An ex of mine earns £250k. He has worked hard, long hours for about 25 years to get to that point. He works 60-70 hours a week as standard. He is a partner in a professional services firm. He brings in enough business to his firm to ensure at least 25 people are in full time work.
Anyway, he pays about half his salary in tax.
He supports another ex-partner (not me) fully as she can’t work due to chronic illness. That is about £2.5k a month as she has medical costs too, things the NHS don’t really cover like a weekly physical therapist, plus he bought her a flat outright which took a decent chunk of his equity so his mortgage is a bit higher than it would be otherwise.
Otherwise he pays his mortgage and household bills, probably another couple of grand a month. He doesn’t live in a flashy house, he lives in a three bed semi on an estate in a rural village, close to a couple of important clients. The house is worth less than his annual salary. I doubt his neighbours have any idea how much he earns. He will probably move to a slightly more expensive place in the next couple of years, as he will need to relocate to a city for work reasons. He’ll get a two bed flat in a nice neighbourhood but nothing grand. As the city in question is a lot more expensive that the village, it’ll probably be around £300-350k.
He drives a Volvo 4x4 which he first has in lease and then bought after a few years. He needs a 4x4 as his largest client is in a remote area up a dirt track. He thinks he will switch to an electric car in a few years once the Volvo is past it’s best.
He took a 70% salary cut for 12 months at the start of the pandemic to help minimise the lay offs in his firm. He is proud they managed to keep it to a few voluntary redundancies and they have paid other staff who took salary decreases at the time back (but not partners). His firm is paying furlough money back. He’ll take a year or two to repair his savings etc after that.
At that he lives a pretty simple life. He has just about every streaming service going since the pandemic started and shares the passwords with me even though we broke up a while back. He likes craft beer, he’ll have a couple once or twice a fortnight. He buys free range/organic food as much as he can for animal welfare/environmental reasons. He shops pretty frugally except he has a steak every weekend. So he spends maybe £40-50 a week on food/beer etc. He’ll get a takeout pizza or fish and chips once a month. He’d go to a football match two or three times a year pre-pandemic. Same for nights out with friends. His last house he did have a gardner to cut the grass once a fortnight or so and to do a tidy up at the end of summer. But his new place has a simpler garden so he takes care of that himself now.
Clothes wise he buys good quality but very rarely designer. When he needed suits he’d always buy in sales. He’d buy himself a couple of pairs of jeans at about £100 a pair each year and a few checked shirts/sweatshirts/t-shirts. Usually he’d go shopping on holiday so he could take his time and enjoy it. I doubt he spends as much as £1k a year on clothes.
He has a fairly healthy pension and a rising equity stake in his firm. He helps family and friends with money when they need it. He’s told me if I ever need anything he’s never see a friend go without.
For example, I might need to see a specialist in another country for a health condition in the next couple of years and he’s said not to worry about that. I also might need to relocate in the next couple of years and he’s said if I can’t find a decent place in my budget, his priority would be for me to live in a safe neighbourhood where I felt comfortable and he’d cover any shortfall to make that happen.
Whilst we were together my place had a very worn bathroom and he saved up money over a few months so I could get a new bathroom.
He does have private healthcare through work and pays a monthly premium for it- his firm insist on it and that’s he gets annual health checks tied to a life insurance policy they have in him (which pays the firm in the event of something happening to him, he has his own life insurance policies for his former partner his still fully supports, his mum and also for me). I’m still down as his partner on the health insurance so I get private health cover at a very reduced rate and he covers that.
His one place he does sometimes splurge a bit is travel. He likes a nice holiday. He will go to a European capital for a couple of weeks, stay somewhere nice but not flash, eat out a lot, sit in cafes and bars drinking coffees or having a cocktail, tip well, do some clothes shopping, maybe try or see a football match at the local stadium. But he’ll also spend time in parks and just walking round, going to museums and galleries, or hanging out in the apartment watching local tv. He hasn’t done that for the last couple of years and probably won’t travel again for at least another year or two, so at the moment he lets himself have all the streaming services going as compensation.
When we were going out I think I paid for a meal for us once, as a birthday treat. He’d say ‘get the tip’ or ‘you buy the first round” for drinks before or after. I never paid a cent towards a holiday and he’d take out spending money either in cash or prepaid cards and split it 50/50 between us. He’d always spend less than me and end up using his leftover money on the last day to buy me a gift, like a belt or a pair of sandals.
In essence he saves a lot of his money and where he does spend is usually about taking care of the people in his life he loves.
He basically gets no time to himself though. On holiday he would switch his phone off in the afternoons but would work for at a least two or three hours in the morning. He’d switch his phone back on late afternoon/early evening and handle urgent calls or important emails for an hour or hour and a half. So basically on holiday we’d do our own thing In the morning, then have lunch and go out in the afternoon, go back early evening, he’d do work, I’d relax, watch tv, and then either cook or get ready to go out for the evening. Then we’d go out for drinks or dinner.
I don’t think he’s had a day he didn’t take a call or respond to an email for over a decade. One sick day in twenty five years for norovirus and he views that as a bit of a blot,