What is your family's monthly take home money?

[reefqueen]

So following on from a popular thread about what us women earn, I am genuinely interested in how much net income families bring in each month?

This is not talked about in real life but I think it is so interesting and I am nosy

So how much money does your household bring in each month? Is it from work or benefits or both? And where in the uk are you?

I'll start:
Me, DH, 2x DC, South East. Money in each month is £3,900. This includes 2 salaries and child benefit.

About half my income is removed in direct tax so I tihnk the FT worked out there was rouhgly a 1 - 10x difference between rich and poor but once the housing benefit and tax credits of the low paid were taken account of and the 50%+ tax marginal rates int heUk that came down to about 1 - 4x difference which is not really that bad

Really?????

@Xenia I’ve found that FT article. It’s ignoring the top decile of earners so it’s a bit disingenuous

Their jobs are undoubtedly hard, worthy and emotionally draining, however they just have to think about one function, whereas as the overall director, I am responsible for a wide range of functions and it is me that gets in serious bother should something go wrong. The range of skills needed is wider essentially and I carry the risk

Of course you’d say that.

I honestly thought NisekoWhistler must have written the yearly wage down.

Their monthly take home is £5000 more than my yearly income.

I really really wish I had been more aware of a good education when I was younger! I did have a lot of issues at home though.
I tell my DC every day how important it is.

Me, DH, 1x toddler £5407 take home, south east

@Workreturner you haven't scribbled out the photo properly and your name and sort code are still visible

^About half my income is removed in direct tax so I tihnk the FT worked out there was rouhgly a 1 - 10x difference between rich and poor but once the housing benefit and tax credits of the low paid were taken account of and the 50%+ tax marginal rates int heUk that came down to about 1 - 4x difference which is not really that bad

Really^

Leaving aside the effect of excluding high earners from that statement, it's certainly true for the gap incomes and actual take home for people on £10-20k compared with £30-40k (that's annually btw, for those who think these might be monthly incomes).

Families on £30-40k might have hardly any extra money or even be worse off compared with those on £10-20k due to the effect of tax credits and also that the higher earners are likely to spend more on childcare and get less help for it.

A relative of mine with 5 DCs and her and her DH doing the optimum 16+8 hours per week on low paid work, plus tax credits etc, actually had a higher income than I did on a £40k salary and that didn't include HB or any disability payments as they own their own house.

About £3300 after tax myself and my husband no kids yet.

Can I play even though I'm not a UK resident anymore?

Up until DH became self-employed, combined take-home of €6-7k per month. 1/4 me, 3/4 DH. Now I've no idea because he works random hours and I don't understand how the tax works, but it's a bit more. We're very lucky, I'm well aware of this. But we live in quite an expensive country, have a big mortgage, 2 kids in childcare so it soon goes.

Two adults, one full time worker and one self employed, two teenagers. Take home pay for DH is 3K per month and I make £500 on a good month (cleaning and gardening). Also get child benefit of £137 a month.

About £2,300 for a full time and part time wage. No children.

Yes BoS is right about those on middle incomes. Then you get to those with an effective upper rate of tax of 63 % in I think the band where you lose the single person allowance, who might also have student loans and full time childcare costs and massive london rents. It is quite interesting to compare people's net incomes.

I don't remember the full details of the FT article but if we have someone on £800k about half that is taken in direct tax so they are left, poor little souls, with £400k and that is indeed a fair bit more than someone on £20k after tax.

Give a parent of 3 in London his tax credits and housing benefit and as indicated above that might mean his income is not too different from some on a supposedly higher income. The London benefits cap is £23,000 a year which is a gross income of £28,500.

Anyway it's all interesting stuff and I like most people prefer it when I get in more than I spend each month. People's spending goes up with their incomes. I can see it in my 1993 diary, the 3 children and I have a weekly riding lesson, we have school fees (which was not that much more then our full time childcare costs so relatively painless) and losing money hand over fist monthly on the 2 buy to lose flats. We went skiing in Dec 92 (albeit in a place with shared bathrooms with bread from the shop only for our lunch), we had 2 weeks in a Gite in France albiet our car was so old we arrived at 2am with 3 small children on the back of an AA lorry. What we did do in 1993 when interest rates went from 15% in 1991/92 on one of our loans down to about 8.95% (our other loan was stuck at 13% fot 10 years fixed) was try to use the difference to pay debt off as much as possible whenever there was any spare money. This was paying off deferred interest - interet over 10% on the mortgage was rolled up and added ot the loan (eeek, dangerous product) and we had rolled up al ot of it so thankfully could start repaying it in 1993. I was marking exam papers for the extra money that summer, even 2 hours before a family wedding, 2 hours in the hotel room on our first night away without the children in 3 years. I can certainly see a lot of work being done (not that people on low incomes don't work and their father was teaching extra music at £8 per half hour at every chance he got).

