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??

I would consider it a high salary but they have a point about affording rent as a single person, salaries aren't keeping up.

Here we go again.

£60k for some is pocket change. £60k for others is unobtainable unless a windfall befalls them.

It is relative.

Many people survive on much less than half that in London. This idea that everyone living/working in London lives inside a shoebox unless they're earning £100k is non-sense.

I wouldn't say it was high for London.

IMO, £90,000 would be a high salary in London/Home Counties.

it's our combined household income so yes I'd say it was pretty high

Yes if I earned 90k myself I would think I had done very well, it’s highly unlikely though.

DN is manager of a shop in central London and earns £70k. I would think it is slightly above average, but not by much.

To put it in perspective though, a single person on £70k would never be able to buy in London.

They could always have a play with this calculator which says that a single person earning £70k a year and paying £1500 pa in council tax, which oddly, is the only expense they ask about, is better off than 98% of the population, so rather much more than 'alright'.

Median household income in London is around £40k, so whichever way you look at it, they have more money than nearly everyone.

£70k being not enough to rent a place in one of the world's most expensive cities, is an entirely different matter. They could always do what everyone else has to do and live somewhere cheaper.

Bloody hell, what social circle do you keep.

If you're 40/50 and bloody good at what you do then maybe that's a standard salary.

But in your 20s!!!!???? It's a fat stonking salary no matter where you live!

I just think London is a different planet to the rest of the U.K.!

If both parents are on that so an income of 140k I think that would be comfortable.

In most parts of the UK it's a fantastic salary. But in London it genuinely doesn't go that far and so, yes, would think it would be decent but not really high in that context.

Re. the earlier comment about Dr's salaries - as a full-time NHS doctor (currently working up to 70hrs a week) with 13yrs experience I earn significantly less than £60k (and am definitely not alone in this). I'd be very pleased with 60-70k in or out of London!

Personnally I think it depends on your job and experience.

60K for a recent graduate, yup it's very good.

60K for a manager of a team of strategy consultants at the end of her career = rubbish salary.

When I was in consulting I wasn't on a particularly "good" salary for the sector. If I'd played the field and changed companies a lot I could have been earning much more.

I side-stepped into a different sector and joined a team where my salary is at the "high" end. Yet I'm earning the same as my "fairly low" consulting salary.

Thanks Flowers for checking the stats - I might have been thinking of household? Anyway, lower than I thought

It's above the 90th percentile, in other words more than 90% of people earn less than that.

I think it is a pretty good salary, I would certainly be very happy to earn that amount - I currently earn half that and live a reasonably comfortable (but far from flashy) lifestyle.

It is all very relative to spending though and sometimes wonder how people on higher incomes don't appear to feel rich. A higher income usually ends up with higher outgoings though, so bigger house and therefore bigger mortgages and then bigger bills.

My friend has a beautiful old house, sizeable but not massive -she recently told me the Council tax was £300 a month!! I did think to myself then that you would really need a big income to afford that housing situation, and still not necessarily be any cash richer in the short term.

I’d consider it:

High for outside London

Pretty decent for someone in late 20s, single, child free in London

Pretty standard for someone 30+, with a young family in London or commuting into London.

To put things in perspective for non-Londoners, my train commute costs £24 a day plus £6 a day parking. There’s no option for a ‘part time’ season ticket so I get stung with the full daily rate even though I work half the week from home. Plus petrol.

Nursery for one child is approx £350 per week so over £18k a year out of net salary.

So that’s approx £25k out of net salary just for childcare for one and the commute.....so while £50k sounds good on paper it doesn’t stretch far in London /SE

ONS is good for things like this.

According to their most recent figures, a headline salary of £60k is 92nd percentile and £70k is 94th.

Someone on £60-70k is a senior professional - a lawyer with 5+PQE or an NHS consultant, maybe. It would be damn near impossible to be either of those until your thirties, so it's a dazzling salary for those in their twenties! Many many professions will have salary ceilings well below £50k no matter how hard you work or how much experience you amass.

So yes, you have to be in some kind of bubble not to recognise that £60-70k is a good salary compared to most of the country, even if it doesn't give you a "turn left when you get on the plane" kind of lifestyle. Financial services bubble, perhaps? A friend of ours walked out of university straight into a £50k position which is equivalent to £70k now but he was very much outside the norm and it's a household name financial institution. Also he's a genius.

In any case it's staggeringly tone deaf to talk casually about such high salaries as being "all right" in general (rather than for a particular kind of post).

The higher rate tax threshold is £45k. Just under 14% of people are in this band.

A further 1.2% of people earn over £150k and are in the highest rate band.

Source: www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-40117521

Surely that's all you need to know?

Wow walkignthroughawall, I knew that Drs were getting a pittance in the UK but under 60k after years of study and student loans. Im surprised more have not walked away by now.

I think that is a really good salary. I work for the NHS and that figure would be earned by top senior management (Band 8c/d). And I don't think I've ever seen someone in their 20's on that wage in the NHS. Its something you have to work your way up to. Higher pay is reserved for executives. I think the top salary of the top band in the NHS is about £100k. So yeah, in the grand scheme of things, you're not doing too bad eh?!

Ignore your mates. Are you happy and do you feel well off yourself?

In your 20s and without decades of experience it's a high salary. The median graduate starting salary is £30k, so it's double that.

Hospital consultants, pilots, senior managers and some headteachers earn a lot more, but have more experience.

I think the disparity between living costs & income skew ones view. I know 70k is more than money people earn but it still won’t allow you to buy a 3 bed house so then it seems like less.

That seems like a Huuuge salary to me, but I live in the North West. I would assume it would seem less in London due to the insane cost of living there.

I also think wages have been supressed so what an accountant/barrister/doc earns today is lower than say 10 years ago. My director earns 130k & has a final salary pension (public sector). When they retire their replacement will not get the same package.