..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?

Remember this is an anonymous forum and that anybody can pretty much invent a story about their salary, lifestyle and so on

My husband earns 6 figures, he paid our mortgage off in 5 years and now he is saving it so he can quit his highly dangerous and stressful job early , maybe around 50 years old then take what to him would be a easy job.

He is 44 and I'm 42

We drive a old Volvo , we have one nice holiday a year that maybe costs around 7/8k and the rest of the money is saved for our futures

We don't live any extravagant lifestyle but I don't worry about money but we don't just spend for the sake of spending.

@Libertaire it is when it's OVER £3,500 more Per month than I take home!

Should of said we didn't buy a huge expensive house (£340k) 5 bed detached- we live rural Scotland so you get a lot for your money.

I wouldn't send my kids to private school but we do get a tutor (£30 a week) for our P3 child

I also only work part time 8.5 hours a week so have very little income, so his salary is the only salary.

For me, out of ~£5K net pcm, around £3K went on childcare.

So nobody living in millionaire row, flying on private jet or owning a yacht on £100k? I did not think so.

@Itsnotgreatlike there’s a minimum salary at which an expensive commute becomes worth it though. When I was looking for a job I looked in London and locally, and was willing to accept a lower paid job locally to the value of the money and time I wouldn’t have to spend commuting.

@missbunnyrabbit my DH and I are on £4200 a month.. mortgage alone is £1020 and it's a 2 bed flat. If we had a house, our mortgage would be £3k as the houses are a million here. If we had a 3 bed flat, our mortgage would be £2k. So an extra £1k per month really wouldn't cover living in a 3 bed terrace but would only be ok living in a 2/3 bed flat (which I am fine with). It would not be enough to run a car+ pay the mortgage + save and we don't have a car. I don't live in the most expensive area in London but it's a decent area and in zone 3. We don't live extravagantly by any means.

This doesn't even factor childcare fees. I would say that £120k-150k household income is the minimum needed to raise 1 child in zone 3 ( pay a mortgage of £1k plus childcare fees of 1600 per month). Given higher rate tax, £200k (£100k each) would be an ok amount for a family of 4 to live but as I have only planned for 1 child, I don't know if you actually need 200k for a family of 4 to live the same standard of living as a family of 3 but given half of it is taxed and 25k is £2k per month-childcare alone is £1600 (I can quite imagine so).

My husband earns a really ridiculous salary. We live in a pretty expensive area in a nice house, we have a child at private school and we have nice holidays. I'm not really a high rolling type (he wasn't in an amazing job when we met) so wouldn't want designer clothes, sports cars or going to fancy London restaurants all the time, so apart from the house, the education and the holidays, you'd probably think I'm comfortably off but not rich.

We put a lot into savings for the future so DH can retire early.

I wouldn't have chosen this life as he's had to basically given his life to his job and that's destroyed our marriage (turning up halfway through family holidays, spending 6.30 until 8.30 outside the house, working at weekends, not doing anything with the children, 50%+ travel etc). I'm considering getting out and leaving him with the investments and the fuck off bank accounts. Not asking for any sympathy as it's a much easier problem than many couples have but it's not all sunshine and flowers either. He's acted for years as if he has the BIG job, with all that entails.

He's paid eye watering amounts of tax and never tried to fudge his earnings, though he probably could have.

We are on "that sort of money" and know several other families who are too. All the talk of 6 months in America, boats in marinas, hotel suites costing £2 a night, ponies and private school fees doesn't reflect how we're spending, or how our friends are spending.

We live in an area with excellent state schools so most people take advantage of those so aren't paying school fees but are paying larger mortgages as property prices are higher. We have two cars - but midmarket VWs rather than Bentleys or Porsches. We have a cleaner who costs us £35 a week. We don't spend on hair, beauty treatments, expensive clothes.

Lots goes into savings and pensions for us and for the kids. We have the money there to cope with any emergency like the boiler breaking down or needing some other work done on the house immediately. I do my shopping in Aldi and Tesco, the occasional Waitrose shop for nice treats. About 50% of my wardrobe is charity shop.

@LizzoBorden

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!

🤣🤣🤣 an 8 year old car isn't old!!! I'm sorry, I'm not contributing highly to this thread but some of the responses are hilarious. An 8 year old car... fml.

We are in this position and I completely agree that it doesn't go as far as you'd think. Our mortgage is £1k a month and our bills are high. We run two cars and have a couple of holidays abroad each year but nothing extravagant. DC at a state school but we are considering private for secondary. This will take up a lot of our income so really needs to be weighed up.
We eat out a fair bit and I would say the main luxury is not having to worry about money. If we want to buy something we do but we don't have particularly expensive taste and I buy lots of things secondhand.

We have a high household income, but I can't relate to many of the comments on here. That sort of money doesn't just "soon go" unless you up your lifestyle accordingly.

2 cars at £80k - £100k each? Why? We do actually have 3 vehicles, but all cost less than £20k, and 2 of them are +10 years old. One is a campervan which we use for camping holidays (we don't really do 5* hotels).

We live in a nice house (4 bed detached, but on the small end for that sort of house), nice garden, and we don't need to budget in order to treat ourselves to things like meals out or trips to the theatre etc. But our lifestyle isn't flashy or expensive. The main benefit compared to when I was poor (properly poor) is that we don't have to worry about money.

