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

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

These women are fools.

Well yes ladygingina if you insist on refusing to cut your cloth then you can be squeezed on any income.

I overpay my mortgage in order to get it cleared. This means I don't have as much to spend on clothes and holidays as I might otherwise. By your definition I can claim to be squeezed?!

Not being able to buy a house, or live in zone two do not make your poor and if you choose to do either then you cannot then whinge about being squeezed.

People have expectations that attach to certain salaries, much in the same way as those who don't earn £100k have expectations of what sort of lifestyle it would buy you.

My DH is guilty of saying "I earn £100k I should be able to afford x." Most of our friends have household incomes of probably double that (two consultants or two lawyers) and they live well (Midlands not London) but many are mortgaged to the hilt to fund their lifestyles. £100k doesn't buy what it would have done when our parents were our age and some people can struggle to understand that.

Personally I will still be watching the pennies until the mortgage is paid off.

If your mortgage is 4k a month and your take home is 5.5k + childcare costs + bills + council tax + travel + food = very squeezed. I know many in London this kind of situation.

If you are in the north east on 50k then you'd be much richer.

I could have written Snowbells post - very affluent childhood,my sibling and I at boarding school all the way through, horses, tennis, holidays, nice clothes etc etc. and my father wasn't a 'high' earner - just seemed to manage his money amazingly efficiently.

DH is on £100k+, I used to work and earn about £70k (pro rata'd for 3 days a week) but after we had our third child, my commuting and nanny costs took up almost all of my salary, and it just wasn't worth it. We then had a surprise number 4 - and any thoughts of private school (x4) for primary, let alone secondary has gone. I know that we are very privileged - I am a SAHM, we do go on holiday (though 'only' driving to France, in the car - we don't fly anywhere and certainly not long haul!), the children do as many clubs and activities as we can fit in, and we live in a grammar school area in the SE so we are hoping that they will benefit from a very good state education. But we aren't living the high life - we rarely buy clothes/treats for ourselves and I have to budget carefully for stuff. Our mortgage is high, for not a huge house - but as it's in the SE, it's expensive. Both of us wish that we could give them the life we had, but at £100k on fees, net, for the local day schools at secondary, it's not going to happen.....I don't by any means think that we are the squeezed middle, but I do feel that the life the 'middle class' used to have on the money that it was possible to earn as a middling professional costs a lot more nowadays.

tbh when I was growing up in our council house I could only dream of salary of 4k per month. When I srarted work I earned that per year.
However to support a family of 5 in the South Eas with a long commute it isn't as awe inspiring as it seems. Obviously it is far more than the majority of households earn but it goes quickly enough.
1500 mortgage , endownment and pension.
council tax 200

fuel maybe 400 per month (for work)
school dinners and travel £100
swimming lessons 60 (obviously a luxury but schools do not do swimming)

forgot car loan and home improvement loan. another 600

We have a joint income of around £120k and are very comfortable in London - but we don't have typical middle class expectations of 2 dc, private schools etc. We have one dc who has SN so his private school fees are funded by his SEN statement, and he has minimal education costs (no school lunches/bus or trips to pay) and no childcare. No car as we live in zone 1, cheap travel as we live close to work. Lots of holidays abroad (limited more by time than money), meals out, trips to theatre, clothes, gadgets etc. We only have a 2 bed flat, new build, so bills, maintenance costs etc are low. I know that if we wanted more dc we'd probably have to move further out and we'd probably either pay a huge premium for a decent school catchment plus tuition, or school fees, but the city lifestyle is more important to us and we've chosen to stay in our 2 bed and stop at just one dc. I just wouldn't want to live in more suburban bits of London, but we've made choices to enable us to stay where we are. I think it would be a struggle to manage on our income if we wanted a typical middle class lifestyle with a 3/4 bed house, car, more dc with associated costs (not even including private school fees). Most of our friends on similar incomes live much further out of the city than us; our neighbours are mostly child-free.

