To think a combined salary of 60k is really comfortable?

[BathedInLavender]

OUTSIDE of London. But still in the South East. This isn't a conversation about London because that obviously won't go very far there full stop.

AIBU to think a combined salary of 60k is actually comfortable and not 'meh' at all.

DH earns 30k, I earn the same but I'm part time so it's less because of pro rata. We aren't struggling by any means. If I returned to FT we would have a lot more spare cash, and we have a fair bit now. We don't have cheap housing costs, £900per month just on that.

I spend a lot of money on ridiculous crap and we holiday every year with DC.

It's not bad money if you're not paying out for an excessive mortgage or rental costs, I'd say.

Why does he get 15 hours funded from 2 if you earn that amount? It’s meant to be for lower income families

He's additional needs, so qualified that way

I think it’s not that much. Don’t get me wrong it’s definitely ok! My husband earns 10x that amount but we’ve 3 DDs to put through private so it’s all relative.

Our entire household income is just under 20k and we're relatively comfortable 🥰
But we don't have a mortgage and that makes all the difference I think.

I’ve never felt so poor.

You'll never get a sensible response to this on here, the average uk salary is about £30K, National minimum wage is about £15,000 (might have gone up) for an adult working full time.

On Mumsnet you can't exist in London without earning at least £100,000, and even then you'll be told it won't go far, how much do they think cleaners, hairdressers, bar staff etc. earn I don't know.

I'm not sure why so many people are so keen to gleefully tell you you're badly off. If your pension is sorted then it sounds great. I do think kids get more expensive as they age though. My 12 year old doesn't do much in the way of hobbies and seems to cost a small fortune, but we earn a lot more than we did 10 years ago!

@LatinSisters, if your DH earns 10X that amount (so either £600K or £450K depending on the OPs actual take home or pro rata equivalent) I would have thought a likely spend of circa £90K annually on school fees wouldn’t be an awful stretch 🙂.

£90k school fees would be about a third of take home income if earning £450k btw so would indeed be pretty steep even at that salary.

@BubblyBarbara, after tax & NI on a £450K salary you’d be taking home £249,640, leaving you an annual take home of £159,640 after the school fees which isn’t inconsiderable in terms of having a comfortable amount to live on really. To be fair, I appreciate a hefty mortgage on a property commensurate with someone in this salary bracket might be rather considerable though! I think as the majority of us have said, it’s all about how you cut your cloth (as my grandmother would have said) really. For us as a household on £120k, the choices we’ve made in terms of our outgoings mean we have less disposable income than others on half our salary.

[quote SJaneS48]@BubblyBarbara, after tax & NI on a £450K salary you’d be taking home £249,640, leaving you an annual take home of £159,640 after the school fees which isn’t inconsiderable in terms of having a comfortable amount to live on really. To be fair, I appreciate a hefty mortgage on a property commensurate with someone in this salary bracket might be rather considerable though! I think as the majority of us have said, it’s all about how you cut your cloth (as my grandmother would have said) really. For us as a household on £120k, the choices we’ve made in terms of our outgoings mean we have less disposable income than others on half our salary.[/quote]
Bollocks. You just choose to dispose of your income differently. Mortgages, school fees, savings, diamonds - don’t try and pretend that’s not part of your disposable income.

@DollyDoneMore ?? What’s with the aggression? You make active choices & commitments in terms of how you spend your income - houses, schools etc. What you have left to dispose with after all that may or may not make you feel ‘comfortable’. Someone on a bigger income in London with a massive mortgage, childcare costs for a couple of kids etc might very well have less in the bank after these costs have gone out than someone on half their salary. Yes of course they’ll have actively made the choice to have the mortgage and the kids.

Where I’ll agree my comment could have been put a lot better was the ‘we have less disposable income than others on half our salary’ as of course we might not. It’ll depend on what they themselves have made. My sister with a smaller household annual income has more spending money than I have after all bills have gone out thanks to her choices. Others will too. But others won’t.

We are on quite a bit more than 60k. Our kids and bills cost 25k including cleaner but not including food.

How do you replace cars. We've just had to replace both of ours (with second hand) for a combined 15K and that's knocked a hole in our comfortable frankly. We always buy outright.

Our holiday rental has had an awful year but the same costs as usual including mortgage is 24k. It would normally wash its face. Not so this year.

I've massively upped my hours too but not yet received the corresponding pay. I think we will scrape by. But I'll be probably be maxing out my overdrafts again.

I think generally when you have more income you increase your outgoings. So for eg buy another property with all the associated costs. Pain in the short run so you can hopefully have more security at the end of your working life.

I think stating a gross figure can be massively adrift to what you end up with.

