as it gives you choices whether school fees nannies holidays designer goods etc

Yes- I think when you are well off, you get so used to having certain things as a given that you forget that they are luxuries to 99% of the population. Even little things like buying olives, buying wine, sticking the hot water on for an extra 30 mins do you can have a bath.

My pre-breakdown income scales up to about £100k in today's money. I knew I was well off, but really hadn't a clue by how much. I used to look at the average wage figure every year, and be unable to imagine how anyone could maintain a normal family life on so little - I assumed top-up benefits must be really good, they must all be living in bargain housing association properties, and so on. All my friends thought the same way. I did understand real poverty, and was a big charity supporter. It's the mainstream middle I didn't comprehend, to the extent that I didn't even realise how ignorant I was.

It's galling to realise that, if I'd then had the 'living poor' skills I have now, I might not have become homeless a few years later and would certainly have suffered a bit less fear & panic. There's no point blaming my past self, but I suppose this is why I try hard to help other well-off people understand the realities of life at the bottom and why it's like this.

DP and I lived in London for many years but moved back up north to his hometown for a better standard of living.

We are midway between Liverpool and Manchester in a very naice middle class village. Not a million miles from Tequila. A good income goes a helluva long way.

London is lovely for a weekend but I do think that people living there are being seriously conned: you can have a massively better standard of living up north, it's not all cloth caps and whippets.

Sssh! Tinkly

Let them continue to think we don't have electric and running water and all those other fabulous things that make living anywhere other than London simply unbearable.

If they find out how great the north can be, they'll all want to live here and we'll end up just as crowded and miserable as they are .

Teacup - as already discussed, 100k doesnt always give you a life of designer goods and private schools. Far from it.

Lol ilkley I've been asked if we have tarmac on our roads, TV and electricity in Scotland. The person was being serious and genuinely curious. This was the same person who told me my English wasn't bad considering and was concerned about how I was coping with everyone speaking a different language from me.

Good grief, Aspiring, was that an English person?!

If you're a SAHM with DH on 100k, do you need to stay in London? My BIL just bought a 3 bed house in a pretty Sussex town for £245k, town has a train which takes you into Waterloo in an hour. I don't live in London but looking at possible redundancy and may have to move. Even if higher commuting fees mean you're paying the same amount overall, at least the house deposit to save for is slightly lower.

There needs to be a totally separate area on mumsnet for money discussions for Londoners

No maybe there needs to be a separate board for well off MNers who can moan then with impunity about how much they are struggling.

Yes well, I'd go with the second. Londoner here who has a household income of under 30k. We're nowhere near poor imho, we've definitely had less. Things are easier now the DC are older and I can work more. We have a frugal lifestyle in some respects (no holidays for example) but we live within our means. It does grate when people's expectations of a 'normal' lifestyle are so much higher than ours but I can choose not to engage, it's hard though when it's friends and all you want to say is stop bloody buying takeaways/buying clothes for the sake of it/thinking 'want' is the same as 'need'

Yes garlic but not a very bright one. The whole room were just staring at her.

I bet! Mind you, I did meet a few very rich, apparently posh, people who had no clue at all about the rest of Britain. Didn't know how long it would take to go to Manchester/Newcastle/Edinburgh; didn't know Wales & Scotland have great scenery; thought the Lake District meant the Italian Alps or Canadian ... both of which they knew well

If you're assessing how 'well off' people are though, it isn't quite as simple as looking at their income. Inherited wealth can allow you to be pretty comfortable on not quite low incomes, whereas a relatively high income (not huge obviously, but say £35k) from a very poor background so you have no buffer against housing costs etc may not stretch quite as far.