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

[ArsenicFaceCream]

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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.

Although we could have got a much bigger place way outside of London it wouldnt have gone up the way this one has which gives me the Plan B should the job front not go well (but I have 30 years at current company) and unless I do something really silly like slap a client I will be here until I retire.

Yes, apparently on 64k we have a higher income than 51% of the population. Funny how the government always refers to us as 'rich' . Obviously, I am well aware that we are not poor either

Joss - I really think you had it wrong if your household income (ie both of you!) was only 26k and you were working 7-7 most days and BB on all night.

What on earth were you doing?? Glad you have left it btw.

I'm just going by what that IFS calculator sayssmoke

Handcream - I don't want to out myself by being too specific, but it was media-based and very stressful. Still in the same field, but a different role now, and life is far easier!

zillionaire

Yes, my parents didn't eat out much back then - but where we lived hardly anyone did other than on birthdays / with friends, etc. That's why you had housewives after all. My mum cleaned, plumped the cushions and cooked in the house like clockwork. Both our parents have noticed how much more difficult it is for their kids. When my dad and FiL finished university… the world was their oyster as only a few went (supply and demand at work again). Now… not so much. Both, my dad and FiL, benefitted from final salary pension schemes. We will never have that.

Yes, they didn't travel earlier in life but they travelled a lot with us kids. They still travel now - my parents already have several holidays booked for 2015… one of which takes them through several countries and half-way around the globe.

All that on one salary.

Different life. Completely.

SnowBells I live the life your parents did except that I eat out a lot, I even plump the cushions!
I wonder if my DC will post on here in 25 years saying how they don't have the things DH and I had at that age.

wish i had 100k a year we live on 16k and find it quite enough

Probably zillionaire, although I get the reverse from my dad. He always says that he can't comprehend the salaries that we earn these days. He talks about telephone number salaries. He says he earned £1000 a year in 1960, but he forgets to mention that his first house was £3000 and he put down a £1000 deposit!

ihate my Dad does that too. I think he brought a car for about 25. My parents rented but my DH told me his parent's house was 5k in the mid to late 60's.
Mind you I have told my DC about my first job in Woolworths and earning just over a pound an hour. Oh no I am turning into my parents.

zillionare . Yes, I have told our dc that I used to work for £1 an hour in the 80's and early 90's. They can't comprehend it now

BTL-ers have had an advantageous ride through the tax system - and they rob us thrice. Once though getting an unearned income via high house prices, twice through raising the housing benefit bill to meet rising rental costs and thrice through making decent lifestyles unaffordable.

I agree with the point about housing benefit (which is the government's fault - not BTL'ers), but otherwise - I'm curious. If BTL is essentially free money, then why don't you do it?

Incidentally, I have no idea who wrote this (I copied it from a copy).

I wrote it - and I don't do it because I essentially view it as blood money - earning money by leveraging your advantage against people who are too poor to buy.

Anyway - its less free money now that house prices are stabilising and HB is capped - but 10-20 years ago BTL was astonishingly favourably taxed.

TheLovelyBoots

All the BTL-ers I know fell into one of the following categories:

• 45+ years old
• money from parents
• money from grandparents
• moved out of London, kept flat to rent out

There's a huge difference between someone who is 35 and someone who is 45. The latter were likely able to buy properties in the 90s when the former were still in school…

Not always just a "why don't you do it" thing.

Also another thing about BTL - can't they claim back some tax on mortgage interest??

Yes, mortgage interest is allowable for tax.

Also another thing about BTL - can't they claim back some tax on mortgage interest??
No.
A landlord pays tax on the net profit from the rental, and mortgage interest is a tax deductible cost.

Lots and lots of people rent their houses out while not declaring it, while forgetting that HMRC are slowly trawling through the land registry and have the right to go back 7 years.
If they find one month on undeclared income in that 7 years they then have the right to go back 20 years : and the penalties regime is not nice now.
They have been warned

I know someone who was busted for juggling HB and BTL. Don't know technical details - but I think it was painful.

You pay tax on your profits. So if I buy chairs for £10 and sell them for £11 I am taxed on £1 quite rightly, not £11. If I let out a place and make a profit of £100 then I am tax on £100 not on the rent received. There is not illegal or wrong about that. It is how every business in the land operates from GPs to lawyers, B&Q to your corner shop. You cannot tax people on money they don't make.

Certainly I woudl support abolition of housing benefit.

We certainly did not gain on buy to let flats. We had two and sold them at 50% LESS than we paid for them. The profit was about 4 or 5% IF and only if it was a year without agents fees to ;pay or £2k gas boiler to replace. As soon as you get a big expense or a month or two without tenants in and particularly in the many periods there have not been any house price rises - I have lived through a 1970s property crash and the 90s one and no doubt others - then letting property our is a waste of time and a huge hassle and gamble.

Not read through all the thread so this may have been said before ... but when I see these articles on the Daily Mail, I do question if the people in them are real. I mean, surely they are actors no? Would anyone in their right mind appear in one of these articles?

That said, I do think people lose perspective sometimes due to the social circles they move in. They think they are poor because they compare themselves to much richer people, rather than counting themselves lucky compared to 95% of the population.

bonhomme
On a thread similar to this yonks ago somebody said
everybody I know earns over £100,000
when I asked her which petrol station, supermarket, hairdresser and garden centre paid all of its staff over £100 k
she admitted that she's not considered them in her list of people she knew

Bonhomme that's where the internet is a great leveller, like the hospital used to be. You are thrown together with people and have no idea apart from a slight hint in their writing style of their background and no idea of their income at all.

I don't think I've ever met anyone earning 100,000, certainly not the circles I move in. No children at private school, no golf club membership, no high powered job. I would scare them all off with my cheap clothes and second rate phone anyway.

Not sure what my point is really but I do wish sometimes people went around with a badge saying how much they earned on it so we could all get some kind of perspective.

Almost every job I see advertised is offering about 25-30K. Anything over that and you need a highly specialised skill or years of experience.

Perhaps these people are just all fabrications - (is that a word?) or figminations even. It wouldn't be the first time the DM had made up a story to get us all frothing.

I think that people on 100K have plenty of money. It sounds like many of you would like more. Would you like an even more unequal distribution of wealth with an even higher proportion of money being in the hands of the few? It all seems very unsavoury and greedy to me.
As has been said numerous times on this thread people on 100K plus salaries tend to have to work very long hours and often have to be available even when not 'at work'. When you add commutes to this some high earners are rarely at home. They can therefore feel deserving of a better lifestyle than the many who do not work this hard. I can agree with this up to a point as the pursuit of more and more money can for some be such a priority that they can forsake family life, time with their children, partner, etc. I can't imagine any amount of material wealth would be worth giving this up for so I can see why they would expect to be able to have more for their efforts.

I moved out of London a long time ago because I wanted a good life. I'm very glad I did.