To think £100k pa is NOT 'the squeezed middle'?

[ArsenicFaceCream]

Link

The article is very confidently attributing the definition to Danny Dorling, but did he really name this figure?!

These women are fools.

A household income of £100K is clearly sufficient for a family to live on, even if there are five children. But it doesn't seem unreasonable to point out some things aren't attainable at that level of income, a family would need to watch their finances.

I spend over £10,000 net on extra curricular activities for my children.

You lot are enough to scare anyone off! Nomama he did earn that last year but nothing like it the previous year or ever, for that matter. The reason we do not feel wealthy is of course through lifestyle choice- dh has 3 dcs from previous marriage all private, gave his ex their home so started again from scratch- last year's earnings going towards new home. Unless you know people's exact circumstance, very hard to judge! If dh carries on earning like last year then I have no doubt we will feel differently- but for now, although incredibly grateful not to have immediate money worries, yes we just feel comfortable!

Marmite did say it was gross. So it's just over £500k after tax and that's excluding pensions etc. So it's not exactly £1million net. Like Marmite said it's very much dependant on where you live.

Yes Super?

I think everyone understands that a million pound income will be taxed.

Is your point that half a million a year doesn't constitute wealth, wheras a million would? I'm lost...

I wouldn't count the squeezed middle as people who can afford private school fees. It's not income alone. People in London have been stung for higher house prices. And childcare costs are astronomical these days. And transport costs too and from work seem to be increasing all the time. And losing the child benefit.

Honestly, my husband earned £4m last year but he has children from his previous marriage and his greedy ex wife insist the children remain in privately education even though their marriage is over and has refused to move out of the house that really is far too big for a single parent. Consequently, we're simply not what I would call wealthy. I could only buy two new handbags last year! Really, it's too bad of people to consider us anything else than exactly like the majority of hard-working British families.

Something like that Balonz? :o

Yes, I don't earn as much as MM's husband hut had the same issue - giving most of what we had after a long marriage and 5 children to an ex husband and starting from scratch but with £1.3m of divorce debt.

However it is all relative. If you surround yourself with people who earn more you feel not well off whatever you earn. I have just about always felt quite well off because I know what most people earn even after their tax credit and child benefit and housing benefit top ups from the state.

I do though think a single mother on £50k who works full time and pays £10k a year childcare, £13k tax and £13k mortgage is no better off net than her twin sister who has never ever worked and the state supports her. So it is never right just to compare incomes after tax but you also have to consider childcare costs - which are likely to be £30k a year if you have 3 children under 5 and you both work full time as we did in London and look at what state benefits like tax credits lower earners get before you can do comparisons.

I have always thought myself very very lucky. My parents lived under rationing never mind WWII bombing. If you have a family like that then you feel grateful you can even afford soap and I do feel grateful for that. I think I also benefited from having children young when we had to buy all their stuff second hand and I know I have pretty simple tastes and what makes me happy like a walk tends to cost nothing.

I do think a lot of it comes down to women not picking well paid careers. Make sure your daughters think about this when they choose careers. If you just rely on men for money you can come unstuck as some of the women in the article have. Earn your own money. Take responsibility for your own fate.

I think the problem is that some of these people want a 'rich' (as in celeb culture rich) lifestyle on an 'affluent' income and it doesn't work like that.

We have an income of around this level and don't live in London. We have a nice lifestyle and our income gives us choices that aren't open to many. You still have to make choices though.

Regular beauty treatments is a choice. Private school fees are a choice. A brand new high end in the garage is a choice. All 3 at the same time? Unlikely to be a realistic choice on £100k a year, particularly if most of that income is earned by one higher rate taxpayer and you're still paying a mortgage / rent.

Polonium yes I quoted individual income as a proxy for household income but the principle point remains. Anyone with over £100k in household income feeling squeezed is much more likely to have got to that position through lifestyle choices because they are in the top 15% of households by income.

There is also this perception that if you're on £100k plus or £1m that you're probably mumsnetting from your yatch which is also totally untrue.

Some of the families in that article are "dire". Speaking of feeling entitled to having their cake and eating it? Of course you cant put money aside for a deposit if you are frittering away £300 per month in massages, £75 on hair, £800 on clothes, and £210 per week on dining out!? That is 2k a month that could gone into a savings account. £20k per year!
They have their priorities wrong if they want to buy a 2 million pound house in Fulham...