We don't have kids, so our spare income each month goes into a combination of pension, investments and mortgage overpayments, and we're also renovating our house gradually. We're working towards being in a position where we can both comfortably go part time and then retire as early as we can. After that, I'd love to volunteer on conservation projects etc.

So don't assume that everyone one +£100k thinks they have to buy a £80k car and buy a pony, because that is a long way from the truth.

@MsMitford I'm not sure why you are living that lifestyle with that salary. We have a very similar incomes and also live in London. After tax and pension (depending how much you pay in) you are taking home about 6.5k per month. Even if you have the maximum mortgage for you salaries which is about 2.4k you should have at least 4k left over a month. Not enough to send more than one child to private school but enough for to afford nice holidays/days out and for your children to go to pony club. We manage to ski each year, a summer holiday in Europe, a few weekends away and a long haul holiday every other year. It is a great income to have even in London. I can spend it easily (leaving some for saving too) but there is no denying that I can afford to have a great life doing so.

Tax, NI, Student loan repayments, mortgage, school fees, childcare, cars - tax, insurance, diesel, transport costs, food, utilities. It all adds up.

DH and I are each on that kind of salary but by no means have everything gold plated. We live in a two bed flat in London, no car. We are however putting a lot in our pensions, our ISAs and other investments every month for the future when we are likely to need it more (don't have kids at the moment).

The luxury for me is never having to worry about money and not having enough for an unexpected bill/ something I want as most things we would ever want we could buy if we really wanted to. The thing is, future comfort and time with my family is more important (we are stressed most of the time about the jobs which give us those salaries and very long hours so would like to give it up at some point maybe in ten years and do something which maybe pays less but is less stressful).

school fees in London are upwards for £22 k / year after tax. so I need to earn £45k a year to send my son to a private school.

My mortgage costs me almost £4K a month. an i live in a 4 bed semi in a nice part of greater London ... so thats almost £100k pre tax ... can you see where my salary goes ? I can

As others have said a decent chunk goes on tax

But also i think it depends on when you start earning the big bucks

At 30 dh was on 30k, not much more by the time we had our three children so no private school and multiple holidays or massive home and posh cars

20 years later he’s on over 100k (can’t remember when it jumped…i think in his 40’s)

Our lifestyle hasn’t gone up that much, funnily enough we’ve just got an interest free mortgage for a larger house …but its less than the mortgage on our old house and we will have to sell to pay off the mortgage

Weve got nice second hand cars, he supports the children at uni… they don’t have maintenance loans, weve been on holiday abroad once a year and although we have to plan we don’t have to worry though he does worry about his pension and I don’t work much at all

If he’d been earning that sort of money in his 20’s/30’s I should imagine our lifestyle would be very different

I earn that much. Out of the (approx) £5k a month take home, £3k of it goes into my mortgage and service charge. That leaves me with £2k. Some into savings, kid clubs, bills, travel, insurance etc, it soon disappears into nothing.

I buy nice organic food from expensive stores like Planet Organic, but I don’t buy new clothes often. I live in london and it’s an expensive city! For instance, I spent £40 after school yesterday on some noodles and a new book for DS and I. That’s how quickly it can all go.

I didn’t go to private or grammar school, I am from somewhere relatively working class. I came to london for jobs, got very lucky (property was cheaper when I bought and I couldn’t afford it here now), worked hard.

@ShrikeAttack

I'm a twat aren't I?

Jesus, why would you say that about yourself?!

I have nowhere near a 30k a month income (and being a nosey cow I’d love to know how but wouldn’t actually ask!) but if you do that’s great! I don’t think your posts have come across as bragging or being “better” than anyone else and I think you’ve had a bit of a hard time.

So no, you’re not a twat based on what you’ve posted on this thread. You are rich though!

Our household income (before tax) is over £100,000 a year. One thing I think about a lot is our nursery fees. We pay more than £30,000 a year for a bog standard nursery in the south east for four days a week for two children. That’s more than the average salary for a person. How is a family on an average income meant to afford that? We don’t have any family nearby so don’t have any choice, if we want to keep working in our jobs. But it’s very easy to see how some women/parents fall out of the workforce not because they want to but because childcare costs are so high.

Other than that, our mortgage on a tiny terrace house in a London commuter town is £1.5k a month (rent would be similar). So mortgage and childcare is close to £50k a year. Again, totally not affordable for most families.

Our house hasn’t been touched since the 1960s when we moved in, but we’ve done pretty much all the renovations/building work ourselves gradually over a few years. So that’s taken up a lot of our spare income and time, but we’ve also managed to avoid going into further debt to do the work. We have one 20-year-old car, needed to get to one person’s job ( bought outright). Train costs to get the other person’s job are about £3.5k a year. After that, we live a pretty nice life.

We both grew up in single parent families and I was very aware of just how tight life was financially. I hated those red bills coming in and live in a fear of debt now.

Life is comfortable now, but I will be rich when we aren’t paying £30,000 in childcare fees!

@Flixon is your son in prep or secondary? I thought it was 18-20k for prep and 24k for secondary

Huge amount of tax. Private schools and university fees. Supporting elderly parents. Not much left after that.

i'm top end of lower rate tax but DH is higher rate and what i don't think people realise is that you also lose your personal allowance and effectively there is a band where you end up paying 60% tax because of that

no private schools here but we have after school clubs, holiday clubs to allow us to work. no ponies and only one car

but living in London is expensive...

Good point about when you earn it. Also someone earning a 100k with family wealth behind them eg help with house deposit, etc will have a different lifestyle.