To ask how you would spend a salary of £300k?

[iwishiwasafish]

In a similar vein to “what would you do if you won the lottery” … how would you spend an ongoing salary of £300k per year?

That’s £25k per month before tax.
£14,180 per month after tax.

@Peanutbuttercupisyum

It’s really not that much! Especially in south east/London. DH earns this: Savings, normal 4 bed detached house, couple of second hand nice-ish cars, one ski holiday, one aboard summer holiday and one ski holiday a year. Private school for 3 children. Sahm. Definitely no designer clothes, horses, buying stuff for relatives, etc! Just a normal, comfortable life!

Er, it is a lot. It is higher than 99% of people's salaries. A "normal" life is not multiple DC in private school and ski holidays.

Staff and assistants? It’s £300k not £3million

No idea. My boss pays himself that much and I've regularly wondered how on Earth he manages to spend it. I'd feel sick frittering that amount each month while others are starving, or indeed while he pays the junior staff a touch over minimum wage.

Detached house with land. Horse and a swimming pool

I'd increase my number of horses from 3-4, and buy a nicer horsebox. I'd also buy an electric car for running about and have the solar panels that we are currently saving up for, installed. Then after that, apart from doing a few outstanding bits of work on our farmhouse and farm cottage (so we could let the cottage out again), I would put the money each month towards a few nice holidays a year for all my close family, and the rest into a retirement savings pot as I presume I would have to be working full time for this £300k a year wage, and so I'd want to stop doing that as soon as possible! I currently work part time and my husband works full time.

A full time PA, housekeeper and chef! 😂zero drudgery

I'd buy a bigger house

@MummyJasmin

People who earn a similar amount....what do you do?!?? (Advise please.) I can't begin to imagine what it would be like to earn that much!

Worked overseas on what was considered a hardship posting. Welcome to China!

I’ve always thought if i had the money I would like to buy houses, do them up nicely and then give them to Shelter or some such organisations to give to homeless people to get them back on their feet…. A stepping stone as it were but something that wasn’t a step up from a drug den but somewhere that would really feel like a home and give people some kind of feeling of normality. 300k a year would basically allow me to buy and do up a small house or 1 or flats a year I think….. I could happily live on £100,000 a year.

The first year I would probably pay off our mortgage on our house so we owned ou outright and no one could ever take it away from us….. and I would buy a spacious 4x4 and a classic car. And buy my husband the Scrambler that he wants.

I don’t want houses all round the world or a yacht or a private plane. I have realised that I prefer a smaller life…. And if I had money behind me, my first thoughts would be to secure myself and then I wouldn’t want to keep accumulating money but actually use it to make some wrongs in the world right.

@thenovice

I'm thinking maybe I'm out of place on this thread. Everyone else seems so affluent.

You're not hugs hi5

For that amount, I would hoard & squirrel away, spend next to nothing and then QUIT WORK. (I’m assuming that for £300k, the job is blood, sweat & tears)

lol ^ you know what I meant haha.

My DF earns this and has a second family. Go figure.

@Whatamess582

I’ve always thought if i had the money I would like to buy houses, do them up nicely and then give them to Shelter or some such organisations to give to homeless people to get them back on their feet…. A stepping stone as it were but something that wasn’t a step up from a drug den but somewhere that would really feel like a home and give people some kind of feeling of normality. 300k a year would basically allow me to buy and do up a small house or 1 or flats a year I think….. I could happily live on £100,000 a year.

The first year I would probably pay off our mortgage on our house so we owned ou outright and no one could ever take it away from us….. and I would buy a spacious 4x4 and a classic car. And buy my husband the Scrambler that he wants.

I don’t want houses all round the world or a yacht or a private plane. I have realised that I prefer a smaller life…. And if I had money behind me, my first thoughts would be to secure myself and then I wouldn’t want to keep accumulating money but actually use it to make some wrongs in the world right.

Yes 100% this. I started typing out my reply then lost it somehow. But then I read yours and it's aligned with pretty much what I said. I'm naturally frugal and would rather help others if I can.

@Whatamess582 where are you that you can buy and do up a house for £60k? Bear in mind you need to pay tax etc on £300k, you’re taking home £160k best case

Also have always paid for private health insurance, for me and DH, DS and stepchildren, and my parents, absolutely worth it (parents would both be dead without it). And paid for private maternity hospital when DS was born. Fantastic.

My boss earns around that. She lives in a spacious converted farm house in countryside, has a property portfolio and spends her holidays visiting her holiday homes. Buys designer clothes, has regular botox, pays for private school. She does work really hard though - long hours, high stress / high responsibility job. A lot on her plate that she can never truly “switch off” from. Is the stress worth the lifestyle? I’m not sure...

My dad seen this much.

