Sorry, but £80k a year in London ^really is^ a large salary

[nickymanchester]

So I was just reading the "Unpopular Opinions" threads and I noticed more than one poster saying that £80k a year really isn't a lot of money in London or the SE.

What with being locked down again and not having much to do I thought I'd have a look at the actual figures as I had no idea which side of that argument is correct.

For full time workers who work in London, the median (average) pay is £39,500 (men £42,700, women £35,800).

If a person is earning £80k a year in London then they are on the 87th percentile. Although, if you're a woman that places you in the top 95%

(87th percentile means that you earn more than 87% of all people - ie you're in the top 13%).

Of course, areas of London are very different so I split London down as shown below.

The practical upshot is that, well, if you work in the City of London then I guess you could argue that £80k isn't necessarily a large salary.

You might even be able to get away with this if you work in Tower Hamlets. But elsewhere - not really.

.............................................75th.......Gender

Area......................Median...Prcnt......Pay Gap
City of London.....57,361....89,492....27.9%
Tower Hamlets.... 49,728....72,254....20.6%
Westminster.........43,597....64,038....15.7%
Southwark............41,948....59,816....11.4%
Camden................39,837....53,950....20.9%
Hammersmith......39,676....54,132....14.9%
Islington................39,312....59,587....8.1%
Lambeth...............37,866....55,458....15.3%
Hackney................36,748....46,540....9.4%
Waltham Forest....35,651....45,552....23.5%
Hillingdon.............35,183....52,390....5.5%
Lewisham.............34,913....46,608....-2.5%
Brent.....................34,866....48,064....8.5%
Hounslow.............34,809....50,528....5.2%
Richmond.............34,726....47,070....25.4%
Kensington...........34,445....47,242....4.4%
Croydon................34,086....45,146....18.8%
Havering...............33,821....46,249....-15.0%
Greenwich............33,181....45,427....6.0%
Kingston...............33,030....49,150....18.7%
Haringey...............32,812....44,840....-11.8%
Newham...............32,292....49,618....-1.8%
Sutton...................32,167....43,898....-2.4%
Wandsworth.........31,938....45,786....7.0%
Bromley................31,777....44,824....10.7%
Ealing....................31,418....45,001....-6.0%
Merton..................30,607....48,381....-11.0%
Barking.................30,482....39,988....13.5%
Redbridge.............30,306....45,157....-5.7%
Barnet...................30,092....47,362....9.3%
Enfield...................29,895....40,586....11.8%
Bexley....................28,174....39,614....11.3%
Harrow...................26,998....43,077....17.3%

And for comparison with people outside of London:-

London.................39,556....57,975
South East............31,647...44,704
Scotland...............30,820....41,855
East.......................29,895....41,449
North West...........29,099....40,820
West Midlands.....28,730....40,186
East Midlands......28,704....40,004
South West...........28,605....39,645
Yorkshire...............28,023....38,865
Wales....................27,966....38,392
Northern Ireland...27,487....37,903
North East............27,113....37,872

All figures are ONS latest 2020 figures extracted from NOMIS. Gender pay gap is for full time employees only.

@waydownwego that’s not what I got from it. The way I read it was OP reporting on the reality of pure numbers. Else, what’s she supposed to do? Only report one or create her own set of numbers?

@Singinginshower

The main issue in London is the cost of housing whether buying or rent which needs addressing. I have no patience with people who complain about commuting costs, people elsewhere in the UK have to commute too. Ditto childcare. Other things in London can be much cheaper such as eating out, public transport, leisure activities (lovely parks/art galleries/museums)

Are commuting costs £500 per month elsewhere in the country? Genuine question really. I don’t know anyone outside the SE/Greater London area who pay that much. But I’m happy to be told it is, I just don’t know.

We consider fares akin with mortgage and council tax, it’s a bill we just have to accept. I tend to add the 3 together and think of that as the cost of a house/area. All other bills are more moveable, you can shop around, choose to go without etc, also they tend to be the same wherever you live. But mortgage/fares/CT really varies.

Someone on MN recently commented that they had a "reasonable salary" over 100k.

Sounds like a fortune to me! Triple what I think of as reasonable.

Not all commuting costs in London are huge. It's about 200 a month for a zones 1-4 railcard

I lived in a village in Scotland during uni. To get to uni and work every month cost me £400-600 using a combination of the bus and train. I had to plan for visits anywhere else and the cost was quite prohibitive as a student on limited income. I'm nkt sure if that is representative of the rest of the country. I realised owning a car was cheaper.

