To wonder where all these peoples spend there money?

[choiceofwords]

I have a household income of around 50k. We eat out regularly, nice and quiet neighbourhood, DC always in nice clothes, run a nice car, save a little.

I am quite a big spender and not great at watching what I spend so I don't feel comfortable because I'm careful with cash.

Yet people, multiple people on MN, often seem to start threads suggesting anything below much more than this is poor?

I really don't understand it.

I have friends on much less that still do nice things like go out and on holiday every year. Obviously the same won't be true for everyone on similar incomes but I just wondered where these 'anything less than 100k' tribes are coming from.

Posh people trying to understand the poor 🙄

I’m genuinely baffled too!! Household income approx 80k and we live a wonderful life that I would describe as very fortunate! We don’t have a massive house or Range Rover so maybe it’s just different perspectives though. We live in a very nice town, in beautiful extended cottage refurbed to high spec, big holiday in summer and lots of trips to U.K./ European cities in half terms. Two cars, new clothes when wanted ( mid-ranged brands, not posh deigner), kids in private nursery, eat out once/ twice week on average. All my friends are similar, with some better off and in bigger houses. I can’t imagine how someone on 100k a year is struggling to be honest but perhaps it’s the London bubble!!

We earn around £70,000 combined and struggle month to month. Childcare alone comes to £800 a month.

My childcare is slightly more than yours.

How much is your rent/mortgage?

£950 per month.

Living costs can be very high in London. My mortgage is £2100 per month, on a tiny terraced house. So that’s £25,000 per year on housing alone - but it’s still less than if I was renting. All bills are probably another £500 per month. I don’t have a car. So then there is food, transport (to get to work), clothing (I may not need new clothes but dc keep growing!), etc. It all adds up.

Cloudy We are fairly similar. I just don't know where people are putting their money. It must all be (mostly) on childcare and housing costs really. Only having 1 DC helps a lot I think.

And I have the benefit of only working part time since having DC. An active choice - I could bring in a bit extra working FT but choose not to as I want this time with DC. I am shocked I'm writing that as I generally believed having that type of choice was for the wealthy but we definitely aren't on around £50k (but in practice, I do feel well off!)

To a large extent it does come down to housing costs for most people.

In my very ordinary London Street, full of very small houses, there are some older people who would have very small mortgages (as they have been there for a very long time), some people who have social housing and once again are paying very little and then people like me, who have huge mortgages.

I wouldn't say we are struggling but we don't have much disposable income/fun money around £40k in Brighton, our rent is £1050, then there's nursery and DHs season ticket to London.

We don't move anywhere cheaper as my parents live here so can help out with childcare. DH is better of keeping commuting as a similar job pays 10k less in Brighton (more than the price of his discounted by work season ticket)

Big mortgage-some of the posts on that thread yesterday were over £2k a month.

Childcare. Especially with 2/3 kids

Commuting-my DH pays about £7k a year on train fares.

Bigger/newer cars

School fees (again x 3)

Cleaner

Food for a family of 4/5/6 of loads

Activities/hobbies for 2/3/4 children

Holidays

We have children (I.e. two lots of school fees Total about £17k p/a in total and rising each year)
Until recently one lot of university fees (£16k p/a)

That is already £23k. Then we also have very high commuting costs, things like health insurance, car payments, rent, food, childcare costs etc. We also have family that live abroad which we try to see as often as possible (a single trip costs about £6k for all of us).

We couldn’t manage on 50k.

I think if you can afford to

• buy whatever you want on your weekly supermarket shop
• buy new clothes and uniforms whenever needed
• pay all your monthly bills on time
• go on trips and holidays
• buy treats / luxuries
• not worry about finances when planning what to do on the weekend

... then you’re extremely fortunate indeed! Otthhers would think they aren’t well off unless children are in private schools, own ponies and everyone is wearing Gucci. It’s different perspectives I suppose.

@Velveteenfruitbowl you could ‘manage’ fine if you weren’t paying the total luxury of school and uni fees.

Health insurance also a luxury in this country.

We couldn’t manage on 50k.

Yes you could. If you used state education you’d be fine.

