£85k per year

[pondfresh]

In the course of a conversation with my cousin, she disclosed that she earns £85k per year but said she does not consider herself especially well off. She lives in the south east but not London, has young dc. She said she has no problem paying bills etc and they have a family holiday each year but she does not consider that they are wealthy. He earns less than this as he is a teacher. AIBU to wonder how well off someone is actually is on £85k and what would be classed as wealthy.

Wealth and income are different.

This is definitely a high income as its in the top 10% of earners.

Unearned income would usually require some kind of wealth to generate it, wouldn't it? Be that rental income from a property you own, interest from savings, shares dividends or whatever. And if it generates 40k a year then the value of the assets themselves must be quite substantial.

Starlight I live in London so know how far it goes. If you can afford to spend hundreds on music classes a term then you are very well off! Your money gives you these choices. I also spend hundreds a term on classes for my children but I realise that I am able to do so because I am well off.

Wealth and income are not really different. Wealth is expressed through monetary value.

Having money makes you wealthy, that is the measure. If your wealth is in your house it is because it is assumed the house is worth a lot of money.

@YerAWizardHarry - Mumsnet is getting absolutely fucking ridiculous. The people on these posts don't know they're alive! Yes mortgage and childcare can be expensive but don't act like you're skint and having to go to food banks to survive on an £85k salary

Nobody is saying that. Pretty much every poster saying that salary is not wealthy has said that it is comfortable or it's a decent salary.

Basically, it comes down to how you define wealthy. I define wealthy as having enough money to live a 5* lifestyle without having to consider the cost. Others may define wealthy as not having to worry about bills or as being able to afford to send your kids to private school, even though it means cutting back elsewhere.

We have a household income of considerably more that £85k. I don't consider myself to be wealthy. Sure, we have a very nice lifestyle. We can afford to send our kids to university and fund the fees and accommodation, if we wanted to head off for a long weekend to new york we could do so. However, we can't afford a yacht. We can't afford a fancy holiday home. Hell, we couldn't afford to buy a house in a posh area of Dublin these days.

Are we lucky? Yes. Are we comfortable? Yes. Are we wealthy? No.

Its not just LUCK though is it? Not for everyone. for example most well paid jobs require qualifications, so working hard at school and committing to getting qualifications helps if you want a high earning job. Being prepared to fund a University degree and work hard at it, being prepared to take risks both with the job you do and within it, taking responsibility and performing well. I'm not saying everyone CAN do these things, but most people could at least recognize that where they end up is not JUST luck
I'm a doctor. saddled myself with debt, studied for a long time, worked punishing rotas, put off having children until my training was complete and I still work in a profession where I carry a lot of responsibility. I am well rewarded and I think myself fortunate. But its not just luck, some of it is down to choices I made. I dont come from a family of doctors nor did I attend private school. I funded myself and what I have achieved is down to my hard work. I object to being told I should think I'm very "lucky" ....

WEALTHY means having enough money to choose how to spend it.
very simple

Well we are one low wage and consider ourselves comfortable it's all relative.
A low income with few low outgoings could give you more disposable income than a high wage with high outgoings.

85k is 4 times our income, but we manage school fees and have always managed music lessons and other cultural activities

Its not just LUCK though is it? Not for everyone.

Luck is ALWAYS a part of it, but the extent to which it is relevant will vary between people. For some, luck will have been an enormous part, i.e. lottery winners or being in the right place at the right time. For others, luck will have played a tiny part, maybe as little as being "lucky" not to have a disability or ill health.

You, as a GP have indeed worked hard and no doubt made sacrifices, but you were still lucky to have been able to study and work to become a GP. If you'd gone to a crap school, however bright you were, you may not have got the qualifications to enable you to have gone to Uni or your family may not have been able to support you to do so.

Luck is definitely a factor. If you'd been born in a third world country or to parents who cared more about drugs than you and you were bounced about the care system there's a very very low chance your life would have panned out the way it has.

We don't have 40k a year from our unearned wealth - we have never had a household income of above £45k, but have consistently lived on half of what we earned and saved the rest, so that we can live off the interest of our savings with no need to work.

Which is why I'm amused by the idea that I'm wealthy, as the amount of money we actually spend is pitifully tiny by Mumsnet standards.

But we can live a comfortable, although not luxurious life, for a family of 4, without having to work. So I do always find it amusing when people with what seem to me like huge incomes complain about how little they earn.

As an example I was on 35k in Wales and was offered a 68k job in London. Yay! I went. Until I worked out rent, council tax etc. I would have only been £35 a week better off as the cost of living was higher. Therefore I turned the job down. I had children and would need childcare which I had free from family and would then need to pay this. I hadn’t even began to look at how much it cost, because if my normal living only gave me £35 more, no way in the world would I be able to afford child care.
It’s all relative!

Oh right broomstick sorry I read that as you had 40k in unearned income. But I expect you must have quite a lot of savings to be able to generate even half your costs. I'm not asking how much btw so don't feel obliged to answer!

