To think if you are a family of 4 and struggling on £100k…

[LetMeSpeak]

That it is purely down to mismanagement.

I saw a debate on social media and I also know a few people on 6 figure salaries, have extremely nice houses and cars. Yet complain that they are stuggling the same way others with less money. Aibu to think if you are really struggling even in this economy, a lot of it is due to mismanagement with your money?

OP I trunk YABU and making sweeping generalisations that every high earner has massive mortgages, lives above their means and if they have to tighten their belt it's down to not being able to manage their money. Ridiculous and almost as bad as saying everyone in a low income and struggling should just get a better job and not buy luxuries.

Myself and DH are on £120k but have student loan repayments and high pension contributions so take home does not reflect this

We are in a 4 bed and mortgage is 15% of take home pay. We don't go abroad on holidays, don't have second home and could not afford to send children to private school if they were of age.

We did have savings for our planned second child which are being used for my maternity leave. When I go back to work our savings will be almost depleted

When I return to work there are significant changes to our outgoings that we could not have anticipated, along with some we knew
-childcare costs of 2x nursery fees (expected)
-council tax increase by £60 a month
-dog injury this year means pet insurance up by £70 a month
-expected fuel bill up £550 a month!!
-other insurances up £50 a month

We are able to cope with the above but will not be able to save and will be adjusting our outgoings massively

I am not comparing 'struggling' on £120k with struggling on £30k of course but I really don't understand why you can't see that the cost of living crisis affects us all and that it is not always large mortgages and poor money management.

Anyone struggling on 6 figures is massively mismanaging and I have no sympathy for them at all. People manage on less than half this.

Imagine if all of us in the SE and london upped sticks and moved north to secure cheaper housing, there would be a housing boom there and all the locals would be complaining about us "rich" city folk coming along, buying up all the houses and increasing all the house prices out of their reach.

Surely "struggling" is based on how much disposable income you have after the main costs are covered. So mortgage/rent/heating/eating.

It's really not outside the possibility that someone on £100k could be struggling with little to none alongside someone on £24k if those bills cost the same wage percentage for both parties.

I can only speak from experience my normal salary is around about 50 K plus child-support which equates to about another 10 grand.

I went through a brief period in my life where I was earning 70,000 let me tell you that tiny little bit of difference meant the world to our family in terms of what we could afford.

On 100,000 I don’t know what I would do with myself

Well lots of people who earn a lot less than 100k live in London so you could maybe do as they do? And lots of people earning a lot less than 100k live up north and are not struggling quite as desperately as you seem to be, do that's doable too.

Well no they won't struggle like someone on a much lower income, but it's not to say they aren't struggling now at all. Someone earning that much is likely to have higher housing costs etc. also depends on where you live.

@Iseestupidpeople yes I agree anyone on 100k with no savings is financial mismanagement, I can easily understand why someone on 20-30K can't save the 3-6 months recommended livings expenses.

I can understand someone on 100K losing a job getting ill etc and needing to use their savings but if you see ahead that the situation is unlikely to improve your savings give you a few months to make decisions to curtail expenditure, change tack, re-evaluate, down size etc, you can't downsize overnight to pay a bill but you can over 6 months

But if you are on 100K you should not be taking on expenditure with no cushion, to commit yourself to a large mortgage, private education etc with no cushion or just a tiny cushion is mismanagement

The real problem is lifestyle creep, with your expenditure expanding to fill a salary increase instead of savings, the importance of savings is not emphasised enough
40% of the UK can't cope with an unexpected £500 bill it is understandable that this includes people on NMW, on benefits and top up benefits the JAM, it is not understandable that this includes people on 50K+

We have a combined income of about 100k and whilst I can see how it would be tight in certain scenarios, I do agree with the op to a large degree. 100k pays for a nice lifestyle but it doesn’t pay for the nice lifestyle it paid for 10 years ago. We don’t have a massive mortgage, live in a terrace, own our cars outright, no childcare costs etc. if your mortgage was two or three times ours, you had two brand new SUVs on lease, loans for home improvement/holidays….Keeping up with the joneses?

what I want to say is that I think some people expect 100k to buy them a certain lifestyle and when it doesn’t they use credit etc to bridge the gap. If you’re in that scenario then the basics go up then you could we’ll be in a precarious position!

obviously that’s not the same as having massive childcare bills, but they at least usually have a time limit!

Out of our £5k takehome, £1800 goes on childcare. It’s an absolute joke. That’s 4 days a week and one of them allegedly gets some funded hours! We have a £1k/mo mortgage, own cars outright (pre-children when we could afford to save up) but the rest of the household bills and supermarket shop still add up to £1500 so although our basic outgoings are still less than our income we haven’t a massive buffer despite the 100k pre tax income and we haven’t made bad budgeting decisions! We do pay into pensions and prioritise this.