Nobody here is pleading poverty on a high income. The OP asked where the money goes and lots of us have answered - mortgage, lots of kids, high childcare and commute costs. Of course these things are choices and I feel very very fortunate that we have them. But - especially if you live in London or some parts of the SE - they are not the kind of things - limitless Waitrose shops, long haul holidays, private schooling, constant eating out etc - that many people imagine are possible on an income of 70-100k.

It's all comparative. We live in London, and although we had 2_wages coming in and D H was usually in higher rate tax bracket( only just) we couldn't afford for the 3 DC to have school dinners, or for a milkman, or foreign holidays, or even a week in UK some years.

@BuffaloCauliflower was I suppose to not go to university and work a minimum wage job instead? I don’t see how an undergrad education is a luxury.

As for the school fees, a primary education isn’t a luxury either. Obviously we could be really irresponsible and make other people pay for the costs of raising our children but we don’t think that’s a good way to live. On top of that state schools in our area, while good as far as state schools go are pretty poor in comparison to the school we use. Our children are a bit behind developmentally and the state schools wouldn’t be an adequate education for them (obviously for more average children some of them seem absolutely fine).

A £1k per month mortgage is pretty much unheard of in the SE.

For every additional £1000 required per month, a higher rate tax payer would need to earn an additional £20k per year. So consider that someone in the SE could be paying £2-3k housing for somewhere quite ordinary, and you can see that the "reasonable income of £50k" becomes a "required minimum income of £70-90k". That's way below private school and pony level.

We couldn’t manage on 50k.

Of course you could.

You would just have to make some choices that aren’t what you would have otherwise wanted.

Like most of the population do.

Ok actually you know what, velveteen, with that frankly insufferable post you've actually made me rethink. The key advantage of money is choices and whether or not they are luxuries is just semantics. The stereotype of multiple foreign holidays and Waitrose is a distraction. The point is that if you can afford something like private schooling or a big mortgage then yes, you are rich. By that measure, on a 100k of course we are rich. We get private healthcare through DH work which of course still costs money as a taxable benefit, we also pay for critical illness insurance cover and 3x private music lessons for our kids, and all sorts of things that are way out of the reach of most people. There is always someone richer that you can justify your poverty relative to, but when you start saying 'private education isn't a luxury' then you have officially lost the plot. We have a child with SEN too but to have three kids in private school would take pretty much all that 100k gross salary so we 'irresponsibly' use the state system (as well as thinking that rich kids ghettos are a bad idea, but that's another thread). But regardless, we are still well off enough to have all sorts of choices that most people do not have. So mea culpa, please ignore my previous posts as they were self-justifying nonsense. I do not want to be the kind of person who thinks rich people's choices - paying for private school or having private healthcare - is somehow a necessity because we or our kids are somehow more special than others.

You know when you read articles about how to reduce your outgoings and you're like because they suggest things like not just randomly replacing your entire wardrobe because it's not in season any more, or not having takeaway coffee, swapping to netflix from Sky, or eating out less often, or cutting down on kids' activities, not buying branded clothing/accessories/food.

I suppose they spend it all on those things I wasn't doing in the first place to cut down on.

Obviously we could be really irresponsible and make other people pay for the costs of raising our children

You mean like 93% of the population. Of all the ridiculous arguments to justify using private education that absolutely takes the biscuit.

Housing costs and childcare. When dds were young I couldn’t have lived on 50k as the childcare I needed to do my job would have left me with very little after tax.

I should make clear I could not have met the basic costs of living (food, housing) after paying for the childcare I needed on 50k salary when dds were younger. It’s easier now as they get free nursery and don’t need full time nanny.

It’s easy to look down on others and think they must be actually heaving with spare cash because your circumstances are such that you would be comfortable. But people have different circumstances which differ from you.

That comment really made me see red alsohuman. If you start to see a national education system as an instance of poor people sponging off the state, rather than a core function of government in a healthy society, then you should probably stop using those pesky public roads and ambulances and you know, if you for instance have a premature baby I do hope you won't be so irresponsible as to make other people pay for your kids in an NHS hospital (even though there is no private provision).

Neoliberalism gone properly nuts.

Also people get help from families ie. holidays paid for, help with school uniform and childcare etc. I never have. I worked with someone who always commented on my uk hols as they said always go abroad but found out their parents paid for it each year.