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.

If you have managed to buy a property or live with extended family then that's enough.

When we buy I'm going to stop working as my partner earns 50k. Most of our money goes on rent and saving for a deposit. We're planning to start a family soon so childcare will be the next big expense. I think we'll be struggling on 60k while renting, saving and paying childcare costs.

Some people just have lower standards of living. 60k would be a fortune for some while for others it's not nearly enough. What a dumb post.

What amazes me in these threads is that everyone mentions mortgage, rental costs and nursery fees, which makes sense as these are the largest outgoings, but there's never any mention of pension.

Is this because people don't pay into a private/occupational pension or very little?

My OH and I pay over £1,000 a month I to.oyr pensions, so that's out biggest outgoing but we went to retire early and with enough to enjoy luxuries.

We both pay into work pensions (public sector) so it doesn't factor into my calculations, no. It's not as necessary as paying for the roof over my head or somewhere for my children to go so we can go to work. I imagine many people feel the same.

Surely it depends on where in the country you live and your outgoings/lifestyle.
We have a combined income of about £50K in Scotland and pre-baby we put away between £800-£1k in savings every month, as well as enjoying hobbies, eating out and holidays. Our mortgage was £350 on a large, lovely flat, but in a somewhat rough inner city area. Our lives felt very comfortable though.

Now we're looking at moving to a family home in an area with good schools, which will double our mortgage. Plus higher council tax, childcare fees and more fuel costs for getting to work from said family home (whereas our flat is walking distance to work).
We're going to be very stretched, at least until DD starts school.

If we were in SE England I don't even know how we'd manage. Genuinely don't know how people on average and low salaries manage to live in that part of the country, it's crazy.

What amazes me in these threads is that everyone mentions mortgage, rental costs and nursery fees, which makes sense as these are the largest outgoings, but there's never any mention of pension.

We both pay into our company pensions and have student loans but as they come out of our payslips I think about them like NI and tax and don't think about them as a separate expense if that makes sense.

@dontdisturbmenow

What amazes me in these threads is that everyone mentions mortgage, rental costs and nursery fees, which makes sense as these are the largest outgoings, but there's never any mention of pension.

Is this because people don't pay into a private/occupational pension or very little?

My OH and I pay over £1,000 a month I to.oyr pensions, so that's out biggest outgoing but we went to retire early and with enough to enjoy luxuries.

DH and I pay a large % of our salary into our pension pots but our mortgage is the biggest outgoing [shrug]

It’s surely not as simple as ‘£60k is enough to be comfortable’. It depends on whether it’s combined income or a single earner, makes a massive difference. How high housing costs are, how many children you have and what ages, do you have a company car to pay tax on?, any additional expenditure like car finance etc and obviously things like child maintenance etc!

We are on significantly less and very comfortable- we can save a fair bit each month and if there’s something we want we get it. But then we don’t have extravagant tastes, we haven’t been on holiday for years, don’t have much of a social life and I’ve got my first haircut in over a year next week. Our twins are disabled which comes with a lot of costs but they both get higher rate care DLA plus tax credits as a direct result. We also crucially own our own home with a low mortgage and have no debt - rent would be double what we pay on our mortgage, and if we had loans or credit cards to pay off we would struggle.

Because our outgoings are low we are able to save for a bigger house, which we wouldn’t be able to do if we were renting or had debt.

@SaraSara12

Some people just have lower standards of living. 60k would be a fortune for some while for others it's not nearly enough. What a dumb post.

Some people have lower standards of living, that's true. But few people can be happy with low standards of living for example a cold apartment, nowhere to go for a walk, feeling unsafe outside at night, mold, very long commutes, worrying about not being able to afford rent on a pension, living hand to mouth- especially when they have children. It's fine when you're young and have no responsibilities but as you get older, low standards of living start to wear on you.

What amazes me in these threads is that everyone mentions mortgage, rental costs and nursery fees, which makes sense as these are the largest outgoings, but there's never any mention of pension.

Is this because people don't pay into a private/occupational pension or very little?

I don't count pension as I see it like a tax as it comes out before I get my pay & I feel I don't have an option to not pay it.

@SinkGirl when you say you are considerably less is that including the DLA & tax credits?

