High earners - how do you spend your salary?

[Citygirly]

DH and I earn just under £140k combined.

We do maximum pension payments (his is 9% as NHS) and we also give about 10% a month to charity.

Other than that, we plan to start overpaying the mortgage. We invest £1k a month (so £500 each) and save £1k for holidays. We of course do general/specific savings but then have a good chunk left over for disposable income.

AIBU to ask other high earning households how they tend to allocate their money? Just want to see if we could be using it better or this is about right for comparables.

So why are you on this thread?

scroll. On. By

If I'd known I would be in the Daily Mail I would have ensured there were no typos in my quoted post...... Ah well.
What people regard as priorities is always interesting. For me it was always having a lot of children and then educating and housing them and paying off mortgage debt (repaid mine entirely this week for the last time).

If people aren't interested they have no need to click on the thread. It is perfectly clear what the thread is about.

Zombie

Mortgage and nursery.

Combined income around 220k euro . Good pensions , mortgage just paid off . Spend it all on holidays - skiing , theme parks , Ikos etc.
Old cars, nice house in good area but not huge.
I should perhaps be more sensible but kids have house deposits from lovely grandparents . Life is for living .

We don't allocate our money as well as we should, I do intend to sit down and make a proper plan but life goes by fast as working parents with a toddler. This thread has inspired me to get a move on with it though.

We earn around €178k combined if you include bonuses and RSU shares (living in Ireland). There's also €1680 a year that we get from child benefit.

Husband puts 15% in to his pension in addition to employer 10% contribution and I put in 6% to AVC's but I also have a public service pension.
5% goes into company shares (ESPP scheme).
We put €200 a month in to an investment trust for our son's future.

Mostly we're just saving to upsize our home, saving roughly €2k a month now. I hate debt so I'd like to have as big a deposit as possible, hoping to have 200k deposit and buy in the 550k range. Not overpaying on our mortgage currently, I'm undecided on whether we should restart overpayments or not when we'll be selling up in the next year or two anyway.

I'd like to invest more, contribute more to my pension and overpay the mortgage but it's all kind of on hold until we get our forever home. No intentions of paying for private school, I'd rather build wealth and private schools aren't a big thing here like they are in UK, but we will be choosing our new home based on how good local schools are.

How do you still get child benefit or is it not means tested in Ireland? My husband and I earn around £120k and had to opt out of child benefits.

We have 2 toddlers, a nanny because the nursery hours didn't cover my job, between that and the mortgage there's not much left each month currently.

We save half of our income which goes into a mix of pensions and investments

Then we spend the rest on living in a resonably nice apartment in a good location, eating good food, and travel inc. taking unpaid leave, buying a campervan and a hoilday home outright.

We also pay for anything out parents need and for them to visit us

I am single so life is more expensive. I pay 15 percent of my income into a pension a total of 30 per cent, £1000 into an investment account, £1500 mortgage, say 1000 on bills, food, small treats. That leaves £1000 to spend on trips and clothes and other things.

Not a massively high earner, but do well enough as a singleton without kids.

• Overpay mortgage
• Put extra into pension every month
• Save & invest a percentage of income
• Spend extra on nice foods and snacks
• Spend on sports equipment and other hobbies
• Buy art
• Spend on quality homeware (if and when I need to replace anything)
• Spend on DIY and tradesmen and maintain the house to a good standard
• Spend on shoes 🙈I have quite a few expensive pairs (to me)

Those are my priorities ... I do not spend on cars (it's not flashy and I do a lot of the work myself) or clothes (very often - I buy little and infrequently, mostly because I'm at capacity with a one in one out system! I don't want a packed wardrobe, I have enough clothes now)

Do not spend a huge amount on holidays - usually go for bargains but I do enjoy festivals, concerts, gigs, and days out and those add up!

It's a universal payment of €140 a month for each child, it isn't means tested here so everyone is eligible regardless of income.

😂😂😂😂

I no longer work "officially", but my DH brings in just shy of £1m per annum (after tax) but topped up with some additional income of mine, it brings it to just over the full £1m...

Half of that goes straight to our investments & savings, then the rest is all lifestyle expenses, (which we break up into wants and needs).

Household takes half of what's left = £250k (mortgage, running costs & groceries etc)

Then £125k to all other must pay, reacuring costs (like school fees, memberships & subscriptions, cars, allowances etc)

£62.5k to discretionary spending and £62.5k to 4 overseas holidays throughout the year and 4 weekends away...

As you can see, we're very conservative and live way below our means, we could spend a lot more, (better house/more fun etc) but we just choose to be simple & wait for the proof of growth.

We're in a very fortunate position indeed, that's not taken for granted, but our goal is to sustain such an income standard passively (which we should be able to, after a decade or so), hence the rather heavy investment...

Hope this helps and the openness is appreciated xx

P.S. For those wondering, he's in finance, I was in law :)