To wonder what’s deemed middle income, low income, high income?

[Callmesadie]

I’ve read a few posts where people are talking about people on middle income struggling to pay the bills.

Can anyone advise what’s deemed middle income please?

I would have thought the fact that I went on to say "So that's just under £70k..." would have made clear that the word 'month' was a mistype. 😂

£1,300 per week is just under £70k. Which is the upper end of middle for families with 3 kids. And significantly less than the £150k being claimed upthread

I say earn - my total income, including DLA and a paltry amount of CMS is 35K.

This IFS tool is very useful, I’ve gone on about it for years. Which clearly shows there’s a strong skew to the lower end for the middle rather than a standard bell curve.

I think household income is much more useful than individual income most of the time. A single person on £60,000 will be worse off than even 2 people on £30,000 each due to the tax and the loss of child benefit.

I’d say a low household income is under about £40/45k, high is over £100k, so everything else is middle.

I don’t think that’s right at all. I’m in London and we have a combined salary of 60k -our actual income is of course much less once tax, insurance etc is removed. I’d say we were firmly middle income.

@Swampthing55 unless you’ve only earned that much for the last year and nothing like it before, you absolutely could afford a mortgage. Maybe not an £800k mortgage but you could still live in a house somewhere nice

Utterly ridiculous to the point of probably being a troll. Of course you are well off. And you can afford to buy. Just buy somewhere that doesn’t cost £800,000….?

You could rent somewhere smaller too if you really don’t feel well off. It’s not like you need extra bedrooms for kids.

The problem with the ifs tool us it only allows dependent children up to 18. We gave two kids at university and it costs us an absolute fortune.

Initially actually it didn’t, but on re-reading I can see that is what you meant.

The IFS tool isn't pretending to measure outgoings though.

Below is what the government define as low income. I am slightly astonished to see people here suggesting that if you earn 60k a year you are income. Are people earning 60k really living in poverty?

The government’s department of work and pensions defines low pay as any family earning less than 60% of the national median pay. On this basis, there are more than 13 million people in the UK living in low-income households.

Low pay has also been defined in relation to the cost of living by the Minimum Income Standard Project. By their calculations, for a single person household anything less than £19,200 a year, before tax, counts as low pay

Agree with a PP who said income is increasingly meaningless and it’s housing costs that are determining whether you’re squeezed or not.

I was blown away with the recent threads where posters said their social housing rent was around £100/week for family sized homes, and that there were benefits that contributed towards that. I didn’t realise social rents were so affordable - I think it’s great for them, but a bit shit for everyone else who’s earning considerably more, usually by putting in considerably more effort and stress (especially if you have to put childcare into the mix), and are barely getting by.

This is why we need a government which is prepared to undertake massive investment in building social housing.

I agree with this. DD2 receives the minimum loan which we top up and although not a dependent under 18 she is still dependent financially.

University can surely only cost you a fortune precisely because you are high income. If you were low income, it wouldn’t cost you anything.

I'd say the squeezed middle are people like my brothers family, household income of around 45k I think, 2 kids, one in school one in nursery. He works 6 days in trade supply shop and my SIL is a nurse and works a few long shifts a week. They don't qualify for any benefits or help, but will really struggle with household bills going up by hundreds of pounds a month. Any additional shifts my SIL could do would be eaten up by the cost of childcare, my brother is already knackered working long days in a physical job. Modest, mortgaged 3 bed ex council house, one car, 1x 5 day uk holiday (often camping).

I earn 52k plus bonus, live alone and for me if my bills went up by £300 I'd just cut back on meals out/drop a holiday. I have a decent car, horse, horsebox, go on 3x holidays a year and eat out at least once a week. I guess I'm middle income but I feel very lucky not to have to worry about bills.

I think it's too broad to split into 3, I think 4 categories is better. For a single adult I'd say less than 20k is low, 20k to 35k lower middle and 35k to 70k upper middle and 70k plus is high.

That's inaccurate. The cut off is pretty low and no allowances are made for having to support more than one child. It's costing us more than childcare did.

Just because every other person on Mumsnet is apparently on £100kn doesn't make it an average salary.

I mean that you would qualify for UC.

😂

Yes, this sounds about right. You also have to consider the effect of the tax system, so a household with a single parent earning £100k is worse off than a household with couple earning £80k between them.

It can't possibly be assessed in any mean

Sorry, can't be assessed in any meaningful way unless you look at it as a household.

It’s not much, but I believe SFE deduct £1130 from the parental income amount used to calculate the loan amount for every financially dependent child other than the one whose loan it.

The problem with these threads is the conflation of income and outgoings.
If you have two households earning over £150k, the fact that one may be paying out nursery fees or have a higher mortgage does not mean that it is no longer a high income household. They may have more expenses, and feel 'worse off" than the other household, but their income is still high.

How is it inaccurate? The cutoff isn’t “low”, it’s just that you think it is because it’s a hit to you and you feel it. It doesn’t mean the cutoff is low.