To consider £60-70k a high salary?

[rebsemmie]

Just that really, I just had a general chat with a few friends about work and salaries (not talking about our own salaries, just chatting in general). We are all in our late 20s, unmarried and childfree, so we were not discussing in terms of household incomes, just in terms of single people's income.

Much to my surprise, some of my friends did not consider a salary in the range of £60-70k (for one single person) to be very high, they though it was "alright". One of them said you "come on, you can barely afford to rent a place on your own with that income!"

I was a bit surprised as my salary is well over 30% lower than that, and I considered myself quite fortunate and well-off! Granted, we are in London which is very expensive, but still..

AIBU to think my friends are a bit detached from reality if they think a salary of £60-70k is just "alright" for one person??

Yeah probably, wankers

I never understand these threads; I know lots of people who live in London and none of them earn as much as 60k and they all seem to be doing OK. I can only assume ppl mean you can't afford a central area and sending their kids to private school and that kind of thing when they say they feel poor on that kind of salary. Most are renting I grant you but then most ppl I know are doing that even outside London.

I think some of you need a realty reality check

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/property/3214626-For-1-25m-youd-think-theyd-have-made-it-tidy?trending=1

fruitcider, charmingly put sentiment about wiping! . makes you come across angry

It is a good salary. My dh and I don't earn that much combined a year! I bet your friends don't earn that type of salary singularly either?

Yes that's high. I support a family of four on much, much, much less than that.

Very very good salary for late 20s. Crazy that they don't agree really. I wonder how much they earn. What do they do?

Take home pay for £60k is about £3500 a month, or £4k a month for £70kpa. Which is a decent sum if you're single, even if you do live in London, where you can rent a nice one bedroom flat in a decent area from around £1250 a month. Still leaving you with £2250 a month for the rest.
But if you want to buy a house, as someone else has pointed out, forget it. Even on £70k you'd be lucky to get a mortgage 3 X that, ie £210,000, and given that most lenders only lend up to 80% of valuation, or offer the best rates for customers who don't want to borrow a higher proportion that that, then you're looking at a deposit of around £50k, plus your £210,000 which really doesn't buy you a great deal in London. A one bedroom flat in somewhere like Croydon would set you back about £270k. And then you've got the cost of commuting........

God I've just looked at the house for sale that bluebeck posted. What a dump! It's not so much the price, as sadly that's what London houses go for, particularly in trendy areas, but the fact that it's in such a grim state. Hopefully it is tenanted out, and its not the actual owners that have left it looking so squalid.

YANBU, even more so when you consider that's for a childless couple/individual. We have a household income of that, closer to 70 then 60 so no child benefit as it's just DH's wage. 3 kids and have a mortgage, we had to move out of our old area though into a cheaper one as it wasn't affordable to us on one income, we'd love to move to Surrey and closer to family but it's completely out of our budget unless we both work and even then I'm not sure what we'd manage it,

I think we could probably buy a garage or shed in London if that so for there yes our salary wouldn't be high enough, funnily enough DH got offered a transfer to London two years ago and even with a London allowance just wasn't viable.

When I worked in London (almost 20 years ago) the woman at the next desk commuted in from Leicester every day. 90 minutes on the train is a fair commute, but actually some people do that from much closer due to getting across London on multiple tubes. You could get a 3 bed house in Leicester for a quarter of the price of a 2 bed flat in London even then... In fact you could certainly get a 3x salary mortgage now earning 70k and buy a 3 bed semi in Leicester on your own, if you were so inclined...

I realise that is a bit of a tangent, but so many people think they have to live in one of a very small number of areas.

I bought a 2 bed flat in London N17 in my early 20s which Rightmove tells me has doubled in value since I sold it (sob) but would still be affordable to someone buying alone on 60k - the commute was short and I never had any trouble, in fact people were very friendly, but it is very much not a good area!

For that age group it's massive, although for someone in their late thirties/ forties with a lot of experience and a good job I'd say then ... well actually I'd say it's a really really good wage still ... yeah yanbu!!

It depends what the job is. It’s not high for a well qualified professional but good for run of the mill jobs.!That’s why good qualifications from good universities are so Important

It’s not high for a well qualified professional but good for run of the mill jobs.!That’s why good qualifications from good universities are so Important

Are you for real?

@minnie - not many Oxbridge grads are lucky to earn 60-70k as an employee. Most half-way decent plumbers / electricians etc, however, earn that and more even as employees.

I'd love to have ever earned that kind of salary and that's with a degree and a grammar school education behind me. However I live in the expensive property low income region in the rural south.

That is a fantastic salary in your 20's.

If your friends are renting then they should be very comfortable unless they are opting to live somewhere luxurious rather than practical. If however they are wanting to buy a property in zone 1 or 2 then yes it would be unrealistic.

Last year DD's boyfriend bought a small basement studio in Shepherds Bush for £290k and I was . I live in quite a deprived area so my mind really does boggle at London property prices.

DD has a training contract that starts in the city in Sept 2019 and I was speechless at her potential future earnings, her 1st year salary is £45k, 2nd year £50k. If she is lucky and is retained by the company her 3rd year (newly qualified) salary would be £105k at age 25 - I cant even begin to imagine earning that amount of that money at all.

@sassy. She will work every hour under the sun for that 45k. Chances are after 1 year most of her recruitment class will be gone. That 100k per year salary won’t materialize for most of them. The reason why city salaries are high is because of turnover and pressure :)

Glug44 The company have had 100% retention rate on all of their trainees for the last 5 year so fingers crossed!

She is under no illusion that she will have no work life balance

MInnie, I’m a lawyer with 10+ years’ experience, and I earn MUCH less.

Minniebirdy not really, dh didn’t go to university he left school without a single exam he now earns 200K. I went to university and I work from home and earn about 10K, I did stay at home with the dc but even so my earning potential wouldn’t be a huge amount.

60K is a very good salary. It’s better if two people are earning 30K each (more take home pay and child benefits if they’ve got dc) but even for a single person it’s good. People usually spend according to what they earn, so unless it’s a decrease in salary their outgoings usually tally up with their incomings and survive very well.
It makes a difference where you live too, lower house prices mean lower mortgage payments etc.

I feel soooo sorry for them when they finally do start their lives, get married, have kids, mortgage, childcare fees. Reality is going to hit them like a bomb! It's is also not realistic the salary they found OK. That is usually a household's total income if two people work which would be quite comfortable.

Don’t believe them. No City firm has a 100 per cent retention rate on analysts. Most view shoving perceived underperformers in ‘back office’ as retention; but it’s really not. There are also those who will get stuck in Associate roles for the rest of their careers but can’t leave because other relevant city firms might not like to hire in Associates; and other city industries wouldn’t pay them those salaries for Associate level work!

bbpp corporation tax rates affect small businesses too not just big companies like Amazon and Starbucks.

I live in a greater london borough and this amount sounds massive to me. DP and I dont make half of 70k combined!