My colleague announced today that he is lowly paid............

[TroubleinDaFamily]

He is on £45K a year, now he has four children (all planned) but lives in a detached house in the South East.

His money may not go far, but IMO he is not lowly paid.

Depends on the role. He may be on the low end of pay for whatever that role is looking at other companies.

Is it time to drag out this one again? www.ifs.org.uk/wheredoyoufitin/

thanks slight

apparntly dh is in th top half of salaries he gts 40k but living in se is more expensive than elsewhere

It's all relative though...I was talking to someone at the school gates who told me her DH was very well paid in his job. I was surprised she said it as they live in one of the least expensive houses in our town, drive old car and have inexpensive holidays. Now it could be that they save thousands a year, or it could be that relative to what people around them earn it's quite a lot. I suspect it's the later. Meanwhile my lifestyle seems more comfortable, but I don't think we earn a lot as we can't afford holidays abroad...I feel disappointed in myself for never having taken my children skiing...obviously it's all relative.

He earns more than me and DH combined and we are comfortable. Each have a car and own our house ect. We are also south east. Seems like a decent wedge to get yearly.

£45,000 supporting four kids in the south east doesnt go that far tbh, But I would say it was a healthy wage for a single person or a person with two kids. Four kids do cost a fortune.

I wouldnt call 45K highly paid. It's average, in the SE.

Well it depends what he’s doing and what other people in similar roles are being paid doesn’t it.

It's hardly average - it's more than most teachers, nurses, etc never mind all the non professional jobs!

Maybe average in your social circle. A think a lot of these beliefs depend on who we are surrounding ourselves with.

Thìng is, if someone on a wage significantly higher than the median feels poor, then how do they think people manage on min wage? I can understand wanting to have a little whinge now and again, we all do. That's fair enough.

I don't think being willfully oblivious to income inequality is fair enough though. What I have found is that some of the biggest whingers, if asked about "so what if your household income was 23,000?" just seem to ignore it.

Found this too which allows you to put in area, but not number of dependents: www.ons.gov.uk/visualisations/nesscontent/dvc126/

Also this: visual.ons.gov.uk/household-income-and-inequality-where-do-you-fit-in/

Did he say he was lowly paid or did he say he was skint, there is a difference.

He probably isn't lowly paid but his money won't go far because he has a large family and and a big mortgage.

CaretakerToNuns: Males always think they are hard done by, no matter how privileged they are

What a weird thing to say. Might as well state women always make massive sweeping statements that are not true

Well he's certainly earning a decent wage but unless his wife or partner earns a similar amount it won't go far, not with four kids and living in the south east.

It depends why he feels low paid. Clearly objectively and based on national statistics he absolutely isn't.

However if he is regularly pulling 50 hour weeks, has several degrees related to the field, has to travel away on business at short notice and has years of experience he probably does feel undervalued thus hard done by moneywise.

I earn £10 per hour. I feel this is a good wage for what I do and the commitment I make. However my dad is a very senior project manager in a completely different field and is on c. £70 ph. Does he work 7 times harder than ne? Probably.

Mind you this argument doesn't always stack up, for example carers on minimum wage often work incredibly hard while you can "earn" millions through investments and property doing very little actual graft.

I'm in the SE, and the average household income in this area (from ONS) is around £80k. So a salary of £45k in this area is average to low (making the assumption from my own peers that, on average that £80K is made up of one full time earner and one part time earner, but obviously all different work patterns are included in the average).

If £45k is their sole household income, then in this area, they'd be significantly lower earners than the majority of people around them living within their community. Plus, of course, they have 4 kids and a big house (not a decision I'd make on that salary, but that's not the point).

All of that is, of course, irrelevant - it's whether or not the salary is a reasonable one for the job being done that matters.

But as someone who lives in commutersville in the SE, I'd consider a £45k salary mediocre at best. But I also have to spend £400 a month to commute and £400k+ to buy a smallish 3 bed semi. So salaries in this area tend to be much higher to reflect that. In other parts of the country, I imagine that £45k may well be seen as a very good salary, and could afford the worker a very comfortable life.

One really interesting thing is that everyone thinks they aren't that wealthy compared to others - even the alpha wealthy do. Multi, multi millionnaires will say they are doing "OK" or that they're "comfortable" and will shy away from descriptions of themselves as "wealthy".

I think, at another social level entirely, most middle class people severely underestimate the state of poverty in this country and the straitened circumstances in which some families are trying to exist.

You might enjoy this article!

www.nytimes.com/2017/09/08/opinion/sunday/what-the-rich-wont-tell-you.html

It's a good salary in my opinion, and I live in the South East (well, maybe not if he's a brain surgeon or similar, it's all relative I guess). But if his DW / DP doesn't work for example and is a SAHM then that would be a bit tight as a gross annual salary to support 6 people on.

£45k with four kids in the SE won't go very far. Having said that, there are plenty of people earning far less.

SE here and standard four bedroom 1970s detached houses are £650k+.

basically his friends are richer - better paid

i know a male whose pension is too high for them to be able to claim a bursary for their dc, ie, over £25.000, yet what a whinger he is. claiming poverty - claiming that their outgoings are not taken into account

He's probably a Mumsnetter if he thinks £45k isn't very much. He might see this thread and recognise the scenario.

Just because he's chosen to have a large family in a large house in an expensive area, which probably means he doesn't have a lot left for discretionary spending, assuming you haven't forgotten to mention that his wife is a high earner, it doesn't mean that he's low paid. He still probably earns more than about 80% of the country.

Plenty of people choose to limit their families and/or are forced to live in a smaller house or in a cheaper area because they simply don't have the means to live in an expensive area and/or a large house.

mrsm43s It really depends on how you work out average salary in the South East. I live in the South East and I only know one person who earns around 80k a year. Most people I know earn between £18,000 - 30,000. It's the problem with averages. If you work out averages using the mean then it's always going to give a much higher result as the relatively small number of high earners will give a skewed 'average' that will be much higher than what the majority of people earn. If you use a mode method of calculating the average, the average salary would be much, much lower than 80k.

My DH and I only earn that between us. But, we have free accommodation in a beautiful area with absolutely zero household bills to pay. W e also have no dependent children so we are quite comfortable financially, even if on paper our wages are quite low.

A friend said to me that she did not mind being on a low wage like £40k, as other things are more important than money. Even her husband was not amused. If people come from money, they often have an unrealistic idea about what other people live on.

Well, if he's making pensions contributions of, say, £600 a month, his take-home pay won't be much more than the benefit cap. Which obviously wont go very far with his mortgage repayments and multiple children.

His gross pay is still 50% over the average though.