6 figure incomes and can't afford a load of bread?

[LemonyFresh]

Is it just me or has there been a influx of posts about household incomes of over 100k or similar and complaining or wondering how they're skint at the end of the month and struggling? Is it a stealth boast or do these people actually struggle?

Am I really in the minority with a household income of less than half of this?!

I know we tend to spend to our means but even when DP and I are having a flush month I don't see the point in over spending for the sake of it.

The financial times was heavily mocked for this article:

www.ft.com/content/d6f1e58e-20c9-11e6-aa98-db1e01fabc0c

"Aged 45, she works in IT marketing for a large consumer goods company and lives in a £700,000 house in Croydon, south London. Married with a four-year-old daughter, the combined income of Nisha and her husband nudges £200,000 a year.

Life should be good, yet incredibly, Ms Sharma claims she and her family are struggling"

Even the FT itself made fun of it if in a different article:

"The educated rich tend to assert their averageness only when airing their material grievances, with this or that tax rate, with the price of sundry luxuries. In habit and etiquette, taste and sensibility, they are proudly apart."

www.ft.com/content/9cfcc512-28dd-11e6-8b18-91555f2f4fde

I asn't being patronising. There was someone above assuming you kept all your £100k whereas the state takes about £45k of it before you get any of it. That was all.

"I just think - why? What's the point in being such a super high earner when your quality of life is poor due to super high expenses?" Because if you're very ambitious as a woman (or man) then your pay can go up. I've worked full time for 30 years and now don't have a mortgage after 30 years of paying one and then it becomes easier if you get pay rises etc in London.

Our first house outer London £500k is achievable by a lawyer/doctor couple before they have babies buying if they both earn £70k for examplem small perfectly nice house. I even grew corn on the cob in the small garden when daughter 1 was a baby.

And yes I do understand that people with not enough to eat must be very cross about anyone complaining they only earn £25k or even £100k. Just as potential migrant in Syria or an African without any food thinks life on British benefits is a massively cushy life. It is all relative.

Anyone who thinks you keep all of your £100k is either stupid, or does not live in this country. Tax rates are well publicised. And anyone who works full time pays tax.

There was someone above assuming you kept all your £100k

I'm struggling to believe that TBH, but anyone who DOES think that there's zero income tax or NICs to pay on a £100k salary has bigger problems than an MN thread will solve

laSegunda
I understand what you are saying about house prices as I live in West London. However, living in a £2M house is not usual even in London. However, it is usual in pockets of London and so you get a form of economic homogenity in those areas where the concept of what is normal / essential spending becomes skewed. Where we are, there are 5 prep schools and 2 Senior schools within a 1 mile radius so private schooling is not particularly unusual. In other parts of London it would be outside the norm.

This is what happens to Londoners who cannot afford to live in London:

www.theguardian.com/society/2016/may/25/londoners-sent-to-canterbury-council-bidding-war-housing-borough-redbridge

I moved to London 30 years ago, and moved out after 3 years as I knew if I wanted a family, it would always be a struggle financially.

100k is plenty even in the south. It is just about what you choose to spend your money on. We earn just shy of £90 k between us. Take home is £2700 for me (student loan take 200 before) and husband is about the same. He doesn't have a student loan but earns slightly less than me but somehow seems to take him monthly slightly more. Mortgage is £1400 , childcare £1400 for 2 full time, CT £200, car loan £285, car tax, insurance, misc stuff £250, gas and electric £60 in the summer , £150 in the winter, life insurance £40, internet £30, phone bills £60, husbands mountain bike £50 and a few other things on interest free credit that we needed when we bought house £200. Food £400, fuel £200. Spend about £50 a monh on clothes and bits for the children. Don't really buy clothes for ourselves. I'm trying to lose weight anyway. Very rarely buy makeup . I do like to eat out thoigh. We probably spend about £200 a month on Costa, lunches, etc. But that is how we like to spend our time. There isn't much left at the end of the month. We don't go on fancy holidays. Don't really see the point at the moment with children so young. In a few years mortgage will drop, childcare
Will get cheaper and we will become more like we were before kids money wise.

Oh and yeh house was £300k and is a 4 bed detached in tbe south but every room needed doing and it is a massive work in progress.

I would be very happy if over the course of my career I earn an additional 10-20k a year as I would like to be able to buy nice clothes and take some fancy hols with my DH. But what we earn now is enough for a comfortable life style.

Pretty much the same as us Brasty. Here in the North West we live in a lovely village where decent three bedroom houses can be had for £150k. Most of our neighbours are professional type people on decent salaries. There were loads of career break SAHMs around at playgroups and playground when my kids were small. And while I acknowledge that choice will not appeal to everyone, how lovely to be able to afford the option.

