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?

100k won’t pay for even a cheap house in London. Absolutely no way you could pay for kids in private school either.

Yes it’s a lot of money even in London

Its a choice how to spend such a high wage

Many of us earn far less and are comfortable

@MsPincher

Do you really think there are no people earning less than 100k living in London?!

I earn more money but I spend more money so I have less money is such a weird take on this. I mean it’s correct I suppose but what on earth is it meant to be adding?

It is really quite an impressive mind shift for people on £100,000 a year to convince themselves that they are somehow worse off than the people all around them who are scraping by on minimum wage.

@DaisyDozyDee Read the subject title again. It's a combined household income of £100K. So that's £50K each or whatever makes up the £100K

Not unusual, as most graduates start on £26K and even low paid jobs like teaching can bring in £40K after 6 years.

@Topgub Read. @MsPincher said that £100K would not buy a house in London. (She's right.) She didn't say people all families in London had to earn £100K.

Not unusual, as most graduates start on £26K

Do you have a stat for this? You’ve repeated it a few times, I’m curious. It might be the average ‘graduate starting salary’ but I also wonder how many graduates are in those jobs - many (most?) don’t get a ‘graduate job’ straight out of uni.

@NoSquirrels There is another thread that was trending yesterday on 'Who is taking all the new grads' from someone recruiting for their company. They were offering £22K as the starting salary. This was given by other posters as the reason she could not recruit as it was too low.

www.graduate-jobs.com/gco/Booklet/graduate-salary-salaries.jsp

This research quotes £30K

And from The Times last month

Graduate salaries have increased to a six-year high as employers dig deep to fill a surge in vacancies and combat labour shortages. Companies are opening new positions and increasing the advertised salaries in an attempt to replenish their workforces with young workers straight out of university. The average advertised salary for graduates in the UK rose 7 per cent on the year to £26,076 last month, according to Adzuna, the job advertising website. Job vacancies for graduates increased 59 per cent over the same period, to 14,690 in May.

I don't quite see your point that some grads do not start on a graduate scheme/ job.

The fact is we are discussing graduate starting salaries.

What job they do before then is irrelevant.

There is a big difference though between 100k as a single earner with a sahp versus 2 parents earning £50k.

eg £100k on 10% pension would take home £4966 Two people on £50k with same pension would take home £2766 x2 = £5532 which is more but would likely have high childcare costs. The sums above don’t take into student loan. The higher earning one could be paying £500 a month in payments.

At that level I’d say comfortable but not rich and people probably do feel pretty stretched if paying for nursery. Mortgage could easily be £2k, nursery another 1.8k for one child. I’d have thought private school for multiple children and luxury holidays would be unobtainable (although I know poster have said they do do those things).

On the other hand, a household on that income out of the nursery years with a small mortgage due to inheritances is probably laughing.

It is a good wage, though I imagine with mortgage payment and childcare costs on top of insurance, food etc and as a combined household income.

It wouldn't stretch too far.

Why would that follow, given that there'll be millions of people living in houses in London who, thanks to their age, were able to buy them well before one needed such a high salary? This is the key point: that even in an expensive area like London, the population aren't all exposed to the same housing costs and that it's only particular cohorts who need to earn high wages to buy a property.

Except plenty of people pay for private school on that income, myself included.

And we have a cheap house!

@3WildOnes but surely it makes sense that a cheap house allows you to have more money for the private school. However, I know lots of people who have 350k plus mortgages for very modest houses in London. Thats still a high mortgage and will only get higher once their fixed terms end.

@3WildOnes School fees vary hugely.

The Dragon School in Oxford has fees of almost £8K per term for day pupils. That's £24K pa so someone with 2 DCs would be forking out £50K pa. £50Kpa needs a gross income of close to £100Kpa (taking tax into account) to cover school fees alone.

The fairly modest indy school where I taught has fees of £18K pa.

And these fees do not include any extras like trips and music lessons etc.

You must have a very cheap or non-existent mortgage or your school fees must be well below the norm, or one child perhaps?

And anyway- this thread is not about fees!

Also @3WildOnes our income when my DCs were at school was in excess of £100Kpa. There was no way we could afford local indy schools which would have cost us around £21K pa for EACH child - £42Kpa.

And anyway- this thread is not about fees!
I was about to say – it’s about whether you can afford cost of living in London on £100k and whether it feels like a lot of money or not. Private school is irrelevant to that as it’s such a(n extreme) choice. Putting it aside, £100k should be plenty to cover the costs of running a household (council tax, utilities, and so on), food, rent or mortgage, commute. What you have leftover after the have-to-pay is pure choice: private school? Ice creams every weekend? Decorators or DIY? And it’s the fact that choice is there that makes £100k plenty.

Household income of £100,000 is fairly unusual. More than 90% of households have an income below that. More than half of households have an income below £50,000.
If you think £100,000 is not a high income household, you should maybe consider whether the cross section of people you know perhaps isn’t very broad.
I’m not saying money is never tight for people with a household income of £100,000, but it’s undeniable much tighter and much more difficult for those with an income less than £20,000.

I think it just depends on location and mortgages. In London with a high mortgage and a couple of kids, it's not much but could be perfectly fine elsewhere especially if you dont have or only have one child

"Discovereads · Yesterday 08:43

Well £120,000/yr puts you in top 1% of earners in the U.K., so £100,000 per year is way waaaaay above average"

I always wonder about how this data is collected. It's only going to be available from those people who are paying there taxes. What about the many, many people who have trusts funds and offshore investments whose incomes probably aren't represented fairly.

@SunniestSunshines

It was clear what they meant

If you think £100,000 is not a high income household, you should maybe consider whether the cross section of people you know perhaps isn’t very broad

I could say the same to you @DaisyDozyDee

Two full time teachers ( not well paid, by any means) would have close to that. More, if one had more responsibility. Ditto many public sector workers in areas of local government- planners, H&S, accountancy, etc.

£100K as a combined income is not that unusual and especially in London which is where the OP says she is.

Clearly, people who are in unskilled or low-wage jobs don't earn that.

Cheap as in London house prices cheap! Our mortgage is large for our salaries over 500k. 4 5× our earnings, the maximum we could take out.