A thread for lower earners to discuss!

[AlexBalex]

AIBU to make a thread for lower earners?

I feel like every thread I read on MN is full of middle to high earners or just posters where it's commonplace for a household to be earning really high amounts like £80k, £100k, £150k.

Now I fully understand the national average is approx. £30k. But does nobody on here and their partner take home minimum wage each resulting in a household income of about £45k?!

In real life I'm surrounded by plenty of 'low earners' but the representation on here seems to be massively skewed the other way.

Where are all the retail staff, hospitality staff, nurses, school teachers etc? Apologies, I don't know the salaries of these roles but they're understood to be below the national average right?

Just wondering if anyone with a not insanely high, lower than average household income (i.e. less than £60k) exists out there?!

Thoughts welcome, was just looking for a discussion really as fed up of reading about 'high earners' all the time .

I think most people on low or average wages are too busy working, and too knackered at the end of their long hard days in long hard jobs to be spending too much time on MN!

45 is above average. But it doesn't go very far when you live in London and you have two kids, childcare, rent/mortgage.

Well of course there are people in poverty everywhere - the main issue is housing costs. And maybe transport. Everything else necessary for life costs the same in London food, water, electricity, some boroughs have stupidly low council tax given the wealth of the residents but I digress.

levelling up relates to investment in infrastructure, transport etc but remote work also opened up a lot of opportunities. Quite a lot of people (including DH at one point) now live in Manchester and commute to London. of course they used to do that, and stay in Mon-Fri lodgings but obviously hard with family commitments. It's opened more doors for a lot of people.

Our gross household income is £51k. I'm a full time civil servant in Northern Ireland in a management position and my DP works for a Russell Group university. We live semi comfortably but that's because I worked every hour I could when we got overtime and paid off chunks of our mortgage. Still, the cost of living crisis is starting to hit us and lots of others in the same income bracket in our area.

Single income household with £30k salary. 2 disabled adults and 1 child. The non-working one was working when we married, but has deteriorated since, I struggle to work full time, but do anyway. Trying really hard to get a higher paying job without success. Feels like we will forever be skint and surrounded by things that need replacing. Try and remember it's family that matter, but more money would release a lot of pressure!

Would never say this in real life, but financially covid was good for us, work from home was a relief from crippling petrol prices and a chance to clear the credit cards. Then came long covid and made life harder.

Pre-covid was the worst time ever. £24k salary and sometimes going without meals for DCs luxuries - I grew up poor, knowing we "couldn't afford" and don't want to pass that on.

I earn £13k and husband is on about £31 so not quite at that £45 but I love our life. We don't need a holiday to the Maldives every 6 months to be happy. A caravan in Cornwall does us nicely. We live in Devon so not a cheap place to live but we have a 3bed semi which I love and can't see myself leaving unless I win the lottery. With 2 kids in nursery money is tight but I just buy most stuff second hand or in the sales. Vinted and Facebook have some amazing stuff which isn't all in terrible condition. Also like the fact I'm saving the planet one plastic toy or clothes bundle at a time. I always feel like everyone on MN earns crazy money and sometimes wonder what I'd do with it all. I guess it's just a different way of living. My kids are never going to have a private school education but I have started a savings pot for them and it will give them a bit of a start in life.

Many of them work though just on very poor wages.

Retail worker, marginally over min wage here, retired on state pension DH. I only know a handful earning above min wage. They generally come from wealthier families. Acquaintances through work earn more as trades. Any wealthier people I know of also inherited and got jobs through connections.

It is a low earner thread. It didn't take long for people on wages of 70/80/90k to come on here.
My DH is a TA. He gets about £20k a year. Stupidly poor pay for such a job. I work part time minimum wage job so we get UC top ups.

Higher than that. It’s almost as annoying when people pipe up that 70% marginal tax rate isn’t enough on threads where they can see the title. People don’t say “didn’t take long for the low earners to arrive.” Good old MN entitlement of everyone else’s time and money.

I have just fought 210 people to get a £27000 pa job. I have 2 degrees and over 20 years of flawless experience. Yes, in the north, but it's not a fucking wasteland - you couldn't get a 3 bed for under £200k. I'm in a Rent-to-buy and will have to do joint ownership or bust in the next few years.

And I'm single with DC.

Feel like just ending it all now....I''m so below all of you!

Gosh I must really be failing at life, even on a thread for 'lower earners' I end up feeling poor...

I'm mid 20s no kid but my rent is £1.3k not including bills for a house-share in London

I work in public affairs earning £48k but it doesn't stretch far

But this is not a thread about people like you. So please - go away. We're all familiar with having high rents. We don't all earn what you do.

WTF is wrong with you?

This is not the thread for you. If you're earning £90k and not much left at the end of the month you're overspending, or clearly not realising all of the luxuries you are spending on versus the people on this thread who can't afford to do that.

Same here I feel really depressed.
33k combined income here and can't get any single benefit.

I became a single parent through no fault of my own, now rely on the benefit system. I take home a little over 13k a year. People tell me that “I should just go back to work” but it’s not as easy as that. I have no family that can watch my child for me to go to work. I can’t afford the childcare costs. And when I tell people that they say “well UC pay back 80% of childcare costs” and as fab as that sounds the reality is having to find the money to pay for childcare upfront to provide UC with a receipt to have to wait three weeks to get that money back for the same money to have to go on the next months bill so no matter what I would be out of pocket. I can’t afford to go to work and I’m just barely scraping by not working. The system is completely screwed. I want to work. I want to provide my child with the best life but I cannot afford it because cost of childcare is beyond. The cost of life atm is beyond and people really just don’t see other people who are struggling because “it must be their fault” when in reality some of us get dealt a shitty hand and we try and do what’s best with what we have

I was hoping low earners would mean I'd see incomes same as mine but I can only dream of some of the ones I've seen on here.

The poster said she was a single person. There was no mention of children.

Where are all the retail staff, hospitality staff, nurses, school teachers etc? Apologies, I don't know the salaries of these roles but they're understood to be below the national average right?

You think teachers earn below the national average?

Me

Our joint income is just below £50k, just over if you include child benefit.
We both get bonuses at work every year but by the time we're taxed on them they probably work out around at £1000 extra each, which seems a lot but we tend to use them to pay for Christmas/birthdays/a short uk holiday otherwise we'd be extremely stretched to afford much for these types of things.
We are in the north east, our mortgage is only £500 per month at the moment, although this will go up in the next 18 months as our fixed term will end. We live in a small 3 bed (grandparent gifted half the 5% deposit or we wouldn't have been able to buy). We only manage as well as we do because we don't pay for childcare.
We have a small loan from home renovations but quite a lot of credit card debt from maternity leave. Basically a cost of living crisis hitting when I was £1000 down a month screwed us immensely.
When the loan is gone and we're out of the nappies/wipes/constantly growing stage we'll probably feel more comfortable but we have pretty much nothing left at the end of every month.
That being said, we don't think we're 'poor'. We have everything we need and more and do realise just how lucky we are as there are plenty of people, especially in our region, who do not.

I earn £40k in the north west so not a bad wage but we're a single income household.