To ask what mumsnetters think is a low income

[Pimmsoclocknow]

Totally inspired by another thread, but what do you think is a low income. - for a individual and for a family of four

Are people counting tax credits, child benefit, hb top-ups in with their figures?

We have thousands of families on so-called middle incomes who get income supplements in this country.

Catgirl

I know where you are coming from as we are the opposite and come out ridiculously on these calculators too.

We have nowhere near your income and have a good disposable income and live a middle class lifestyle, I think.
Its because we bought many years ago, had no cc costs, a sahp, and lived frugally for a long time at a time when you were able to do this.

It has to be a case of outgoings rather than income that determines how well off you are.

Its a bit meaningless. I know somebody who keeps going on about how anybody earning over 25k is really wealthy. As she is on benefits its obviously all relative. But equally, if you get no housing benefit, have to travel to work and live in an expensive SE town, and have kids, then 25k probably does put you on the poverty line, in a way that somebody on a similar income living up north and within walking /biking distance to work would find hard to fathom. If you read catgirls posts more carefully than some of you are doing, you'll see that travel to work takes a huge chunk from her income. Obviously if you are on 80-100k, you are wealthy wherever you live, but a family income of 50k where 10k goes on work travel and another 18k on renting a bog standard 3 bed semi leaves you not on the poverty line, obviously, but not living the life of Riley either.

Real low incomes are minimum wage or not a lot more, where you have one or two people working full or nearly full time and yet still need benefits back up to get by. People earning under £15,000 should be totally out of tax. To work full time but not to be able to live adequately as a family... That's a low income. And so many jobs are minimum wage. A single person working 40 hours a week min wage gets less than £14,000. To rent a flat, pay bills and still have some semblance of a normal life so every day isn't a terrible grind. Minimum wage should be an amount that provides more than the most basic survival.

Incomes don't always tell the whole story in other cases though. I have a friend who's parents gave him an investment buy to let property they'd had for years so he has no mortgage. He also is lucky enough to be able to walk to work. So straight away he's £13,700 a year better off than us (that's our rent and work travel costs pa). Which is why I assume the whole earnings calculator 'where do you stand' thing seems ridiculous to a lot of people. I'm not saying I'm squeezed, after a few tough years I feel blessed that we are very comfortable for now. But there will be people out there who may earn less who have more expendable income, or a larger house that they bought 15 years ago, etc, so it isn't really an indicator of the kind of lifestyle you maintain. Which is what most people really mean when they talk about earnings.

93% - two adults, no kids. Living in central London and earning around £55k between us. I feel very comfortable indeed - the past five years have been a massive leap forward for us after being unpleasantly poor for quite a while. I do often think 'my god I am LOADED' - but I'm still a bit surprised to be in such a high percentile. I would've thought lots more people earned a lot more than we did. Interesting - and a good reminder of how lucky I am.

Actually, if you take out another 12k for nursery fees, actually even 50k family income doesn't allow you to balance the books.

Mintyy, that where do you fit in quiz ask for net income including any benefits. I calculate my income as my wages plus my tax credits and child benefit. I think most people do ?

As a family of three we earn £19k including all benefits now (when was just me and Dp it was £29k but we have chosen for me to return to work very limited hours). We live up north and rent a two bed terrace, have a car and go away at least once a year. I have tight control of our budget to make this possible and we only have around £15 per week spare each per adult after bills, savings and holidays etc. We have enough savings for a deposit on a small house once we've built up our credit rating and also for a few emergencies. Our wages pre Dd left us super comfy but I wouldn't exactly call us poor now so I'd say a low income would be around £15k to £17k for singles and families up north

40K-50K in London sadly is low if you are renting. No spare for holidays or extra treats etc.

I would say less than 25k for a family of 4, less than 15k for a single person. I'm in Scotland. Its all relative of course.

Btw,MrsPiggie, why does a couple need 8k more than an individual?

Well, it's not an exact science, but I based my numbers on the needs of a couple vs a single person. Single person can have a room in a shared flat, for a couple we are talking a 1 bedroom flat. This increases the housing costs by about 50%, at least doubles the council tax, gas, electricity, water will be let's say 50% more. Then food at least 60% more. Other expenses are personal, like transport and clothes, mobile phone if you've got one, so that's 100% increase on these items. So I reckon where on average 14k and below would be low income for a single person, you can add 50-60% on top of that to get to the low income limit for a couple. Sure, if you're thinking here's a single person living in a 2 bedroom house and their partner is moving in then the household expenses won't change that much. But that wasn't the original question.

Two adults, no kids, living in London. Gross income about £85K. We do live well and we are very fortunate. We don't want for anything but nor do we live lavishly by the standards of some of our friends - we don't have a car, we don't have luxury holidays (although we go abroad 1-2 times a year, together and/or separately).

When I lived alone I earned £40K gross, which paid the interest only mortgage on my 1-bed flat in zone 2, my travel to work, repayments on a couple of credit cards (not huge amounts), and reasonable spends - a nice dinner out a couple of times a month, non-designer clothes and shoes, gym, cleaner, bills etc. Nothing left over, but I lived well generally.

London is expensive, but I don't deny that we are well off.

It has to be a case of outgoings rather than income that determines how well off you are.

