..to struggle to comprehend huge salaries?

[missbunnyrabbit]

I was reading the thread about how much people earn having been to grammar/private schools and I just cannot get my head around how much lots of people earn. My head just cannot imagine such huge salaries. People earning over 100k, what on earth do they even do with that money? Do they buy everything gold-plated? That's a joke BUT I have no idea what anyone does with that sort of money or what it could be needed for. This isn't a bashing thread or anything like that. I'm just a bit stunned.

Does anyone else's brain struggle to imagine such huge amounts of money?

Tay pay a huge amount on tax.
Go on more expensive holidays
Have high mortgages
Possibly only one working adult.

Honestly quite easily.
Our household income in about 7.5k per month. Our mortgage is 2k and our child care is another 2k ( 3 kids). We both have longish commutes so own and run two cars. Food bill is about 1k plus other bills o top.
Now absolutely we are not struggling at all. We go on a nice family holiday once a year and my kids do lots of activities which are expensive but we don't have lots left at the end of the month at all and I definitely wouldn't consider us 'rich'

Forgot to say, the best and only thing worth having by earning money is it buys you lack of worry. My parents worried terribly about money constantly. I’ve had periods where I have to as well. The gnawing low level worry , constantly thinking ahead and adding up what’s coming our vs what’s coming in. The luxury of not having to do that any more. Just buying what the kids need from the most convenient place rather than spending whole weekend shopping for bargains.

The kids love our expensive holidays as much as I loved our annual week in a caravan (in fact my mum takes them on a Sun £10 holiday every year and they love it), they enjoy the food I cook from Waitrose as much as I loved Kwiksave own brand crispy pancakes, they love their expensive acitivities as much as I loved going disco dancing in the village hall for £1. The money literally is about having freedom from worry and slightly nicer surroundings.

@DrMorbius

I am more interested in what people do to earn the big money. At least this is valuable information I could have passed on to my kids when they were growing up. Me = Sales Manager £80k Wife = Accountant £75k

Finance (investment banking), £156k base salary - generous bonus (uncapped) depending on performance

We’ve got a combined salary of about 150k and I do not feel rich by any means! We go on nice holidays and admittedly have a big old house but I drive an 8 year old car, children at state school - I have no idea how the posters on 100k afford school fees!

This is what we do with our £100K:

• No school fees (state), no fancy car (2nd hand honda jazz), no excessive holidays (think £2K for family of 4 once every 2 years).

• Pay quite a lot of taxes.

• Save extra into our pension because the state won’t be paying towards our care. And state pension will be means-tested by the time we come to retire.

• After school childcare 5 days a week and in the school holidays.

• Over pay on our mortgage for a medium-sized family house (not a fancy one) in a part of the country where it costs £750K for one of those.

• We don’t eat out much (one every 4-8 weeks ish) but like free range / organic groceries.

• We don’t worry too much about heating and bills or if clothes need replacing. No designer clothes/bags by the way.

That’s it, really. Life is easier with a higher salary, but there’s nothing from another world about it.

[quote ShrikeAttack]@missbunnyrabbit, if this is a genuine thread and question, our family income is about 30k a month after tax and it gives you options. It makes your life a bit easier.

We're not super-rich, our children go to state school, but that's a choice. They have tutors and they pursue their hobbies and interests. One of my parents went to a well-known public school, as have their cousins, I don't want that for them. But that is a choice. I don't want my children to feel entitled.

I want them to know they are privileged.[/quote]
That is rich. Maybe not billionaire super yacht rich but out of the park rich.

I know what you mean OP.i earn less than the average (RL, not MN ) salary and DH is self employed but probably slightly above average but we live in an area where most people seem to earn much more in finance and law. Etc.
I'm always (naively I know) surprised at conversations I have with local friends if for example their annual holiday budget is more than I earn, and one of DH friends pays more in school fees per year than our entire household income. (In both cases there is a SAHM)
At the same time to rent a family home in our area seems to cost around 2.5-3.5k/month so if you were in rental or paid a similar amount for a mortgage that would take care of a massive chunk of it. Add in 3 or 4 foreign holidays and or school fees and you wouldn't have much change.