I'd probably do similar to him and my mum. Nice but not massive, expensive house, nice cars and holidays, meals out but save, save, save and retire at 50 with the same lifestyle as when I was working.

I am not quite at 300k but not far off.

Firstly masses goes on tax and NI. You do not have any personal allowance at this level, and you have virtually no pensions allowance so you are paying tax on your pension contributions too.

If you have young kids, you spend a lot on childcare just like anyone else (except you don’t get tax free childcare). If you are earning 300k you are probably working all hours God sends, so you will be paying for some kind of wrap around care. Probably a live in nanny, because who else is going to cover for you if you have to pull an all-nighter or go to Frankfurt on a business trip at short notice. And if you have a live in nanny and kids you need somewhere big enough to put them in. And if your job is in London, which many 300k jobs are, then that home is going to cost you a fortune in rent or mortgage payments.

Older children - probably if you are on 300k, unless you are ideaologically VERY motivated, that means private school fees, so anywhere between 20k and 40k per child depending on age and school, from after tax income. Many of my friends have three kids, so that’s maybe 100k a year, more than half your take home pay, on school fees alone.

Finally there is the big expense people don’t often talk about which is alimony/maintenance. It’s not uncommon for people who work long hours and earn a lot to be on second or even third marriages, and (while things are changing now) there used to be a presumption that as well as child support, ex-wives should be kept in the style to which they’ve become accustomed without needing to get a job. That can get very expensive, especially if you’ve started a second family with a new partner.

Once you’ve done tax, pension contributions, a bit to savings, childcare/school fees, mortgage/rent and maybe child maintenance and alimony, there’s no room for “staff and assistants”, or some of the other very expensive ideas mentioned on this thread.

In my experience people earning at this level tend to be time poor, so you often see them spending their spare cash on nice holidays to exotic places - a kind of compensation for not seeing their families very much.

*earnt

I earn a bit more than that, but pay an even higher proportion in tax (close to 55%, before the latest increase to fund social care). Rough outgoings for the two of us (best guess):

Eat out regularly (weekly) ~ 600-700 pm
Maintain a house and a flat ~ 1,500 pm
Weekly commute ~ 600 pm
Food and wine ~ 600-800 pm
Vehicles (3x secondhand) ~ 500 pm
Holiday fund (3 per year) ~ 750-1,000 pm
Books and magazines, etc. ~ 200 pm
Gardener (fortnightly), cleaner (weekly) ~ 350 pm
Shoes/clothes ~ 500 pm (mix of charity shop, mail order, made to measure)

Rest goes to pension / savings / car replacement fund.

Fortunate to be mortgage free before 50 (repayment mortgage was 3,500 pm - for a relatively small mortgage at this level of earnings). No children/no school fees - which helps.

Maintaining two homes in the week definitely brings a big inefficiency - but means I can work in the city and we live in the country.

We don't earn quite that much, but not far from it. We have had a lot of expenses over the years with our special needs child which eats up quite a chunk. We have a cleaner but only for a couple of hours every two weeks. We live in a nice house, but by no means a mansion. We don't spend much money on clothes (in fact we usually buy at charity shops). We are able to buy new cars when necessary, rather than having to look at used cars, but only normal cars, nothing fancy (basic Japanese cars), and that only happens about every ten years. We don't have any fancy electronics. I like to cook so I wouldn't want to employ someone to do that, but when we feel like going out to eat or get a takeaway instead we can do so without being concerned with the cost. We don't travel a lot, but when we do so we're able to do so without too much worry about the cost. We don't travel first class or anything like that, but if a direct flight is more expensive we'll take that rather than saving money on connecting flights, for example. We don't stay in fancy hotels, but we'll stay in a decent brand name hotel rather than a cheap motel.

We probably could spend a lot more every month and still have enough money, but we don't feel the need to. We donate both money and time to charities. Not having to worry about money is a great privilege and I know we are extremely fortunate, but just having money doesn't make someone want sports cars, yachts, designer clothes, or luxury holidays.

@Peanutbuttercupisyum

It’s really not that much! Especially in south east/London. DH earns this: Savings, normal 4 bed detached house, couple of second hand nice-ish cars, one ski holiday, one aboard summer holiday and one ski holiday a year. Private school for 3 children. Sahm. Definitely no designer clothes, horses, buying stuff for relatives, etc! Just a normal, comfortable life!

It is a lot. I grew up in a very affluent part of London with parents who earned well over this but to claim that an annual salary of £300k is not that much is completely insane.

Bear in mind a bit under half of it would go in tax!

I have savings enough to bury me. No mortgage which helps. But that is such a vast amount of money, I cant even imagine that amount nevermind spend it. My treat is a coffee and a bit of cake with mate. Have not had holiday for 11 years and that was long weekend at seaside. Been abroad once 27years ago. That amount of cash, wow its hard because I've got such great taste haha