You didn’t “need” the expensive cars before the pandemic either. £100k is not a luxury wage but it definitely isn’t one that you should be struggling on. The reality was before the pandemic people were living beyond their means and were ill prepared for something that is pretty much inevitable.

I think it’s crazy how come people didn’t expect their to be a recession/financial crises or simply don’t prepare for them.

That is not what struggling means!!!

But I see you never had to!

Struggling means you can’t because you don’t have, not because you refuse to give up luxuries!

There are people that literally can’t afford to eat more than once a day some days not at all and they work full time yet it’s still not enough!

nevermind the cost of public transport, heating or eating and school uniforms are just taking the complete mick!

This. An example of how crippling the rise in house prices ( vs hardly any increase in income).

We're going to have to be very careful with the heating this year and cut out kids activities, hopefully be able to keep swimming. Lose the cleaner. But I'm grateful we have things to cut. Lots of people don't. We can't downsize the house, we only run one old car. Our mortgage and childcare are our big bills (£3200 combined).

I realize people are struggling more than we are, but we have definitely had to make significant changes. So I think £100k and struggling is not unreasonable. I don't claim to be struggling as much as others, but that doesn't mean it'll be easy.

@RandomMess but if a family on £100k was in a cheaper 3 bed terrace they'd get slammed for hogging a home for a family who can't afford the 4 bed detached newbuild.
Seriously? Who do you think is policing other people's mortgages, and "slamming" them for not going for the max available?!

If your 2 miles from the cliff edge then you’ve still got some options, if your 2 meters from the cliff edge you’ve run out of road. There is a difference & to pretend that you’re both at the same stage is disingenuous

The people who earn a lot less than £100k in London may be entitled to benefits I would think, that those of 100k aren't.

I don’t know what we’d do with £100k pa. I earn £18k and DH earns £22k. We bought our home in 1995 so we’re mortgage free now. DC are 21 & 23 and are in education. We save up and one year we’ll holiday in the uk or Europe and the next year will be long haul we reckon 2023 the DC will want to come away with us, possibly for the last time. We save for everything and have no debt. If we don’t have the ££ we don’t get it.

OK - I don’t earn £100k but we bring in £75k gross, this equates to £4,050 net after tax/NI/pension/student loans. We put in the minimum pension our workplaces will allow (one of us NHS so a bit high). No child benefit as one earns too much. For all those not understanding how someone on a “higher” income could struggle, this is our monthly budget.

Mortgage - £1,200 fixed until end of next year, small 3 bed.
Childcare - £1,090
Commuting costs - £350
Food/household/toiletries - 2 adults, 1 child and 1 pet approx - £450
Council Tax - £195
Energy - £145 (based on yearly average at current rates)
Water - £35
Insurances (car/house/pet/life) - £100 - apart from pet required by law/mortgage
Phones - £40 (sim only)
Broadband - £35
Medications (human and pet) - £40
Loan for fixing roof (water was pouring down the wall when it rained heavily) - £160
Netflix £10

That leaves £200 a month odd for any clothes, activities for DC, if anything breaks. I appreciate it’s more than some have but we aren’t living the life of Riley.

Is the OP talking about a 100k household income with dc or 100k salary for one person? two very different things but there seems to be a lot of conflation.

@InThatCaseCanIHaveARaise I wish I could have bought in the 90s, was still at school. I would be a millionaire now.

You win today award for not being able read a post and/or understand it.

Maybe go back and reread what I said about disposable income levels after MAIN bills are paid.

Ie person one earns £1200 a month. Mortgage is £600, other bills (heating, electric, childcare, council tax) are £500. Disposable is £100.

Person 2 earns £3000 mortgage is £2200, other bills (heating, electric, childcare, council tax) are £700. Disposable is £100

Both have the same after paying the important bits, the fact person 2 might have a bigger house and bigger bills is irrelevant. The fact is both are going to struggle but for different reasons.

I think it’s crazy how come people didn’t expect their to be a recession/financial crises or simply don’t prepare for them.

@LetMeSpeak what does this look like in practice?

We'll the thread title says "family of 4" so I assume she means family with DC.

I didnt expect there to be a pandemic and for the govt to continue a ridiculous furlough scheme sending the country broke, but it happened..

I also didn't expect people to be stupid enough to vote for brexit, yet here we are.

I didnt expect Putin to invade a sovereign country, and oh look!!

I didnt expect wholesale energy companies to cash in quite as much as they have chosen to do and give themselves record breaking profits, but well what do ya know!!