Dp was on £100,000 per year but only came out with £4200 per month.

He had so many deductions after tax and NI deductions eg life assurance, private health cover in the US (Worked a little in the US) to his season ticket, dental cover etc
We are in London and we had 2 children in private education.

Our biggest expense was private school fees (both dc have SENs and were both failed by the state sector)

I think it is about making every penny work for you and not spending anything on crap.

@Wallywobbles most households don't have two cars and holiday homes unless they can comfortably afford it. What happened to your cars?!

@Oliversmumsarmy slightly arrange post, for most people travel, dental and life assurance would normally be considered costs to come out of your salary, people would still have to pay them if they wanted them whether they were deducted before take home or not.

*strange

@Oliversmumsarmy "Dp was on £100,000 per year but only came out with £4200 per month."

Only came out with £4200 a month!? Good Lord however did you get by on such a pittance 😂

This thread/replies are crazy and it would seem the more money you have the more you want/need. You don’t have to send children to private school, you don’t have to buy expensive cars/ clothes/activities/ that’s a lifestyle choice because you have the available money!

I work in health care it doesn’t pay that well in comparison to what I’ve read. I’m on the highest wage I’ve ever been on at £25k my partner is on £32k. We have a smaller mortgage that we overpay due to saving first and bought a smaller house than we could afford. We have savings and pay into our nhs/government pensions. We have no further debt. I could go out and buy loads of expensive ‘stuff’ but it’s not me. We feel very comfortable to live a nice life. But live in the NW.

Lots of people will be living on less and are ok. How many Millions are on minimum wage? Nowhere near even the £45k if both partners are on that. Doesn’t matter where you live it’s still a low wage to live on. No there isn’t much money for pensions or savings at that level. No private school or horses or cleaners. They don’t get to make that choice as the money isn’t there.

I think some people don’t realise how lucky they are, they may not feel comfortable and even skint 🙄 with their 6 figure funds, large houses and cars. But you choose that lifestyle because you have a high salary. You could feel much better off if you needed to.

We are just outside London (Herts, but not the posh bit). Until I lost my job we had a household income of £45k and I felt we were very comfortable. We never went crazy, but we had a 2 week holiday each year and occasional days out. It was a struggle when we had to pay nursery fees though.

Now our household income is £20k and our outgoings are more than my husband earns! We are living off our savings.

Just to add, we also ran a small car and were beginning to build up our pensions and savings and were about to start over paying the mortgage later this year.

These threads never make sense to me. It all depends on size of family, whether you have expensive childcare or commuting costs, mortgage/rental cost - all fine f these things are variable for every family. So there's no definitive 'yes, it's enough' or 'no, it isn't' answer.

JalapenoDave

I was trying to point out that someone with a household income of £40,000 might only translate to £400 more than op is coming out with.

nanbread

Most people in the UK don’t have to pay out for US healthcare and dps life insurance policy whilst he was still in work was just about affordable as he has so many health complaints but now he is out of work we just can’t afford it.

You don’t have to send children to private school

I agree you don’t have to send children to private school and we would have been quite happy in the state system if the state system had actually taught our SEN dc and had done something about the bullying and the physical attacks but they didn’t.

If I had left dc in the state system then I would have very different children to what I have now

Not only did the private schools actually teach dc they also gave them their self esteem back and their self confidence which to me is worth more than any multitude of GCSEs
So we might have been managing with one very old banger car and a house that was falling apart for years but it was worth the money we spent on them.

@nanbread we live 40 km from where we work and live very rurally on a farm. Farm makes a loss but is too small to qualify for subsidies but we produce most of our meat etc large veg garden, fruit trees etc. But 2 cars are unavoidable.

However one vet visit wipes out any profit we might make on an animal. If I have to raise a lamb by hand in milk powder alone it’ll cost about the same as sale price of the lamb.

The cars both died within weeks of each other - over 300k kms. Not enough maintenance probably didn’t help. My farm car was going to cost way more to repair than it was worth and the garage gave us 1k€ which was kind of them.

I'm impressed by people who can list their monthly expenditure!

I tried to do ours but there were so many variables.

However, I know we are fortunate in that it's an academic exercise for the time being as we live well within our means, we don't impulse buy, we don't have expensive hobbies. Only a £3500 fortnight holiday once a year. And no mortgage.

DH's job (£68k) appears pretty secure during Covid and I'm PT NHS with a lot of overtime opportunities (£28k).

However, I am mystified at how much 'stuff' so many people seem to buy! I mean, listing 'going shopping' as a hobby; and now endless clicking online. And £6 on coffee per day.

Each to their own, I guess!