In contrast making the same distance journey in London is £1.50 compared to £6.50 bus fare. Living in London and SE I found commuting costs to be more affordable for me, but I live in Zone 2 and work in the City. When I lived in the SE, my bus fare was £60 a month. Better links here though and everything is more accessible and I don't have to drive

I looked at a couple of roles in London that I would have commuted to from Berkshire. The season ticket, including tube to actually get to the office, comes in just over £5,500 a year. This would need to be paid out of my after-tax salary and so the job would need to have paid at least £10k a year more than the job I was leaving - just so I still had the same take-home pay. This is without putting any value on my own time wasted sitting on the train and tube.

The roles I was seeing basically meant trading 3 hours a day of my time for an extra £10 (or less) a day. I thought my time was worth more than £3.33 an hour.

The highest I’ve paid was from MK to London. When we were looking at areas in Kent a lot of people recommended Canterbury as it has a high speed line into London. But I think it worked out approx £7k per year. Which added to other costs made the area out of our price range. Which is why (not just in London) I think you can see commuting costs as a fixed cost which comes with living in an area and should be considered in the same respect as mortgage and CT. I understand, within reason, where you live is a choice, but it can be a bit of a crappy one if you hail from an expensive area.

Agree with what dchange said. I think that sometimes people don’t take into account what a first time buyer has to now pay (and have saved) to get on the property ladder. £4500 a month take home pay if you’re lucky enough to have a relatively small mortgage is decent. But If you’ve had to buy in the last few years a mortgage is easily 2000k+ per month for a 3 bed terrace in zone 4. That also doesn’t take into account the 100k you’ve had to save for the deposit.

Not all commuting costs in London are huge. It's about 200 a month for a zones 1-4 railcard That's still £2.4K a year!

@NewModelArmyMayhem18

Not all commuting costs in London are huge. It's about 200 a month for a zones 1-4 railcard That's still £2.4K a year!

Lots of people spend far more than £200 on petrol per month for commuting purposes who do not work in London.

** Are commuting costs £500 per month elsewhere in the country? Genuine question really. I don’t know anyone outside the SE/Greater London area who pay that much.

You obviously would have to weigh it up. I agree London travelling costs are high.

What I cannot understand is how anybody is making out that 80k is not doable. It absolutely is because there’s plenty of people living in London on a much lower salary

They will have the same expenses what it is the difference?

Perhaps what they choose and prioritise...

If you're paying £500 a month in commuting costs, you don't live in London surely?

It cost £135 per month for travel from where I live to work in the City.

I think that these figures are a bit deceptive for two reasons. First a lot of people living and working in London at the bottom end of the payscales will be young people, often migrants, who are here either to enjoy life in the capital and/or to improve their English etc and are prepared to live in pretty cramped and grotty conditions for a while which means a cheaper cost of living. Those who aren't young and have families but are paid at this level are likely to have some help from benefits so their income is higher than their salary. This creates a bit of a "pay trap" for those earning above the benefits cap and in higher rates of tax in that their salary looks higher than their spending power because of the unseen government subsidy to the employers who get away with paying less than a living wage for staff working in London.

So a family income of £80,000 actually is two people with not great incomes who are likely to struggle in the pre school years with rent (probably never be able to afford to buy) on a flat big enough for the family, commuting costs as it won't be central and crippling childcare costs. Most individuals earning £80k may be on a decent salary but is likely to have been either highly qualified or experienced or both and could reasonably have expected (based on their parents' generation) to be able to afford a more affluent lifestyle than a small terraced house in a not great suburb in SE London with the best of an hours commute into work (a 2 minute train journey will translate into 45 minutes of commute quite easily), a small and elderly car etc. This is why people say that £80K is not a great salary in London.

It cost me £200 a month to get from Liverpool to Warrington, I was on £14k a year then!

True this was 2006 so maybe not too relevant to this conversation but if I could manage it then someone on £80k should be able to!

@Londonmummy66

I think that these figures are a bit deceptive for two reasons. First a lot of people living and working in London at the bottom end of the payscales will be young people, often migrants, who are here either to enjoy life in the capital and/or to improve their English etc and are prepared to live in pretty cramped and grotty conditions for a while which means a cheaper cost of living. Those who aren't young and have families but are paid at this level are likely to have some help from benefits so their income is higher than their salary. This creates a bit of a "pay trap" for those earning above the benefits cap and in higher rates of tax in that their salary looks higher than their spending power because of the unseen government subsidy to the employers who get away with paying less than a living wage for staff working in London.

