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.

How odd, our £350k property, mortgage paid off put us in the top 20%, better check I didn't add an extra 0 by mistake

Baffled that I seem to be in the top 30% income when we have a joint income of 40k 🤷‍♀️

Top 20% for income, top 40% for savings, top 50% for property wealth but bottom 50% for spending

My DH and I are retired and in the top 10% for everything apart from savings which we are in the top 20%.

Top 10 for income, top 20 for property, top 40 for savings, top 10 for spending. The latter is largely due to a large mortgage plus school fees. Savngs need to be improved but I have been paying extra into my pension over the past few years.

Am I doing it wrong??

It puts me in the bottom 10% for income despite me earning 6 figures. It's take home salary I put in, isn't it?

There are 6 of us though, so I guess that's why? 🤷🏻

Your equivalised disposable income of £34,100 per year puts you in the top 40% of households in the UK.

Your equivalised savings of £0 puts you in the bottom 10% of households in Great Britain.

Your equivalised net property wealth of £0 puts you in the bottom 40% of households in Great Britain.

Your equivalised spending of £130 per week puts you in the bottom 10% of households in the UK.

Bottom 10% not homeowners, no savings, don't even have a car we can all fit in so I'm not surprised.
I'm not upset about it though.

Savings doesn't just mean cash savings. It includes investments but not pensions or property.

Savings "includes any money in regular bank accounts, savings accounts, ISAs, bonds, investments, shares, or informal savings. It does not include any money you have in property, private pensions, or accounts you cannot easily withdraw funds from."

"Your equivalised net property wealth of £0 puts you in the bottom 40% of households in Great Britain."

Does this mean that 40% of households don't own any property? That seems high to me but maybe I should not be surprised.

Bottom 10%

Yup.

I'm on 41k, DH on 25k, and our combined income also puts us in the top 20%...

We're top 20%-30% for everything, and while i definitely feel like there are a lot of people around us who have a lot more (detached houses while we live in a flat, new cars while we have one second hand car between us), we're very comfortable and never worry about money.

I'm not even going to complete the survey. It is stupid to suggest that all but a small minority of extremely well off people aren't going to feel the effects of rising energy costs, inflation and mortgage rates. We will all spend less on luxuries like holidays, meals out, leisure and entertainment and so everyone in those sectors will earn less in their turn. I don't find it comforting at all that my family will survive the winter in terms of being just about able to have the heating on enough because we can siphon off the money we would have spent on luxuries on gas and electricity (guessing at an extra £400 min per month). Nice for us but it has its knock-on effects.

I added two children and my property wealth dropped from top 20% to top 40%

Actual salary not take home

Bottom 20% - single parent teacher and really feeling it already - so scared about winter.

We own a house worth around £350,000, have savings of around £40,000. After all outgoings are paid for we have around £2300 disposable income and it says we are bottom 20%?? We are very comfortable and have good holidays so not sure how they actually work this out??

It's salary after tax

It's quite flawed though isn't it

It doesn't cover debt. Or pensions wealth.

And it doesn't "equivalise" for life stages.

So most people will have their greatest wealth around the time they hit retirement age I expect

We're all over the place here. Our income is a relatively small self employed one, but we've got family money and private pensions to draw on. Our house is worth a fair bit, but we live pretty cheaply, save for food, which is a lot.

There's a house abroad that's partly in our names, no idea what's worth really. I know we're privileged in rl, but on this graph, we're barely scraping by!

Bottom 40% for income, bottom 20% for spending . top 40% savings, top 20% property.

It’s weird not mentioning pensions, in our case it’s worth twice the value of our house.

Very interesting! Our income is higher than I thought, and our savings are worse than I thought! I always thought we didn't earn that much (public sector jobs and part time!) but I'm quite good at saving - apparently not. We were average for property.

Bellie710 I own a house worth just slightly less than yours and my savings are the same as yours. I have less disposable income. It's not giving me results anything like yours.

This means quite little though without context.
When you look at centiles for wealth and see the last centile being completly out of step with the rest. You could be 8th or 9th centile for wealth and still be no where near the super rich. It's an eyeopener on how unequal society is though.
Also knowing you are 3rd or whatever for income is meaningless. What you want to know is which of those centiles can meet the minimum costs of life. If the bottom 4 or whatever don't earn enough to afford heat and energy who cares if you are in 1st or 2nd worst place.