We have 25k per month between us but it's not fair to say that we have lots of money without taking outgoings into account. Our 10 bed country pile has a big mortgage then there's the nanny, school fees, the horses, three holidays a year plus a skiing trip and we give to charity too. Most of our friends are far wealthier.

If we had a nice simple life on a council estate with no mortgage, state schools and cheaper to run cars then I could see why we'd be seen as 'wealthy.

We bring in around £6.5k net pm (excl DH bonus) no DCs yet, tbh this is nothing special for London especially with rent/travel/entertainment/savings/holidays to cover... But I still know we’re lucky to be in this position. I grew up on benefits in one of the biggest estates in London and from where I am now it’s a completely different world!

I think that instead of comparing yourselves to others it’s much better to track your own progress.

Leaving aside the effect of excluding high earners from that statement, it's certainly true for the gap incomes and actual take home for people on £10-20k compared with £30-40k (that's annually btw, for those who think these might be monthly incomes)

It matters that those on very high incomes (over £70k ish) are excluded from such analyses.

Mainly because these people are making decisions which impact on lower earners. By making claims that “we aren’t that much richer than those at the bottom”, spuriously quoting FT articles, deflects from the fact that when you are struggling financially - it is a massive struggle.

And having an income over £70/80k makes life so so much easier. And it is not like being on a median household income at all

Let’s not pretend otherwise.

And I’ll put my hand up to say - I’m currently on a 12 month career break - our combined income when I’m working is in 6 figures.

I’m not going to pretend that it’s a struggle, that I’m not that rich etc etc. Yes we don’t like in a mansion, we can’t afford private school etc and nor do we have fancy holidays

Because it would be utter bollocks and plays into the “we are all in it together” rubbish of a narrative.

And that’s why we have such a divided, unhappy country at the moment.

We bring in around £6.5k net pm (excl DH bonus) no DCs yet, tbh this is nothing special for London

Really? Am I living in a different universe?

South East, unmarried couple no children, both work full time.

£5kish

@theorbrigbrave I came along at the right time.

I think people like the information not the discussion so I am sorry for the thread deflection. The FT is very left wing at the moment and most of its potlical stance is wanting £30k a year annual taxes on London houses and that kind of thing so I certainly don't find it a natural home for high earners (presumably because journalists are low paid these days).

On comparing to others if women want to know if they are being paid less than men then it is worth trying to find out the data within your own company. My 80s/90s diaries are full of those attempts what XYZ person (male or female) told me about what they were earning or someone else was earnings, what we thought ABC at top of the company might be earning etc, who decided not to tell me that year what they were given as a pay rise (obviously it is very different in some careers where there are published pay scales and annual uprating to the next experience level based on years of service rather than how much by tooth and claw you have done your competitors down and generated fees for the company).

The ascent from the 3 years in a row holidays to Butlins (which the children did enjoy by the way) in 1988, 1989 and 1990 - and we were lucky to get a holiday at all - to the drive to France and the basic ski holiday is all about the fact lawyers in the early years of their careers having rising pay in our case (or others might say given our massive debts and negative equity our financial foolishness in those years).

I agree with Crashtestdummie. We also bring home 6.5k a month in SE and it doesn't mean a life of luxury. Lots of our friends/neighbours earn much more.

Actually, I think I got mixed up with the 'what do you earn' thread.
Yes, a 6.5K family income isn't that astonishing with 2 full time working adults.

@theorbrigbrave Actually it was very very rude and stupid of me to say that it’s ‘nothing special’. I apologise. But as blue25 said above London has become vv expensive and the money you’d think would be ‘amazing’ doesn’t actually get you as far as you’d think...

We live in the SW in quite a low income city. Salaries are low.

With my new full time job and rental income we will have around 4.5k month.

£15,200 per month. Live in the UAE so we don't pay tax. DH and I full time jobs with DH earning nearly double what I earn.

I agree with Crashtestdummie. We also bring home 6.5k a month in SE and it doesn't mean a life of luxury. Lots of our friends/neighbours earn much more.

Exactly the same here. Affluent town SE