Indeed. I dye my own hair (£7). I buy clothes when the old ones wear out. I don't eat out. I don't have beauty treatments or massages - you'd have to pay me to endure them so as a result I have a reasonable house (although the Labour party might engage in capital confiscation of it because I chose to prioritise housing my children in London over seeing to my hair in the topsy turvy world of Labour party politics)

Also when your children go to university, higher earners are expected to support them. Whereas lower earners' youngsters receive state support.

I draw the line at colouring my own hair.

We all draw our own lines. I feel very very lucky that I don't mind how I look, that my internal happiness and sense of self seems to be content if I excel at my job, love my children and have some books to read and places to walk. It probably helps that I don't read magazines like heat and junk TV so I don't really see the supposed norms of people on TV.

I am not saying people should go to church more but they can be atheist and still think about why certain materialist things matter to them. Although in my case I put education above most things so deliberately as a teenager chose a career which would enable me to pay school fees. Many women make less wise career choices or husband choices and then wish they had more money. They are probably kicking themselves now if they are these materialistic types that they chose a low paid job or didn't work hard at school or married a man who was not well off.

My DH earns around a zillion a year and I don't feel wealthy. Once you take out the private jet costs and the staff on our super yacht, running multiple homes we are actually rather squeezed.

Has anyone taken NC for Gazillion or Googleplex yet?

500k is still a hell of a lot, more than most of us will ever have. They will nit have to worry about having to put food on the table, and running the heating in tge winter, and keeping a roof over their heads.

@ zillion + nomama

zillionare

You should be careful not to spend more than you earn.
You may end up with a low credit rating. Just make sure you are too big to fail and you'll be ok, though.

My DH wouldn't feel rich even if he did earl gazillions a year which he doesn't. So there wouldn't be much point anyway. And then there would be all these extra burdens as people pointed out of keeping ex wives in luxury, school fees, designer bags, houses nannies. It's certainly very burdensome.So most people would rather be poor. I would have thought.

This thread has reminded me that you can earn whacking amounts of money and yet still have a tenuous grasp of basic mathematics. There's hope for me yet!

As a mum, I couldn’t have gone back to being an actress, working in the theatre in the evenings,’ she says.

Why on earth not?

This is all just utter nonsense.

House prices rose 20 per cent in a single month in London. Thst percentage rise on an average London property is probably more than I earn in a year.

Honestly my heart bleeds

Fortunately my children attend good state schools, we have plenty of good friends/family , work we enjoy (sometimes) and a reasonable standard of living on much less than 100k. So we are the winners in the end

Yes, Charles Dickens had it right:

Mr Micawber's famous, and oft-quoted, recipe for happiness:

"Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen [pounds] nineteen [shillings] and six [pence], result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery."

Anyone read The Manny? There's a but where the husband reels off all of the stuff he's paying for and suddenly his $1.5m salary has gone. Ok it's set in Manhattan and they're having a lifestyle most people can only dream of* but it was really clear to see how easy it would be to feel, well not poor, but "lacking" I suppose. Relativity is a funny thing.

*id sooner be ms surburban average then have all that stress

Superwife
When i read greatful's post it made me smile. I hope that she works in a caring role and that my ill mum is treated by someone like her.
Why the hell does it annoy yiu that she 'chooses' to do a job that she loves for 500pcm?
I actually wanted to send her (flowers) when i read her post.

(I haven't read after that post i will read the rest later so apologies if there is more on that)

Someone said house prices rose 20% in a month in London. In August London house prices fell 8%. Very good news. Every month it seems less and less likely I would have to pay the mansion tax.

" Almost a quarter of all properties on the market in the most exclusive parts of London had to be reduced in price in August, in the latest sign that the capital’s housing boom is coming to an end. Of all the homes for sale across prime central London, 23 per cent were lower in price at the end of August than when they were first put on the market, according to data provider Lonres and analytics company Dataloft. Across the capital, the average reduction was 8 per cent as fears that a housing bubble was developing in London subsided. Properties worth more than £5 million suffered the biggest average reduction in price, averaging 10 per cent. Only 4 per cent of properties had an increase in their asking price."

The proportion of properties which have lowered their asking prices was greatest in West Brompton at 25.7 per cent and lowest in Mayfair at 17.2 per cent. Pimlico had the second lowest proportion of reduced asking prices at 17.7 per cent