@Simonjt

Ah, posted too soon. *@Libertaire* are you trying to suggest that £5,500 a month isn’t a lot of money?

You live in zone 1 on £5500 a month? Really? I’m zone 3 and my rent alone is £2200. And that’s not for somewhere fancy either.

These threads always make me giggle a bit. Remember its not a lot of money because it is spent on things that cost a lot of money which they benefit from. Especially pensions. Thats literally saving money with tax perks for themselves.
I do agree that we dont need to keep taxing paye more. Income isnt the same as wealth and it is earned income that they have done something to deserve.

I earn £50k but I live in the south east so my mortgage on a 2 bed mid terrace is over £1k a month alone. And when I was commuting to work every day my rail season ticket was over £5.5k a year. Now I’m only going in a couple of days it’s £37 a day or would be £57 if I didn’t have a railcard.

@TableFlowerss

You pay 40% tax on that amount so they won’t get to keep as much as what it seems.

My DH is on 50K which is a descent salary, particularly in the north. If we had another 1.5-2k a month, I’d definitely send kids to private school.

You don't pay 40% on it all

100k a year
£5k p/m after tax and pension

£400 bills
£400 food
£500 personal spends
£500 holidays
£500 savings
£2k mortgage
£700 nursery fees, children's activities and tutor.

No money for fancy cars or school fees.

100k is a very large salary and it gives you the option to live in a lovely area with great schools and parks and other facilities. It allows you to save a decent amount so that you never have to worry about the boiler going or the car breaking. It allows you to put a decent chunk in to you pension. It allows your children to participate in any activities they would like.

It is a great salary and gives you so much choice (Even living in London like we do) but it is also easy to spend.

@Libertaire

You do realise that the government takes 40% of everything you earn over £50k in income tax, and that a gross salary of £100k equates to take-home pay of around £5500 per month, don’t you?

That’s a decent salary, particularly if your other half also works and you don’t live in London, but it’s by no means rich.

Seriously thats is more than most people earn with both partners working full time. Get a reality check. Its rich

We don’t eat out much (one every 4-8 weeks ish)

I think vast swathes of the population would consider that to be eating out a lot, they simply can't dream of being able to eat out that much. If at all.

I've been poor enough to never be able to eat out at all, and comfortable enough to be able to do it on a whim. I have found that in general, those who have perhaps never been wealthy but have also never been truly poor just don't understand how little money there is when you're truly poor.

Oh and we only have one car and it is 10 years old!

I earn £95k
Husband earns £135k
Bonuses around £20-30k pa (not last yr)
Take home between us is £12k pcm

Mortgage £2.7k (630k house worth £1.2m)
Overpay mortgage £2k p cm
Pensions - mine put plus employer in 2.1k, DH puts in 1.8k
Savings of £40k
Buy to let houses make 1.1k pcm after tax but often cost maintainance

House has frequent costs, outsource a lot as work a lot. House was 1980s expensive area so slowly refurbishing which costs a lot.

Spend about 10-12k pa on holidays for the 5 of us usually go abroad twice

Have a good lifestyle but alot is invested for future and for maintaining the present.

When you have quite a lot of disposable income, it's easy to fritter reasonable amounts on things like takeaway coffee, meals out, getting hair done, without really understanding that for others these are very rare treats.

DP earns approximately 100k, I also work full time, but earn a much more 'average' salary - we have a combined income of c. 130k pa. That translates to paying a large mortgage on a very small house in London (with anti-social council tenants living next door to boot). One foreign holiday per year camping in France (pre Covid), other holidays are UK camping trips. Very little in the way of eating out, no Deliveroo, etc. one very old car. All my clothes come from ebay, as do the children's coats. We do realise that we are fortunate in that we can pay our bills and don't have to skimp on food shipping etc, but it's hardly a lifestyle of ponies and private schools! We're aware that we could have a much more 'luxurious' lifestyle out of London, but then it's unlikely that we'd both be able to still do the jobs that we love (and live in a city that we love).

