Is £85k a good salary in London (family)?

[SleepDreamThinkHuge]

You may have been aware of a recent Twitter post where one guy was saying £85k a year in London for a family means you will still struggle. Other posters were saying it is not comfortable and definitely not rich. Others were also saying that £85k means your income is higher than 95 percent of the population in the UK. And some have mentioned just because you are £85k you do not need to send your child to private school it is a choice or buy a financed car.

Where do you stand? I can see both arguments but as someone who lives in London how I would love to earn £50k+ let alone £85k. Working in the public sector in a job I like means I earn just over £32k. In the near future, could earn closer to £50k in the next 5 years if I train, and take a more team leader/management responsibility. I think I am not the only one. A lot of people assume just because you live in London you are guaranteed to earn over £50k easily. Many professions are earning less than £50k in London (nurses, teachers, some doctors, police, public sector workers, banking staff in branches etc...

@Botw1 Ibis 17 says they are paying £2200 including bills. There is no mention of nursery or childcare fees. One person earning £45k would receive £2800 after tax. Two people earning £22k each would bring in a total of around £3100. So they potentially have £900 after bills as a couple. That’s an awful lot more than the example I gave you on someone earning twice the amount. Why? Because there is no childcare costs.

Where did I ever say that everyone has childcare costs?! But lots of people do and plenty of people on this thread have told you that they pay £100 per day in London; i.e. £2000 per month. That’s what makes it difficult for SOME people!!!

I guess you’re one of those lucky people whose mam has the kids. Unfortunately, mine died before her grand kids were born.

@Dibblydoodahdah

There is mention of nursery fees.

Anyway. Its getting a bit odd now so I'll give in and say, yes. For the imaginary single parents in your hypothetical scenario then I'm sure they'll find it a struggle for the short time they have to pay full time childcare fees

After that, no, they won't struggle.

And for all the other varied scenarios that don't fit that very specific criteria, they won't struggle in 85 k either

@Botw1 “My partner does a lot of WFH around childcare and I work part time.”

So they are not paying for a full time childcare place!!!!

I think this is a class and expectation based question that the drilling down on might cause rancour..

If you are £125 a year why do you live in a house worth £500000?

You wouldn't get a 3 bedroom semi in the part I live in Brighton for 500,000 with a garden and 2 reception rooms so an average semi.

True, but the difference with the north is that the whole geographic area is never all expensive. There's always the option of going a few miles down the road for a completely different price bracket, whereas in London that's not possible because everything is expensive. I do agree there are places where 95k household income won't get you very far, even price you out altogether. Wouldn't fancy trying to pay housing and childcare on that in some of the more well heeled Cheshire villages. But it's a choice in a way that it's not in the south east. We have that variety of price points.

Yes, that’s about our breakdown. We do pay some nursery from savings (sorry, should have included this!) that we saved in the years before having children knowing that we’d need a bit in the bank as there would be nothing left over after children. We used to have a housemate and put the money saved on rent aside for future childcare costs. We have tax credits that help, and until she dropped her nap our daughter did mornings at nursery, napped in the pm while DP WFH. DP and I stagger hours a lot so I would do 8-3.30 and he would do 10-6 to help minimise nursery. I work 2 days and one evening a week. So we do a lot of that. Writing this out here it’s all stating to feel a bit mad, but we really do get a lot of joy from London as do our children and I’ve been in the same rental for a long time so it feels like home. We are fully aware that this isn’t sustainable long term, but it’s done us ok for the past decade and hopefully will for a while longer.

@ibis17 please don’t think I am criticising you. I know London is a fantastic place and I also know how crazy expensive it is. It’s hard to understand until you’ve actually lived there. I just want people to understand that when your rent is £1500 for a tiny flat and your childcare costs are £2000 for one child then you are not not actually minted on what would seem to be a very high income. I live 40 miles from London and my childcare was “only” £1000 per month ten years ago. My dad had a bit of a go at me for picking such expensive childcare. I was like, well that’s the cheapest I could find. It was slightly lower than the going rate locally back then which was £1100 per month. It was either that or I gave up work! A job that I’d spent eight years training for!!

I just want people to understand that when your rent is £1500 for a tiny flat and your childcare costs are £2000 for one child then you are not not actually minted on what would seem to be a very high income.

