Do you think £100,000 a year household income is a lot of money?

[SleepDreamThinkHuge]

I think it is a lot of money even in London where I live. When I hear people say things like "£100,000 is not enough to live on even in London" I think to myself what are they talking about. I have a family of four and we can only dream of earning that amount. The maximum I can see us earning is about £60k if we are lucky. Currently on over £40k combined income with still a relatively high rent and everything does go on bills and other necessities. But sometimes we are lucky and manage to save some money a year. Luckily no debt. I just think to myself £100,000 would be life changing even in London.

What are your thoughts? What do you consider to be average and above average in London and the city you are from?

If people are earning £100k they have obviously worked hard to get where they are. I am concerned that these people are considered ‘aspirational’ if they want the luxuries of a garden and their kids not sharing a room for all their hard work. If the housing crisis has got so bad that slogging your guts out doesn’t even guarantee being able to have a garden, then I fear we are going to get to the stage where people just say sod it, I can’t be bothered, and not bother trying anymore. Much in the same way that some young people have given up on saving for a house as there is just no point anymore. Everything is just too out of reach of those who want to work hard.

I live in London and it is still loads. We have a bit over and whilst I do have to budget very carefully we can afford to send one child to private school, have a nice house, ski once a year, summer holiday once a year, a couple of long weekends away and three children all enjoying activities.

When I read about people on here who are that much but ant afford a holiday I figure they must just fritter money away.

To me it is a lot of money. I live in the north west and I think 100k is high earning. I can't imagine anyone struggling on that income regardless of where they live.
We have a joint household income of 70k and I feel that is above average for the NW.

It's huge. But we are on about 9k topped up with tax credits. When we were on 25k I felt very rich.

DH and I live outside London with a combined household income of a little over half that.

We have a nice terraced house with a small garden and spare bedroom, affordable mortgage payments, good local schools, reasonable commute to work.

There was a job that came up in DH’s industry, based in London.
It sounded interesting, so we looked into the figures, but decided that to gain a similar quality of life to what we have at the moment, the salary would need to be well over £100k.
We would have been paying out for a big mortgage for a smaller house in a not particularly nice area of London, quality of life would be worse and disposable income likely less - not worth it to us.

On the other hand, a combined salary of £100k where we live at the moment would make us so much more comfortable.

We could afford improvements to the house to make it more energy efficient, perhaps a yearly holiday abroad, a new car, it could enhance our lives.

@Mousemat25

You can earn 100k and not work particularly hard.

You can earn 25 and work extremely hard

Yes, but the average is irrelevant when considering where you live.

I didn't look at multi million houses in zone 1, because I couldn't afford them.

I looked at areas I could afford. Within easy commute of central London. They do exist, even though I don't earn anything like £100,000 pa.

Wages in London actually aren't as high as o thought they were...

We're on 80k shared income before tax in an expensive part of UK and are doing fine on that. Admittedly our mortgage is less than rent but with an extra £20k pre tax we'd certainly be able to rent a 3 bed terrace in outskirts of London.

But we go on one fairly cheap holiday a year (rest is camping), don't have pricey hobbies and only run one car. We're naturally not massive consumers (except of food!).

It's funny because at 40 I still compare prices to 20 years ago, which is stupid as income has also gone up.

But YES it's a lot of money. .But it may all just be about perspective. I grew up "poor", as in parent on benefits and free school meals etc. I'm from London and did a sting there in 2007 but came back up north.

Just going on then, as I've not tried to live in London since, rent for a room in a shared house was £500/month. I moved back up North three years later and rented a studio apartment for myself at £320/month.

That gives you an idea of the disparity.

If you're trying to live a responsible adult family life in London (home insurance, travel, educational activities, days out) then I can see how 100K would not go far in London.