While £5500 sounds a lot, once you factor in housing and childcare costs you can be struggling. I earned that easily in London but my job was so busy (as you would expect at that level of salary) I needed a full time nanny for dds. Plus my rent (London) was huge. I had about £800 a month after childcare and housing costs for all bills and food and that was working all the hours and living somewhere relatively basic.

As a single parent at that time I actually would have been not much worse off working a few hours in a shop or something because I would have got rent paid, tax credits, etc. In fact I had family who did and were better off (that was pre universal credit roll out and pre cap)

So it’s not the answer to all your problems I’m afraid.

When DH and I met we earned normal London wages. We scrimped and saved, shopped in charity shops etc to pay our mortgage and raise the DC. After many years in the same industry DH now earns in excess of 6 figures. It's a lot but not as much as many people who work in the same field. They are paid that much because years of training and experience mean they generate huge sums of money for their employers. In order to do that they are on call to international clients 24/7, 365 days a year. If a billionaire airline owner in Hong Kong wants to talk to him at 3.30pm on Christmas Day DH has to take the call.

We have invested in property and pensions so we will have a comfortable retirement. We have money set aside to help out DC when they want to buy a property. When I needed a minor medical procedure recently I could afford to have it done privately rather than wait over a year for an NHS appointment. We have a posh new car, not a secondhand one. I have some nice jewellery. We eat out often and go to the theatre most weeks We have a very nice life now.

I still buy clothes in Primark though and very seldom pay full price for anything. I still shop in the sales like I did before. I can afford treats when I want them but I don't squander money. Far and away the best thing about having that sort of money is the freedom from worry. I longer wake up at night worrying about how to pay the next bill.

My husband and I are both on nearly 100k each and let me tell you it doesn’t go far down south - mortgage, train fares into London, full time nursery fees, maybe two holidays a year but not luxury

These threads make me cringe at the lack of awareness. I live in the South East. London is about 40 mins train drive away. Mine and dh's wages have crept up now but we're no where near £100,000.

Guess what, we managed to find a house in an affordable area by moving out of our more expensive area and buying a terraced house in a working class area. As have most of the people who live round here now, mixed in the with locals.

I class myself as comfortable. It is preposterous to list school fees, livery fees etc and try to say they make you poor. No, you chose that lifestyle.

We were on a household wage of about £35,000. It's now more. We could have moved to a bigger house and leased a Range Rover but we didn't as it would affect our disposable income. It's called budgeting and not worrying about keeping up with the Jones.

I would say that after that I lost my job and actually lived on benefits for a year. I actually preferred it as I wasn’t so stressed. Not to say both aren’t hard but trying to juggle young children and a city job and commute as a single mum is horrendous.

Get a reality check. Its rich

I think people lose sight of what rich is. 5.5k a month when people have billions does not make you rich because some have less.

We have about 6.5k after tax & pensions. There isn't the option to pay less pension, that's the amount we have to pay in to get any employer contribution.

A lot depends on when you bought property someone older who got on the ladder will have a lot more disposable income. If your younger that's not much you can do about prices. Yes we could move out of London, but I was born & raised here & my parents are immigrants & I don't have any other ties & want to stay close to family. Our mortgage, all bills, childcare, travel, insurance comes to 3.5-4k. Our car is 2nd hand & old but we are lucky to not have to worry about heating or buying food, but often shop in the cheaper supermarkets. The rest we save for holidays (don't go on expensive ones), long term savings & are saving to move house. We've only recently had more spare due to promotions & reduction in childcare. We couldn't afford private school for 2.