If it helps, there are some of us who've never lived anywhere near the place and still get this!

And while I think on an individual level, leaving London is often a good solution for people, it's not a societal one and so the claims that the high housing costs are a choice are a bit silly. Cheaper areas of the country like the one I live in would be much less so if lots of ex Londoners turned up.

I put DS and DILs costs on £75k at the beginning of the thread. Put a child and £10k extra into the mix and without help it would be an utter disaster, particularly if there were no more than SMP available.

Except no one said anyone was minted

The op asked of it was enough for a family in London.

The answer is yes.

You can certainly survive as a family on £85k but a lot of people would expect you to be living the high life on a salary like that.

The reality in London is you are likely to be living in a small flat fairly far out, with barely any hope at all of having the house-based family life people think about outside of London. For that sort of comfortable lifestyle in London, you need to be earning probably 2-3 times this as a household just to realistically be able to buy a house.

As a single person on that salary though, you can have a fabulous time, but it’s probably only temporary until you want more.

@Botw1 no, the answer is that it depends.

I don’t understand your question? Why wouldn’t we live in a house worth 500k? I’m not sure if you mean that’s way above our means or way below… Did you misunderstand the maths?

85k is a good salary.
If you were a single person living in an inexpensive area you'd have loads of disposable income and a great lifestyle.
If your 85k was a single income supporting a family of 4 or 5 and you had a big mortgage, childcare costs and earn too much to claim child benefit, tax credits etc your net income of around £4800 a month won't go as far as many people presume.

But it’s not enough in many areas of London even on pretty low to moderate outgoings.

No idea why you’re struggling to understand that.

Most people wouldn’t count a family of 5 living in a 1 or 2 bedroom flat as ‘enough’. Or having literally nothing left at the end of the month to put towards a boiler, or savings or new kids shoes.

The problem with London, having lived there for 35 years and having brought up two children there, is that it is a tale of two cities.

I earn £76k and live in London as a single parent. I keep being baffled about why I am - not exactly struggling - but not comfortable . I write all my costs out in front of me and yes, my mortgage being enormous is a huge part of it.

Im a bit tied to where we live because exh would never countenance living anywhere else, my teenager is now very settled in school and a lot of community based activities and it would be hard to move.

@Albiboba

3 kids is definitely a choice.

And as I've repeatedly said, there are people on far less.

The question is ‘is 85k a GOOD salary for London?’ it wasn’t ‘what is the absolute bare minimum a family can survive on for the most poor quality of life?’

No one has a GOOD lifestyle and earns “much” less unless they’re bought their house 15+ years ago and or are massively helped out financially through a deposit and free family childcare.

I'm on £44k, which includes rental income from a lodger and I need that rental income to make ends meet. Divorced, so that's the household income and I have to support two teens (50/50).

£85k is more than our joint income was pre-divorce and we would have had a nice lifestyle with that (ex earns more, I was earning much less before we separated). We bought our first house 15 years ago and later traded up to something cheaper but bigger that needed work. If a family did similar and had £85k then yes, I think they could plausibly be in a nice house in Greater London with quite a comfortable lifestyle.

Could you move here from elsewhere and buy a nice house and have a good lifestyle with £85k? Possibly. There are more and less affordable areas everywhere, and if you had a deposit from selling somewhere else then I think you'd be ok.

As with everything, it all depends on the specific context! What your starting position is, what your expectations are...

After all the essential/commitments like mortgage, bills, car, insurance, some childcare (minimal), commute, small amount into savings, I have around £120 per week for food and fun. Given the way prices are rising, it doesn't leave a lot of room for emergency extra costs like something breaking down, but I'm OK. If I had almost twice my income, I'd be living the dream (comparatively).

@Albiboba

That was my point.

Those on 85k plus whining they have it hard (under a fairly specific set of circumstances ) Seems a tad short sighted

Have you heard of living to your means.....even rich f......s can say they haven't got enough.

I cannot imagine how any family could survive in London (Z1-3) on less than £85k without living on social housing or getting some kind of housing benefit.
Having just one child at a nursery close to me is £2k per month. Rent on a 2 bed flat is upwards of £2k.

I’m sure someone will be along to say that many do but I guess it’s surviving rather than living.