To wonder what it's like to earn £200k per year?!

[ABCD1000]

Friend's husband earns just over £200k per year, with an annual £150k bonus for the last few years! No jealousy (much!) just wonder what life would be like?!

*Getsorted21
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I’m not comparing them I’m explaining how an increase in household income got eaten by the change in lifestyle that went with it therefore answering the original question.

I know what it is to be really really poor
& now I know what it is to be doing fairly well
And I also know how it was in the middle
I’m just being honest

Private school fees are the same as her nursery fees were btw

I don’t understand why anyone on that kind of money is driving around in 6 year old cars or doesn’t have a big tv etc.

We’re not particularly interested in cars and our current tv works perfectly well so why would we buy another? We haven’t had a personality transplant as our income has increased, we were both brought up by frugal parents. Our holiday last year was to Wales. We have a cleaner once a fortnight but no other household help or childcare. We save a lot and overpay our mortgage a lot.

Those who say their lives are not so different on this thread are also often saying ‘and we save a lot, of course’. THAT is the difference.

18 months ago my husband was earning £180,000 tax free as his company paid his tax as a extra incentive , he now earns 0 as was made redundant in dec2016 and our only income is £1500 a month from my part time job and to be honest we live the same as we did then really

We have a £1200 a month mortgage for a 5 bedroomed house , holidays before we had kids 3 years ago were trips to Europe on our motorbikes but when we had kids we were just doing short breaks to the likes of center parcs etc

My husband is a saver not a spender we drive a 2014 Volvo

When he was paid off we bought a £3000 2001 caravan and in summer spent our time going on holidays with the kids in Scotland.

He decided to take a year off to spend with the kids as this opportunity wouldn’t probably come up again and prior to being paired off he worked away offshore in Africa for 5 weeks at a time as so missing lots of them growing up

The only difference I guess with him having a high paid job is our security , he is it if work and it’s not a stress at all we could live 7 years on our savings before we would be worried so there is no pressure on us. That said we are not big spenders, we are savers and always have been .

We took out mortgage insurance when we realised the oil industry might take a downturn so our mortgage is being paid for a year another comfort for us and we pretty much manage to live off my £1500 a month without really touching much savings.

daisy I assumed your were paying school fees for 1 & childcare for baby. Where does all your disposable income go then?

Cookies
Don't cry sweetheart.
I want to add to little's post.
When I had my first two children I was very skint.
LP, not working until youngest could go to childcare, everything on key metres or stamps (you bought stamps to save for your next bill). Once I went to pick up my benefit from the post office and they took my book away. Told me I had been over paid.
I walked away with two babies in a buggy and no money at all.

My DS is 23 now and a lovely young man. He doesn't remember any of it the way I do! He looks back warmly on his childhood. He loved the things we did together. Parks and play groups. The cheapo holidays to Pontins (they came later when I was back in work).
He NEVER mentions anything to do with being poor or cold.
He didn't know that I didn't eat or that I cried over a ruined library book because I didn't have the £3.99 to replace it.

My OH was the youngest of 12 kids. He didn't feel poor as a child even though he was.

Your dc doesn't know you are skint for now. Things will get better. You can already give your dc everything they need.

My dh earns near that and life is fairly normal . We have a big ish house on an estate but nothing major . So much of it gets sucked into tax and he pays into a final salary pension so a considerable amount goes into that too . We don’t have to worry about money but equally we don’t spend frivolously .

DH and I earn about 250k gross between us, both lawyers.

Yes work can be stressful at times but it is nothing on the stress of not knowing how you will pay unexpected bill, or the stress of your are declining at the supermarket and having to abandon a full trolley which I saw my mum do on more than one occasion.

We have a nice 3 bedroom house, not a mansion, 2 10 year old cars and and couple of decent holidays every year. Our biggest luxury is a swimming pool in the back garden which I feel very very lucky to have.

Otherwise our money goes on mortgage, childcare, doing bits & pieces to improve the house and saving.

*stress of your CARD declining

“Mind you my husband has a double life I suspect which makes me unhappy.”

What?

I have a seven year old car and we have one tv, 26". Why does being wealthy translate to flash cars and big tv's? The point is, I could buy a flash car and big tv but what a waste.

