If you are minted....

[FeralBeryl]

*What is your/ partner's career or job?
*
Not a TAAT more a TIBAT (inspired by a thread)

Someone has a monthly take home pay of £11k
Not going to lie, I fully intend to suddenly obtain the necessary qualifications overnight for whatever it is. sure there'll be an online course....

I know there will have been a great deal of sacrifice, no work home balance etc. I'm not wanting to judge at all-I'm enthralled

Please.

Sparechange
Isn't that the point? We are not talking about a middle class house in Surrey and kids at an indie. That particular poster also referred to a "folly" car (read Ferrari or similar) plus a house in France plus investment properties plus trust funds plus staff. That's not the middle class life they gave up to get back to basics on The Good Life. That is a seriously wealthy lifestyle.

We are absolutely not minted, but will probably be able to live off investments in around 5 years or so, because we live very frugally. By 'not minted' I mean that we have more or less the national average household income, but try to save roughly half of what comes in. I am rubbish at money, but DP is super-frugal.

We could but we are closer to 60 than 50. Our home is 3500 square feet, large but hardly a mansion. We gave a large garden, not land. I drive a six year old MPV, and ds's nine year old Ka. France costs little because it is let for most of the season. We are very careful with our money.

Plus a generation ago, a house in Surrey and children in independent schools was just 'solidly middle class' rather than 'spectacular'. Expectations have shifted in the last 20-odd years, but it is fairly easy to imagine why people wouldn't see that as living the very high life if it is the same life their parents had, possibly on one middle-management income

I watched this on the BBC the other day which backs up what you say. It looks at how the price of a house has changed in Clapham. These days a terraced house in Clapham is out of reach of the vast majority of people.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/video_and_audio/features/magazine-37657012/37657012

So now owning a property in London is often a sign of a high income whereas 30 years ago it was the sign of a reasonable income.

The same is true of private schooling
www.telegraph.co.uk/education/secondaryeducation/12149907/Can-anyone-afford-to-send-their-kids-to-public-school-anymore.html

ExceptInExtremis
Fair point. I hadn't read the full post, just the PP referring to it.

But I can still see how having £11k a month coming in doesn't make you feel like you are hugely wealthy if you've got high outgoings, and especially high housing costs.
As I said upthread, it is very easy to have to spend £4k a month on a mortgage for a very ordinary house in a very ordinary area of London where you'll have several neighours who are spending £1k a month on their mortgages for identical houses they bought a decade earlier than you.
Add £2k+ a month of childcare into the mix, and you really aren't in First-class-holidays-and-second-homes territory. Comfortable, yes. But not rolling-in-it wealthy

Massive cross post chaz

Clapham is actually where I live...
According to Rightmove, there is a street near me where a house cost £47k in the 90s, but cost nearly £2m this year
This means there are most likely people who have paid £2m for a house (because they earn massively salaries) but probably have lower disposable income after the mortgage is paid than loads of their neighbours. Which is why they probably don't feel very 'wealthy'

My parents spent £52k many years ago (1970s) for a house my DM still lives in. She had it valued recently (thinking about downsizing, in reality she won't leave it) at well over £2m. That's London prices for you.

Wow, just done a calculation.

£52,000 in 1978 would now be £292,000.

So that property is worth nearly 10 times what it was back then.

A lot of people live to their means on any income. But at the end of the 40% equity in a £2 million house is far more than 40% equity in a £80k house for example. So in them terms you can still argue that higher earners who live to their means are better off.

smallfox - yes, that's correct. And since they never re-mortgaged or took equity out, DM is sitting on a sizeable estate, that is arguably "unearned". In the meantime, even though DH and I earn more than my parents ever imagined anyone could earn, we would never consider spending over £2m on a very pretty but unremarkable London house.

Sorry 1Dad, I'm not sure I follow your point?

Loving the list of questions a page or so back in the thread.

"- can you do a job to a high level that very few people can do?

• can you do a job which to this level which is in significant demand?
• do you provide a product or service which has very high monetary value?
• do you actively seek change and new opportunities?
• when new opportunities present themselves are you highly likely to consider and then leap at the chance, even if there are significant risks?
• do you hold the status quo in your life very lightly?
• if things go wrong, are you able to see it as an opportunity to learn and get back up and move forward in a more determined way?
• do you believe that there is always a way forward and you just have to find it?
• are you prepared to move, go abroad, leave friends/family, miss out on social life and leisure for your work?
• are you prepared to work hugely significant numbers of hours for extended periods of time?

-are you prepared to be involved in things where the reward might not come for very many years and isn't guaranteed?"

Very happy to say no to all but one, so there I have my answer to explain why I'm poor and will remain so

I think that people who don't (yet) have a great deal of money underestimate the unavoidable expenses of certain jobs and lifestyles. It was me that made the comment about £11,000 a month not being all that much. It wasn't a specific comment about me but rather a general one relating to conversations I have had recently with some of my girlfriends who have very busy international careers and just how expensive their jobs are to maintain - cost of domestic help (two Filipino nannyhousekeepers to provide 24/7 cover all year round), cost of childcare (graduate au pair who can do homework support), massive dry cleaning bills. Those aren't optional luxuries, they are the bare minimum to keep the show on the road.