Take care MGFM, mortgage rates are incredibly low at the moment; your mortgage is likely to go up, not down. We paid 15% at one point in the early nineties.

I appreciate the concern but we only had a 10% deposit so we didn't get a low rate anyway - 3% I think. As we bought a fixer upper when we come to get a new deal in a few years there will be a lot more equity in the house, on top of anything we have paid off so we should be able to get a more favourable rate. In any case, I don't foresee it going up.

And that's a ticking time bomb for many people tinkly. We are desperately trying to get our mortgage down whilst the rates are low before they go up again. I can remember when we bought our previous house being delighted when we got a mortgage rate of 7%

I don't think we are going to see 15% interest rates any time soon

MGFM the interest rates will certainly go up at some point

I am sure they will. But we are fixed for another 4 years at which point we will have laid off a chunk and with the work we are doing the property should be worth more.so even if the Bank of England puts it up I don't think we will be paying more than we are now. Plus when they do go up, it is going to be very slowly

Our loan to value will be better so we will have more choice. We had very little choice with only a %10 deposit

Chazs - yes you're absolutely right about the economic homogeneity that pervades certain pockets of London. I do think people realise they are living in a "bubble", but it's still reality for them, as is anyone else's.

Got my initial mortgage at 6 % 5 years ago and even as rates fell I paid the same amount. Am now forecasted to pay it off in 10 years. The initial term was 25. So I've basically saved myself 10 years of repayments on a reasonably low repayment outgoing each month.

Childcare costs are not so bad when you can compress schedules or you can arrange your shifts with your OH. When you earn more, often you have to travel. A lot of families decide for the other parent to stay home. If both parents work the cost of childcare is a lot higher and during the early years you need to hire help for cleaning, laundry and gardening which is also very expensive. Just this week, outside of daycare hours I have had to pay our nanny an additional 15 hours to stay with the DC while I work because DH has a work event tomorrow all day and I am working 9-10 hours.

Household income is on average higher in London. But most people are not big earners.£39,100 a year median household income, means 50% of Londoners had a household income less than that.

You're missing the point again brasty. As previously pointed out, household income is relatively low in London compared to average rents and property prices now, because lots of people aren't paying those expensive housing costs. Because the capital was a different world 20 years ago to what it is now.

Giving examples of people who aren't having to spend 4k a month on housing, commute and childcare (they can't be, because they don't have it) has nothing whatsoever to do with the circumstances of people who are. Many of the people you mention simply could not afford to live in London if they were paying current housing costs. You are presumably aware that being priced out of the city is a thing?

Agree greentureen. Given the choice between 100k with the sort of lifestyle some people have mentioned in this thread, and 27k where I am which is cheap and gives me access to family support, the latter every single time. That's not particularly theoretical for me either: DH and I could probably manage to earn that between us if we were in London for a few years, not that we could afford childcare while we built up to that. We earn closer to the lower figure working relatively few hours between us somewhere cheap, and could manage on plenty less. But for us, earning 2 x 50k and everything that goes with it would be harder than it would be to manage on £1800ish a month near us.

Of course, what would be really tough would be living on 27k as a family in the south east, paying private rents or the current ludicrous house prices. Worst of all worlds.

Well earning 100k a year and not being able to afford hols sounds as depressing as fuck

Thank god I live up north , have a job I actually like and family around for free childcare to make my 'pitiful' shockingly low salary (well by mn standards ) stretch to a nice house holidays and a car I own outright

Both DP and I moved away from family and although we have above average income at £38k, by MN standards we are poor. But we live somewhere really nice where houses are affordable. The only thing I miss about living in London is museums and galleries. But I travel down there about once a month and try and fit as much of that in as I can.

And yes house prices were much lower in London 20 years ago as London was just coming out of the recession. When I was there 30 years ago house prices were in a boom. Although nothing like today.

It's all about choices. We chose a two bed in a cheaper area of london so I could stay at home with two small kids. DH had a salary nearer to £50k in that time and we are very comfortable but not rich. We managed to save £10k in a year without scrimping, we even had childcare and holidays.

On the other hand we had friends who expected us to feel sorry for them because they'd mortgaged themselves up to the eyeballs to extend their house, and we're still paying off the loan for their extravagant wedding, they earned double the salary between them but they had to both work to make ends meet so felt hard done by.

I'm back at work because I want to and DH is looking for a salary increase with a new job. A higher income is unlikely to mean we spend more, the jump to a three bed house is poor value for money so we may extend, we already have enough saved to pay for this. For us £100k would just be a lot of extra savings each month, not luxury holidays, upgrading to Waitrose shops or designer clothes. I can totally understand how £100k income families overstretch themselves but it is their own choice and not something to moan about. House prices in london are crazy but it's the people choosing to pay the crazy prices keeping the market growing.