But it doesn't, really. Because if you aren't well off, you can't rent a 3 bedroom house in the first place. Or find £50 a day childcare, or pay off £1k a month in debts (so your debts go on forever because you can only pay such a measly amount back), or spend £200 a week on food (for 3 people?). I didn't make £50 a day when I worked in the UK. 8 hours at minimum wage is £49.44. I would literally not have been able to afford to work. In fact, I wasn't able to afford to work full time. It was totally ridiculous, I did the calculations. FT wages + tax credits - childcare costs was less than no work + tax credits. Luckily for us PT wages + tax credits - (smaller) childcare costs was higher, because on the middle option we were not covering the bills. All of this was with DH working full time.

Agreed that the cost of living is shit, and I'm not for one moment saying that you shouldn't spend £200 on food or have a 3 bed house or anything at all. But these things - though they might not be changeable right now - are part of being well off. It is fortunate to be able to afford £1k on debts, to be able to live in a larger house than you need, to have a job which pays well enough to cover childcare and not be constantly dancing around stupid arbitrary hours limits, to not have to eke out food based on budget constraints. And yes, as you mentioned it, to have a car. I don't begrudge any of these things but it's not really right to claim that you are badly off when you have all of them.

TBH, though, It is exactly why we left. I still don't really believe that we did it, or how. DH got a job and moved out first and we followed on a budget Ryanair flight with two suitcases and the rest of the stuff posted in 16 boxes. Sold the furniture. We have little to no savings after a year, we are living in a tiny roof which is overpriced, we are not earning massive amounts more, probably have less actual income because of higher taxes, but it feels so much easier and less stressful. There is no worrying about how to pay the bills, an occasional eek we only have €x left for the month, but nothing serious, nothing like we did have.

I'm on ESA and get £91 a week (there's always a deduction for something.) My rent's covered. I have to pay 20-odd% of my council tax, water rates and all the usual bills. I also get around £90 a month extra, and that's a godsend. I smoke and, because of this, have to cut & colour my own hair, have no social life, no car, can't travel, etc. It's an incredibly small life. Each time I'm declared fit for work, my benefit goes down to £69 a week and that is hell. Plain rice for too many meals, heating off, just miserable & trapped.

My quality of life is entirely thanks to Aldi, I'm not joking! I eat well & healthily (on ESA, not JSA) because my shopping costs 30% less than it would at other stores.

It's bizarre to think I used to spend more on a good night out than I now have for an entire week's budget. Most of my friends still do. I really don't think people who are 'okay' or well off can quite grasp how wide the wealth gap in this country is today. It's a relatively recent phenomenon.

Talkin, I read the source data too

Higher income than 30.2 million people in UK. Hmmm

Bah. I'm in the lowest 10%. I'm self employed. Fortunately we are rich in other ways

I would be in the lowest 6%. (~10K income, 2 adults, no kids). But the cost of living is much lower here. I don't feel poor. We don't have a car and are able to walk to work which helps massively. We also have a roommate who we share our 2 bed apartment with which also keeps the bills low. We never struggle to buy food and our apartment is warm plus we have a few luxuries so I would consider us to be very comfortable on this income. I don't kid myself that this would be possible in the uk though.

Mine and DH's joint income after tax is £3'100. After we have put money into the joint 'house expenditure' account and some money aside for savings we have £300 each a month to ourselves. That £400 a month though is to cover our individual costs though, petrol, car insurance, mobile phones, pet insurance, gym membership, student loans etc.

We have one DS aged 8 months and live in Warwickshire.

Fabulous
Why do you think your income does not make you in the top few %
do you and or your DH pay higher rate tax?

Both are high rate tax payers but I certainly wouldn't say we are in the top 1%.

yabu op.

I think it depends if you have decent social housing and your other costs. If you have to pay 1000 a month rent, 300 bills, need a car to get to work and pay 1600 a month nursery fees for 2 children then surely that alone comes to well over 30k. and all this trilling well off are talking shit.

I'm very well off btw, joint income of about 75k, mortgage of 35k, only one set of nursery fees, 2 old cars without loans.

You can't count debts accrued by enjoying yourselves or being shit with money as a reason for being skint. You've enjoyed what you bought with that and now you're laying for it. There's no way that can be counted towards being skint.

I have friends like this. Lived the high life wasting their pay packets over a weekend on crap then complained for the rest of the month how skint they were. That's not skint.

anyone earning the minimum wage is on low income

58% are poorer than me.
My quality of life is probably higher than that would suggest though as my housing costs are low (mortgage on a very cheap ex LA place, one third paid off)

I am also chuckling at the number of people who don't feel rich on the 93rd percentile or think that the calculator is "wrong."
If you watched the accompanying Channel 4 documetary (and you should- its very good) there was quite a good explanation of why high earners might feel that way.

1. There is a very steep rise in income between the top 2% of earners and the top 1% and an even higher rise between the top 1% and the top 0.1%. Therefore someone on say £67,000pa will probably be aware of people with much higher incomes than their own and may be comparing themsleves with that, not realising how statistically unusual high incomes are. Or how common very low incomes are.

1. Most people (bar the top 1%) have seeen their quality of life drop due to a rise in the cost of housing, fuel and food. If you've had a drop in quality of life, your going to feel "skint" but maybe not realise how much skinter others are.

Really and truely though, if your earning £37,000 as a family of three (to give my income as an example), your not only better off than the majority of the country, your also better off than the vast majority of the world and (historically) the vast majority of humans beings who have ever lived. Its a possition of increadable privilege.