It's all relative I think. We don't feel hugely wealthy but in our little road our neighbours are: a surgeon, a professor, a couple of lawyers, a couple of businessmen, etc, and yes, thinking about it, I do have the crappiest car but cars are a stupid investment.

Oh should of said the one luxury we did have when he was working was a cleaner but only once a fortnight and it only cost us £70 a month she is now gone because he isn’t working and I miss her but it’s a luxury we don’t really need as such I guess .

I don’t earn that much but our incomes combined are very close.
We don’t live ostentatiously, have a typical 3 bed terrace in the South East.
We don’t have the lifestyle to match as we are over paying our mortgage and aiming to retire early but we can pay all our bills and don’t worry about feeding ourselves. I can also help support my son through uni and my OH is very generous with his child maintenance (rightly so).
However for 12 years I was a single mother terrified of how to pay the bills, sometimes having to use credit cards for food.
I have been on both sides of the fence and it has made me acutely aware of how lucky we are, and we do stuff to help others less fortunate than ourselves.
It does irritate me when people assume higher salaries mean those earning it just don’t understand or care what it is like to have no money.

I have to admit it is very nice.

We’re not flashy people - kids at state schools, two ‘normal’ cars (13yo Mazda and 10yo Ford) and I’m never going to be the kind of woman to get my nails done or buy designer clothes.

But we do live in a very nice house in a nice area, should be able to pay off the mortgage in a few years and go on nice holidays.

Also, as others have said, the main thing is not having to worry about money.

Thankyou TheFirstMrsDV the people on mumsnet are so lovely. It gives me hope that he won't remember it. It sucks because as a parent you want to give them everything, we don't even have a garden for him to play in. But we get by and when finances improve he'll be able to have the things I want for him.

cookies I think the time you can give your DS is so valuable and as others have said he won't remember.

Pengggwyn we do have a massive 60 inch TV and our second TV is 50inches. We got both on Amazon deals and we love them.

i assume the two extremes mentioned are not the norm and most people sit somewhere in the middle!!

I couldn't even imagine having that much money. I had to save up for 6 months to buy my car. We went without any treats at all for 6 months to scrape together enough to buy it. With that income in a month you could buy my car 14 times and still have more left over than we have to live on a month

Me and my OH don't earn that much, but we are very comfortable.

For me, I spent my early career on relatively low graduate wages and moved up slowly, till not long ago when I received a sizeable payrise. The first thing I did was divert it into my pension so I was left with the same takehome as before the rise. Never had it, won't miss it. I am naturally cautions, so the idea of spending to capacity horrifies me.

OH took a different path in life and right up till meeting me almost, was in pretty low-wage, dead-end jobs. Since we've been together, he freely admits that I switched on a lightbulb in his head and he is now leaps and bounds ahead of where he was career-wise and financially. He not infrequently comments about how amazing it is to just afford things without having to save up.

("Things" being relative - a nice meal out, not diamond shoes)

Having money in the bank affords you choices, it's just the scale that changes. For example, we now holiday less, but holiday nicer . But at the same time, we are smart with it - business class travel is not cheap, so we hunt for deals and snap them up when we see them. First Class travel as routine is still a world away.

Doowapwap- none of the high earners have insinuated that their jobs are more stressful than a lower earners. That's the spin you're putting on it all by yourself.

They were asked what it's like and they're answering.

It's really odd how on these sorts of threads there are always posters who say "earning lots of money isn't different really from being poor as your outgoings increase". How can they say that with a straight face?!

That's the whole bloody point. Your outgoings AKA amount of cash you spend increases. And it increases because you spend money on things like expensive property, private schooling, reliable cars, pensions, savings, etc. All things that are out of reach for less well off people.

It takes some amount of crassness to claim that you aren't much better off on 200k than on the average household income because you're paying off a mortgage on an 900k property in 5 years or because you are shelling out thousands for private schooling or building up a big pension. Or because your nanny, cleaner, gardener and expensive clothes for work cost you so much. Those things are what make you rich FFS.

What you are saying is "we don't have much disposable income left at the end of the month because we have spent it on building up our capital and financial security". You are rich.

*Sproglets Mum
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Why didn’t you get it on finance or get a car loan?