I have the opposite experience to Snowbells. I grew up on a council estate and we were not well of despite both parents working full time.
Now we have around 150k a year to live on and we are rolling in money. actually squeezed is the opposite to how I feel.
Perhaps attitudes are to do with what you had when you were growing up and therefore possibly expect.
I just wanted a house with a mortgage in a regular street after living on a really horrible council estate. It didn't have to be zone this or that and for the DC go to an average or better school. The rest of the money we save and enjoy.

pastperfect the 'cut your cloth' argument is flawed overall. People making pragmatic choices on housing is why, where I live, a four bedroom house is marketed as 'great for sharers' and blocks of two bed flats have a pile of folded buggies under the stairs. Which means that landlords can price a four bedroom house with a view to the rent being shared between 4 or 5 salaried adults - and young people find that their housing options are to move away from their communities, or live with mum and dad hoping a HA property comes up. People looking out for cheaper areas to live is the driver of gentrification - aka why it costs £1m to buy a house in Lewisham.

If you're wily, you can make your money work harder - but I don't see a moral highground in participating in the cycle of overpriced tiny flats and driving poorer people out of city centres.

As £100,000 income per year is only earned by the top 3% I have very little sympathy indeed for their inability to pay for their luxuries. So move to a cheaper area, where poor people do. There are plenty about, even in London but if you want exclusivity then you will just have to suffer.

Most people compromise. You shop at Lidl if you want the occasional meal out, or you shop at M&S and don't go to restaurants.

The rich have to do the same. Have a private education and go camping, or spend £10k on holidays and go to the state comp. do stop complaining when life is good.

My husband and I between us earn significantly upwards of £100K combined (it varies as I am self-employed). We live in London in zone 2; we bought a flat 8 years ago and because of the property boom in London, we made a lot of money on it and were able to buy a 4 bedroom terraced house last year after we had a baby. We were extraordinarily lucky in being able to buy a house when we did as we both had well-paid professional jobs and could save up for a deposit. As I'm self-employed, I don't get enhanced maternity pay, just maternity allowance, and we have another baby on the way so we have to allow for the drop in income during my leave - but even so, I have always felt extremely comfortable financially. I'm not a big clothes/accessories buyer; we don't go on expensive foreign holidays abroad (although my husband and I are going on a European mini-break soon); we used to eat out quite a bit, but having a small child has put paid to that! We are not planning to send our children to private school and that obviously makes a big difference in terms of how far the money goes.

I agree with several posters above who say that a lot of this discussion is fuelled by expectations. I come from what I would describe as an ordinary middle class background: mother a primary school teacher who stayed at home until my youngest sibling went to school, father used to work for a quango, got made redundant for 2 years whilst we lived on mum's earnings, found a similar job. Lived in a very rural area. Don't remember going on holiday (other than to grandparents) until I was 10. Never felt poor or as though we were missing out (because we weren't). I didn't really know private schools existed until I was in my teens. It would never have occurred to my parents to send us to one. I can see that things look very different if as a child you never saw the inside of a state school and were brought up to believe that private education and expensive foreign holidays were the norm.

Slightly on a tangent, but I have genuinely never understood why people think that they "deserve" to be able to afford things like private education and expensive holidays. Why are some people more "deserving" of such things than others? I know how lucky I have been in life so far. I had loving, supportive parents who earned a decent income so I didn't go hungry. I went to a reasonable school with a couple of really excellent teachers who encouraged me to work hard. I am naturally hard-working - no-one had to force me to do it and I didn't really have to force myself. I am naturally clever and have an excellent memory which equips me very well for a high-earning professional career. Take any of that away and my life would probably be very different. Why am I any more "deserving" of my currently fantastically nice life than anyone else? I'm not. I just got really, really lucky. And I hope that if anything awful ever happens to me - which I'm sure it will, one day - I can remember that.

Apologies for the essay.

i think the middle or upper middle was referring to the factthat they are upper middle class.

On a bit a bit of a tangent, it's funny how £100,000 seems to loom large in people's minds and assumes a sort of magical significance, as if everything suddenly changes when you hit six figures.

That's probably relevant because it has held that position in people's minds for many many years, yet all the while its spending power has been eroded by inflation. Maybe that is why it seems disappointing to some people when they get there, they still imagine it as the fantastical salary they dreamed of when they were at school twenty or thirty years ago without adjusting for inflation.