Bobochic - I'm always amazed at how much I spend on just turning up to do the job. Grooming, travel, outsourced services such as DIY, cleaning and gardening (all of which I would do myself if I didn't work) are just part of it. There's a time-cost which impacts on things - in spite of being meticulously organised, there's always something where I run out of time to solve the challenge at low-cost and have to throw money at the problem.

And I don't even pay for childcare, except occasional babysitters.

Exactly, QueenJuggler. All those peripheral costs aren't optional and eat very heavily into even substantial incomes.

Right, and they are things that it can be very difficult to compromise on. Living in a dirty disorganised house isn't an option.

As I said upthread, there are other things that I also won't compromise on - education, we travel a lot, we spend a lot on experiences, especially cultural ones, and on ones that build cultural capital.

But we also don't spend on things which many people with much lower incomes spend on. I have never, ever owned a new car, and probably never will. My car is over 10 years old, and I only bought it a year ago. I only drive to the station and back, so don't see the point of a new car. DH's car is over 6 years old and was acquired just a few weeks ago - it's a school run vehicle, primarily. We walk when we are in town rather than use public transport - London is a very walkable city. My bicycle cost £15 from the local FB selling site, and I will use that locally rather than the car.

I buy really good quality food (we also grow/rear some of our own), but meal plan meticulously to avoid any food waste - I'm amazed at how much some people on MN spend on food. Socialising is almost always in other people's houses - restaurant eating is rare (mainly because we all do so much of it for work that it becomes irritating to also do it socially). We drink a bottle of wine between us a week, and never pop to the pub etc.

Oh, and we don't have anything like Sky, don't see why we want to pay for TV when we watch about 2-3 hours a week of TV, max.

Very much agree with the last few posts.

The average house price in the UK in the mid seventies was about £10k, so £52k was very much above average even then. However, it does show how much London has gone up compared to elsewhere. My parents bought their house for £30k in the late seventies and it's probably around the £450k mark now (north of England).

Its not often an intellectual thread comes up theses days, but I just want to say I have enjoyed reading this so much. We live a modest life up north where the main employers are the public sector or Tesco.

I would love for my DD's to have the ability and grit to earn £11 per month. There is no aspiration, example or employers to encourage the younger ones around here.

Its been interesting to know the kind of jobs out there and the salaries that can be achieved, and how people came by them.

Thank you to everyone who has been so honest.

A lot of these costs are optional though. You don't need a big house and garden which costs a lot to maintain. Children don't need to go to private school. These sort of things are the trappings of wealth. This is not a criticism of the lifestyle, if I had the money I'd probably do the same.

The big unavoidable cost is childcare. And that's where having a partner who does it makes a massive difference. If you don't have a partner who is willing and able to be the one who sorts out the kids and your chosen career requires being able to go anywhere at a moment's notice then it is going to cost a lot to have someone on hand. There is a big stepchange in income needed to be able to afford that level of support.

The richest person I know has made it all himself. But in some ways it has come easy to him. He's single with no kids so moving to the US was relatively easy. He loves what he does and it is a massive boom industry (social media). So he's 'lucky' in that his interests coincided with enormous earning potential. He also has incredible drive to do it, and you could tell that even at university: always thinking about it, finding out more, wanting to be better and more successful.

I do think how opportunities come up is often a lot down to luck. Someone starting their own business very rarely does it out of the blue. Most of the time it is related to what they do, and things might present themselves, you spot an opening etc. Being there at the right time, with the right people counts for an awful lot. (That doesn't mean it's handed to people on a plate, they've still got to work for it and have that vision to spot the opportunity and ability to make it a success.)

There is no aspiration, example or employers to encourage the younger ones around here.

This resonates. So much success is borne of social and cultural capital. Kids who see certain things as the norm amongst family and friends, whose parents have encouraged and fostered an interest in education and other activities. Who have role models amongst family and friends have been found to be much more likely to succeed. That's why there is little social mobility especially in the professions discussed here where the earning potential is of the highest order

whatscoming - you could opt of all of those things, but the worry would be that you create what I call "the McCartney problem". i.e. you choose to live a humble life and send your children to the local comp, but all the children there are aware that your family life is different both financially and emotionally (e.g. the impact of one parent being away a lot), and you then belong to no group.

Not that my daughter's life is in any way comparable to being the daughter of a Beatle. More like the daughter of a really bad Z-list celeb

homebythesea yes, yes, yes - if they can't see it, they can't aspire to be it.

I mentor young girls within urban communities specifically to provide a) positive female role models within industries that they might not know much about and b) career guidance from an early age. I'm always disappointed that more women don't do more to help other women get up that ladder.