Take the same family life here up North and you're talking luxurious living. I can say that as we live pretty well here and our family income is 40-50K at most. We have one child and we have lots of insurance things going on (hubby does those) and at the end of every month we do find things tight until payday, but the house we have and the things we do are all managed comfortably on our collective income. I don't even work full-time.

So it's relative, but by most standards, YES it's a lot. Global standards, and the fact most people living in London are living on a lot less.

Of course it’s a lot. And of course it’s not ‘relative’. Private school, nice house in central London, expensive holidays…they are all choices. You choose how to budget to live within your means, whether that’s moving to Yorkshire, moving to Croydon, living in a 70s terrace not a period detached, camping in France not cottage in Cornwall….
if you have a household income of £100,000 you are well off, and it is insulting to the majority of people in London to pretend otherwise. Just live within your means like everyone else does. Or get a second or third job like some have to.
(I live in London, have a combined income of around £100k and know how lucky I am.)

The next three cheapest 2 bed properties in Morden are all cash buyers or modern method of auction only; which indicates there are serious structural or legal issues with them - short leases, EWS1 fails or similar.

The cheapest 2 bed flat in Morden which doesn't have any of those problems is £290,000. The next cheapest are all over £300,000.

Exactly.

One of the most corrosive lies we are sold is that hard work = income

Our household income is about £100k, would be more than enough if we didn't have the current debt levels we do, but is still ok.

These threads always end up the same with accusations of whinging & never any nuance.

You cannot look at income alone these days as you need to acknowledge what's happened in the last 2 decades re wage stagnation, housing inflation, intergenerational inequality, austerity, lack of investment, QE, etc.

YANBU, it is a lot even it London, it puts you in the top 5% (possibly higher) of national wealth, and I know because that's us. Mostly DH - he's a contractor in software so his salary comes and gos, but it's a lot when it comes in.

I think some people complain because on London mortgages you still may not be able to afford private school fees (tiny violin). I didn't want to go private anyway, although we did look at one private school for oldest and, like I thought, we couldn't afford it and, quite rightly, were not eligible for any help.

I think that '100k is not enough to live on' brigade mean 'it's not enough to educate my kids privately, have a full-time nanny and own a second home.' It's plenty enough to live off.

I think that whatever you have you always live up to your income. We were in this fortunate position for a short while after the children had left home and the mortgage was paid off, it should have meant a surplus of oodles each month. We did live well but once we reviewed our pension arrangements we realised much higher contributions were necessary. As a result of Covid one of our sons had to retrain in a new sector, to which we made a contribution and quite a few things in the house needed doing. We realise we were very lucky to be in this position but a designer wardrobe, super car and michelin star restaurant visits remained off the radar.

Private school, nice house in central London, expensive holidays…they are all choices.

No one on a joint income of 100k is expecting the above!

We earn a bit less than that but live more frugally than many people who earn a lot less (including a small mortgage because we bought a modest house in need of complete renovation). On paper we could afford a much nicer house/better area.

But I work in a sector with little job security. I often feel we'd have a better lifestyle if I earnt less but had more security. As then I'd feel we could take on a bigger mortgage, have more holidays etc. It's a change I'm actively considering.

35k in the north east is perhaps equivalent to £55 in London taken in the round

So 100k I'm London is say 70k in the north east

So 100k is still a lot

Sorry to allow for taxes etc say 55 to 60 not 70 - so still plenty

When I was a kid 100k definitely sounded like a lot of money. However, living in London, after accounting for tax, NI, pension and the mortgage, we wouldn't be able to afford to send 2 kids to both to private school on that income.

No problem.

It's still significantly less than the average. And only one suburb, because it's the one I am familiar with.

The point was that the average cost of buying a property is considerably less than the average.

Because that's how averages work.

And that the garden, separate bedroom for each child etc is a choice about how you spend your money

People doing better than you is not “privilege”, it reflects their higher value to their employers. They have skills that are worth more than yours, likely have better degrees, have put more thought into their careers and so on.

What a shame.