to think this income, savings and wealth calculator might give people some perspective on where they fit in

[cakeorwine]

It's from the Office for National Statistics. (based on pre Covid)

www.ons.gov.uk/visualisations/dvc1802/calculator/index.html

It uses the OECD equivalised disposable income - so basically it looks at your household and determines the relative income needed. Some people might take umbrage at this - especially with the increase in energy bills. The idea is that certain households need more income for the same lifestyle compared to a household with fewer people in.

For example - a household with 2 adults would need an income that is 1.5 x bigger than a household with a single adult in to maintain a similar lifestyle.

It doesn't take into account situations like separated parents, chilldren being away at Uni, but it does give an indication.

I think it might surprise some people where there income and savings are. But then again, a high income in some places is offset by a high mortgage.

The equivalised income is used in all set of datasets when looking at poverty.

Turns out I am doing ok...which has surprised me.

Bottom 10% for income then omitted the kids and we’re in the top 10%. I can’t make that make sense need to read the methodology

Your household's income is in the top 50%

Your household's savings are in the bottom 40%

Your household's property wealth is in the bottom 40%

Your household's spending is in the bottom 50%

I think I might have predicted something similar. Probably would have put our property wealth lower because my husband and I only got our mortgage with a 5% deposit two years ago, but a lot of people have nothing at all so they must pull the average down.

I might have underestimated our savings but my husband and I have separate accounts so I’m not sure if he’s dipping into his or not. My savings pot is much smaller and some money in it is earmarked for annual bills like car insurance and rates.
Other that that we seem to be about average, which doesn’t surprise me.

The savings thing seems odd. We are fortunate to be in the top percentile for income and we save quite a big chunk of it. But given how low interest rates are we don't hold that much in cash, so it definitely isn't representative of our overall savings.

I was surprised by the savings. Im pretty pleased we have any at all and apparently we are bottom 10%

Average income, low savings, high property wealth.

Doing ok. This is due to having my own career when xh left, and buying based on location not size of house. I'd recommend this when possible.

It includes shares, a lot of our savings are in shares as we had sharesaves for years at work, we are now retired, I think easy access is anything you can get to in a couple of weeks not just cash.

Top 10% of everything except property wealth which was top 30%.

Doesnt surprise me. We reviewed our finances recently & have enough to go mortgage-free and then some.

I'm so dim I had to do that because I kept putting £X,XXX for amounts instead of £XXXX for example. I was always taught to use a comma!! 🤣

Top 10% for earnings (but work in the most expensive part of the country), top 40% for savings (genuinely thought we were doing better), bottom 50% for property wealth (not that long had a mortgage and a modest one for the area) and spending in top 20% (thanks expensive childcare). Reducing childcare costs to when DS is three puts us in top 40% for spending.

I would love to know how childcare changes people's spending as this made a huge difference here.

We seem to be ok on paper. It doesn't feel like that though. I feel so, so sorry for those who are struggling even more. Having grown up with my mum who ran from our dad, we had nothing for a very long time. I can just imagine being in that situation now. It would be scary.

• I had to do that 3 times that was meant to say

Ha ha @tobee me too!

Scrap that I entered income using a comma which skewed the results 🤦🏻‍♀️

I'm bottom 50% for income, bottom 10% for spending. Can't remember the other figures. I think we do well on spending as we don't have rent or mortgage to pay and due to DHs disability we don't have holidays or go out much. I guess that's one way to save money.

Really interesting- top 10% for income and savings, top 40% for property, but bottom 30% for spending. I may have underestimated some spending categories, but I think I overestimated others.

I knew we were very comfortable and have thought for a while that we probably have relatively high savings and relatively low outgoings for our income. There was no section for charitable giving which surprised me, as that’s a large part of our outgoings each month - currently almost as much as our mortgage.

Income - Top 50%

Savings - Top 40%

Property wealth - Bottom 50%

Spending - Top 30%

I'm not too surprised by the results for us, we bought our first home only 4 years ago in a cheaper area so not very much equity. We have a decent income but have a low mortgage payment so are able to spend and save each month. We were planning to move within the next year or so but have decided to sit tight and see what happens with the cost of living crisis/ interest rates. This has definitely given me food for thought and confirmed our decision to wait for a while as we would loose any wriggle room by moving/ increasing our mortgage payment, we would need to drastically lower our spending and would probably struggle to save. Really interesting , thank you for posting this!

Interesting results ... we own a property worth £450 K (mortgage paid off years ago) but that puts us in the lowest 30% for property wealth .

We r in the top 20% for spending. Putting the numbers in I realise we probably do spend too much on food and going out. I know how to fix it but that would be no fun.

Well flipping heck, if that's how they work it out we are all screwed! It doesn't account for anything but income and council tax!

In the top third for everything, apart from savings where we’re right towards the bottom. But that’s because apart from a small savings account that we keep for emergencies any spare money goes towards overpaying the mortgage. Isn’t that a sensible thing to do? I’ve never seen the point of accumulating savings when we have a debt - the mortgage - to pay off.

Percy you can list charitable giving under 'other'.

Top 20% for earnings and top 20% for property but bottom 20% for savings, we do have a lot of outgoings though, asset rich cash poor I think.

I’m surprised at the level of easily accessed savings the top 10% have. 215k seems very high.

That doesn't sound right. Double check the figures you put in, as according to the graph you should be in the top 10%

Click next at the bottom of the graph.