So a family income of £80,000 actually is two people with not great incomes who are likely to struggle in the pre school years with rent (probably never be able to afford to buy) on a flat big enough for the family, commuting costs as it won't be central and crippling childcare costs. Most individuals earning £80k may be on a decent salary but is likely to have been either highly qualified or experienced or both and could reasonably have expected (based on their parents' generation) to be able to afford a more affluent lifestyle than a small terraced house in a not great suburb in SE London with the best of an hours commute into work (a 2 minute train journey will translate into 45 minutes of commute quite easily), a small and elderly car etc. This is why people say that £80K is not a great salary in London.

You’ve totally missed the point though, that a) this is a single person salary, NOT family income; b) £80k pa is only earned by 13% of the male workforce and 5% of the female workforce in London.

We all understand that it doesn’t seem high when you want to live somewhere naice and have childcare and travel costs, but that isn’t the OP’s point!

@kirinm

If you're paying £500 a month in commuting costs, you don't live in London surely?

It cost £135 per month for travel from where I live to work in the City.

No, you’d live in the SE in a satellite town.

It cost me £200 a month to get from Liverpool to Warrington, I was on £14k a year then!

In 2006 I lived in Selhurst and worked in zone 1 and I was earning £15k and paid similar. My mortgage/rent was £800. But I shared with my boyfriend who earned similar.

Sorry for slight derailment. Thought it was interesting in the context of expenses.

Years ago, I worked in policy & research for an out of London Council and we would look at affordability indices for local residents - what percentage of the property for sale locally was "affordable" (i.e. was available for 3.5 times the average salary). I remember doing the same for a London Council I was working for and it was a fraction of the housing for sale (less than 10%). We did the same for rental, and the figures were less than half the population.

No-one is prepared to do anything about it, though, and the average Tory thinks that "you should have tried harder at school"

Exactly this! It is a good salary however living in London is bloody expensive when you have kids - appreciate that having kids is a choice.

We rent and trying to find a decent house under £2k pm in rent is hard, there are a few but not many where we are. Between paying out for wraparound care for school aged children (don’t get me started on nursery fees!! 🤯), rent, travel and general living costs there really isn’t a lot left over.

I do agree that private school is a luxury and not a necessity though.

Then your caught in the rent cycle. Trying to save enough to be able to buy a house in London and live (not luxuriously either) is near on impossible given the cost of houses.

BF works in Central London as a carpenter and earns about 80k admittedly 10 hours a day. 40 per cent tax though and no child benefits for that. Has a small 3 bed house which wouldn’t be big enough for more than a small family. Only him and his son.

if u bought very basic studio flat for £135k, with £539 month mortgage, you'd hv about £800 a week (after tax) left for service charges, council tax, gas, electricity, water rates, internet, food, toiletries, cleaning products, fares, clothes, socialising, etc. (don't know how much wd b deducted from the £800 for NIC, pension, etc)

The starting salary for teachers and nurses is around £25k per annum before tax and NI. £80k is a ridiculously high salary.

£80K in London really isn’t much at all

I worked in London and lived in Surrey for 15 years, mortgage payments were £2500 per month plus all other bills

Don’t forget those who earn more pay more in tax

Thankfully the OH worked too so we made ends meet

Since moved North for a change of lifestyle and semi retirement

To work in London and live in a nice place you need to be earning in excess of £100K

@Manal82

Exactly this! It is a good salary however living in London is bloody expensive when you have kids - appreciate that having kids is a choice.

We rent and trying to find a decent house under £2k pm in rent is hard, there are a few but not many where we are. Between paying out for wraparound care for school aged children (don’t get me started on nursery fees!! 🤯), rent, travel and general living costs there really isn’t a lot left over.

I do agree that private school is a luxury and not a necessity though.

Then your caught in the rent cycle. Trying to save enough to be able to buy a house in London and live (not luxuriously either) is near on impossible given the cost of houses.

If my DP earned £80k per annum then I would stay at home and return to work once they’ve started full time education, thereby saving on nursery fees. Attending state schools instead of private school will save on school costs. Even with £2k a month rent and monthly bills there’s still lots of money left over.

So my partner and I earn over 100k combined and we were unable to buy a house in London in an area where we would be happy to bring up our children, the house prices are just too expensive. We are a Chartered Accountant and a Solicitor with good jobs and just couldn't make it work. We moved from our flat in Zone 2 to a maisonette in Bromley with a garden but still couldn't make the jump to a nice house. We have now relocated to Maidstone and are very lucky that I can work from home 90% if the time (100 % right now) so don't have to worry about the commute and my other half moved to a Kent firm so can drive. 80k is a very good salary but unfortunately not enough to live comfortably in London with current house prices