£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.

areyou - your mother clearly bought in London before prices shot through the roof. Lucky her. Most of us aren't so lucky.

Ta1kin - the tube / rail doesn't always go where you want it to; the bus takes aaaaggggeeees; most transport services shut down in the evening and run pretty infrequently on a Sunday; getting to major tourist places and big shopping centres can be OK , but it's usually a PITA to get to the rugby club by public transport for your DC's Sunday training and carrying home food shopping on public transport is miserable.

Plus, Londoners don't always stay in London! We do go to other places as well

Objectively, looking at the uk as a whole, I know we’re wealthy. Subjectively I tend to perceive people earning twice what I earn are “wealthy”. The funny thing is that this perception hasn’t changed, although my income has varied by a multiple of 20...

I think whether you feel wealthy or not is linked to the people you are surrounded by. Dh is self employed and in top 0.5% of earners but must of our friends are in a similar bracket. I honestly don’t feel ‘wealthy’ just comfortable. Most of it is tied up in assets and we have enormous outgoings (funding family members and charitable). This is our choice I accept but I would honestly describe out lifestyle as comfortable not wealthy. I have a friend who I’d class as wealthy (super yacht, plane, heli). So there are many different levels.

As Pyramid says above, compared to the uk as a whole I guess we may be-
but just don’t feel it in our lives.

I’d consider that ‘comfortable’ not wealthy. It’s enough that money shouldn’t cause problems, but not enough that you don’t have to think about it.

Wealthy to me means never having to juggle money. So, for instance, if an unexpected 10k cost came up, a wealthy person could just pay it and not have to make any changes, whereas a comfortable person could pay it, but then something else (like their holiday) has to be scrapped.

Wealthy is when your money works for you, not when you work for the money

We are in the SE and 85k is more than our salaries combined, and significantly more now I'm on SMP. Some of the posts on here are ridiculous, with people posting in AIBU about their au pairs, nannies and night nurses as if employing staff is a normal thing to do! Some people are so out of touch...

DP and I (childless 26 and 31- living in the North) earn approx £100k a year. I consider us well off but that’ll no doubt change when we have children

Errr, try living on 30k with DC! Yes, our choice to have a child, but thinking you won't be well off on 100k with children is utterly ludicrous. In this day and age where there are families queuing at food banks, statements like that are ridiculous. I'm sorry, but they are.