And that goes back to the distinction between wealth and income really. People do use the two interchangeably, and the OP certainly seems to have done. Sometimes that's fine, but other times it obscures some quite important distinctions.

Lucky to be born in the UK, lucky to go to an ok state school, lucky to have parents who thought education was worth it. Lucky not to have a disability or serious ill health. Yes, those things ARE luck.

But not all of it ...There are plenty of others who have had those advantages who made different choices, and that's completely up to them. But don't tell me my choices were luck. They weren't

Definitely not wealthy but not having to watch every penny either. Wealthy is mortgage paid, new car paid with cash every couple of years, multiple holidays, investments and more coming in than you could ever spend. DH and I have technically more money coming in each month than my retired parents do but they are wealthy and we are not.

My last post sounded really smug - I don't expect other people to live like we do, and I do realise that in a lot of very well paid job there are expectations about how people will spend their money which are very hard to avoid. Not just things like childcare and the expenses of a work wardrobe and commuting, but in having to spend money to socialise with colleagues, and maintain a certain level of grooming, and having to outsource a lot of stuff you could do yourself to other people. I worked in a very corporate environment in my twenties and hated it. A lot of the people there were very well-off, but not really happy, and I was very keen on avoiding that future.

So I can understand how someone might well not feel at all well-off on a high income, but it's pretty disingenuous not to accept that that level of pay seems incredibly high to the vast majority of people in this country.

I have a higher salary than that in the SE commuter belt but I don't consider myself wealthy.

Comfortable, absolutely. Wealthy, definitely not.

To me wealthy is:

• Being able to fly more than economy (we never would)
• Being able to buy designer clothes (I buy mine mainly from TK Max and Ebay!)
• Having a large house, 6 bedrooms +
• Despite having a large house and nice cars still having a lot of disposable income and money in the bank
• Can afford to eat in high end restaurants regularly.

We have a nice house, 4 beds (2 double, 2 single), two nice cars (on finance!) but nowhere near the disposable income to live a 'wealthy' lifestyle and absolutely zero money in the bank (and we don't even have DC yet).

I guess a bit more context, my DH earns about £25k.

Outgoings are high though...

• £1500 mortgage
• £800 on 2 x cars
• £300 on fuel for my 3 hour a day commute
• £500 on train fares and parking for DH commute
• £275 council tax
• £200 cleaner

And I know having a cleaner is a luxury but DH is out of the house for work from 5.30am - 8pm and I'm out from 5.30am - 7.30pm. We basically cook and eat dinner, watch one hour of TV to try to relax and go to bed so have zero time in the week for anything else.

I grew up in Stoke, with a single parent mother in a terraced house with a huge hole in the floor she couldn't afford to repair for years so I don't live in some middle class bubble. We're comfortable, I'm very grateful for what I have but I'm not wealthy due to lack of assets.

I know that some of this is due to stupid spending - not on big or luxury items but on convenience.

We spend a lot on convenience food, lunches bought in the week, coffees, cleaner, handyman to do DIY stuff around the house...but I just can't bring myself to give up my one hour of relaxation a day.

Plus we have other money worries - I'm a contractor and have no maternity pay, I'm the main breadwinner and we really need to have DC this year (I'm 37) but think I'll have to go back to work within a couple of months. I get no sick pay and can't get any insurance due to mental health issues. I also can't get life insurance due to mental health issues.

So actually financially we're in a precarious situation - wealthy as long as I can work long hours with bipolar disorder. We'll lose everything if/when I can't.

To me wealthy is

Those things I would regard as being for the rich, not the wealthy. The fact you have two nice cars and an above average sized house (presumably in a good area) means you are wealthy.

@Kazzyhoward £85000 in london will not get you an above average house and 2 nice cars if you have kids. it will get you 1 car and a small 2-3 bed terrace if you are carefull . between housing and childcare costs, not much is left.

@Kazzyhoward - Those things I would regard as being for the rich, not the wealthy.

Wealthy, according to the dictionary, means rich, so I'm failing to see your distinction between the two.

Yura
Why do Londoners need cars ?
They have public transport. A luxury that has been removed from much of the rest of the country.

If you love ‘below Your means’ then 85k is a lot of money.
My mother was a single parent and never earned more than £30 000. She is now retired , but was careful with her money and owns three London properties outright .
She lives off her rental income and has a fantastic pension
My husband and I earn much more than that, but my mother is wealthier than us

@Ta1kinpeace depends where in london ... and season tickets aren’t free either. a monthly travel card comes in around £200 per minth quite easily, not much cheaper than a car... plus rail and taxi and car rental if you go outside london

@Yura
You have public transport
buses, tube, DLR, trains
all covered by the Oyster card
all of which arrive more than once a day

NOWHERE outside London has regulated / coordinated / integrated transport

From where I live there are five buses into town, all of which charge different fares and do not accept each others tickets
a 20 minute return cost £9.40

London is BLESSED by proper transport