We take home £4K a month and certainly don’t feel like we very comfortable or well off.

It’s all relative though isn’t it?

We don’t have particularly nice cars, we don’t have fancy clothes and jewellery etc, we don’t have anything particularly fancy in the house and we live a very ‘normal’ life. However, we put a lot of money into savings every month - maybe if we didn’t do that we’d have the lifestyle of ‘very comfortable’ people.

Even bringing home £4K we are still by far the worst off of most of our circle of friends.

How

Even with DLA and tax credits we have quite a bit less than £60k a year, yes. We are quite frugal though, don’t really spend on much. But I don’t feel like we are deprived, there’s just not much we want. I guess if I wanted new clothes and skin treatments and haircuts often and DH had an expensive hobby and we went out a lot then we wouldn’t be so comfortable!

We are in SE just outside of M25 (less than 2 miles) and it would be plenty comfortable for us

We have earned slightly more and currently managing on less but £60k joint for us was a happy amount that enabled us to save, run 2 cars and have holidays

It’s more money than one sole earner of £60k Would bring home

I think for us £60k worked out at about £4K a month after tax

Totally agree. I'm (or was as Covid cut my pay) pretty comfortable on one salary of £30k.

Depends on so many things though!

We have a household income of 130k and one DC mortgage is £380 a month, we are currently looking at moving house to a bigger one.
I've started doing things like having cleaners, booking random last minute holidays
Shopping in Waitrose we used to have a household income of 40k maybe 5 years ago so it's a massive change but we did used to go on holidays etc just now I spend more money on nicer things.

Of course we also have one car that we bought outright for less than £2k nearly five years ago - DH works from home so no travel costs or lunches out etc. There’s so much we could spend money on but don’t. We do have a takeaway about once a week though as we are bloody knackered- that’s our luxury expenditure!

@SinkGirl thanks for replying.

@ThornAmongstRoses

We take home £4K a month and certainly don’t feel like we very comfortable or well off.

It’s all relative though isn’t it?

We don’t have particularly nice cars, we don’t have fancy clothes and jewellery etc, we don’t have anything particularly fancy in the house and we live a very ‘normal’ life. However, we put a lot of money into savings every month - maybe if we didn’t do that we’d have the lifestyle of ‘very comfortable’ people.

Even bringing home £4K we are still by far the worst off of most of our circle of friends.

How

If your choosing to save that’s different though. You technically are not worse off because your choosing to save..

My OH and I pay over £1,000 a month I to.oyr pensions, so that's out biggest outgoing but we went to retire early and with enough to enjoy luxuries

It might amaze you but the vast majority couldn't dream of putting over a grand a month into a private pension, or anything like it. Many couldn't put a penny in.

My DH and I would consider that life-changing and would be a lovely goal when I'm back at work. I would argue (ready to be flamed) people SHOULD be able to live comfortably off this if they didn't aspire to private schools, new cars and high end holidays. However I have learned that people on 60k can still have credit card debt in the 10s of thousands!

We have 2 DDs and live off £45k per year when I am in part time work. No credit cards or debts. We have had 1 holiday in 5 years and to some that's not enough but to us we are very happy consider ourselves blessed but by no means wealthy.

@Onedropbeat surely 60k a year can’t be 4K a month. We used to earn 68k between us and our take home pay was about 3900

[quote Mirrorxx]@Onedropbeat surely 60k a year can’t be 4K a month. We used to earn 68k between us and our take home pay was about 3900[/quote]
We earn just over 50k and take home about £3900 I think. You may have had larger student loan and pension payments? My student loan is £60 a month and my husband doesn't have one.

I would argue (ready to be flamed) people SHOULD be able to live comfortably off this if they didn't aspire to private schools, new cars and high end holidays

@Frokni we don't send DSD to private school, don't have brand new cars (but still needed a loan to buy them) - mine is 5 years old and DH's is 9 years old so hardly brand new and certainly don't have high end holidays. We managed one UK break last year. Obviously covid scuppered a lot this year but generally we have a week away in the UK and a couple of camping trips. We still aren't rolling in it though but I do appreciate we are lucky to be able to afford a UK break etc.