Welsh that was a great post, I was trying to say the same but you put it a lot better than me.

Brilliant post Welsh.

The elitist entitled attitude of the new wealthy is highly distasteful but sadly very rife. Of course it is about luck. The care home worker earning a minimum wage probably works a heck of a lot harder than the gp or barrister, yet they earn about one fifth or one sixth of 100,000. They are just a lot less lucky.

Daughter - as I said above - people 'cutting their cloth' and moving to a cheaper area and smaller house might solve their immediate cash flow problem - but quickly just means that the 'cheap' area becomes a gentrified 'slightly cheaper' area - where the original residents can't even afford to rent a starter home. It's hardly a panacea.

And ( as many posters have said) - for many people 100K doesn't buy M&S groceries or restaurant meals; 10K holidays or private education. Your description of the choices that way just underlines the expectation gap between what people feel 100K pa should stretch to and what it does stretch to.

And welsh - I don't think any poster (the DM sad face linky excepted) has said that they deserve the luxuries you mention. What people have said is that they hustle quite hard to secure their priorities (e.g. A 3 bed house for their kids) - and find that a large chunk of income is immediately absorbed by the costs of being able to work (travel/childcare).

Welsh good post. I think it's about being glass half full and counting your blessings rather than glass half empty and comparing yourself to your neighbours or your parents.

Overall anyone earning over 100k is significantly luckier than most people - they are presumably healthy, bright, well educated, employable and able to work hard - which a lot of people are not. Not too many violins.

On the other hand, I don't think this luck means they should be taxed to infinity (as some people appear to believe) - as if that was the case what would be their motivation to work hard and have worked hard to get there?

(& 'making money' on a cheap London house is directly taking cash out of the pockets of today's care home workers.)

Partymatron, that is absurd. Millions of people manage adequately on 30k single, 50k joint income.

For one person to earn 100k is a huge privilege and if you can't see that you must be very sad indeed.

Which bit is absurd? And I never said it wasn't a privilege. I said that it wasn't factual to characterise the squeeze as 'M&S ready meal or Pizza Express for supper tonight...?'.

But Partymatron I know people who work in significantly lower paying jobs than mine who work just as hard and are simply unable to "secure their priorities". That's where the luck comes in. And I do think plenty of people (not just those in the DM article) think they deserve to secure certain of those "priorities" almost as of right. That's what I don't understand.

Not sure whether your point about making money on a London house was aimed at me? If so, I completely agree and would be happy to pay a higher rate of tax than I currently do - whether on my income or on some kind of property tax. The money we have made on our flat (which, admittedly, was ploughed straight back into another mortgage) was entirely unearned.

Sorry, should have made clear that I wasn't referring to any specific post on this thread when I used the word "deserve". It was more a general comment on things I've heard people say in conversation, not here.

We have a repayment mortgage.

My relative lives in literally a mansion in Surrey. She doesnt work, however she did reveal a while ago they have cashed in the endowments and have an interest only mortgage. Has anyone seen the difference in interest only as opposed to repayment - its huge. Its almost like paying rent. Of course if house prices go up you are ok but if they dont.....

Minipie I agree that high tax on high earners isn't the answer although it works as a patchup job.

The fundamentals of equality need to be tackled first, starting with placing value on people's time and effort with massive increase in the minimum wage and an increase in the skills and training of trades and other skills which ensures that the care home worker is an attractive job, not a job that only the most desperate can afford to do. This is what existed in Germany (until recently perhaps), a gp gets as much respect as a builder due to the pay and a mutual respect for skills enhanced by a sensible vocational education system.

I do wish the wealthy would stop trying to tell us that their expensive lifestyle is helping the poor. Just proves to me that having a high income doesn't mean increased intelligence.

Partymatron the absurd bit is saying that by not buying properties in poor areas you are somehow helping them. Sounds like a dinner party explanation of 'why we thought it right to buy in this exclusive area'. That is absurd.

And my example was based on fact. We shop at Lidl so we can go out for a meal sometimes. We are lucky to have the choice, many have none.