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 .

Before my husband retired our take home pay was about £45k between us, and we felt relatively comfortable financially, but we have no dependent children. Comfortable, for us, means being able to pay the bills, not panic if we need to replace the washing machine, and we can save for inexpensive holidays etc.

We have been really poor in the past, so we feel really lucky to be in our current financial position. It would be nice to have a new car instead of a second hand one, and to be able to go on more, more expensive holidays, but we are very happy with what we have. If we had children at home it would be more difficult though.

But, with a starting salary at the national average, and only up from there, teaching IS a well paid job. No, it doesn't reach the heights of some private sector and that definitely doesn't mean for certain households, life isn't difficult (as we've seen here, plenty of families only have one FT earner so it pushes what that salary can cover). But it is a decently paid, good stable job with unbelievable pension and huge job security.

I definitely don't know people who do 'full time half term jobs' but t's extremely well known a good chunk of teachers take on GCSE/A level marking in the summer holidays, and others run tutoring etc etc. It's a nice little bonus earner. They do it because it's easy, flexible, they have time and most people welcome the opportunity to boost their income if it comes along.

Interesting thread.

I always though that Mumsnet seemed to be a parallel universe where the majority of people live in detached houses, have husbands who make 100K a year and themselves have 'careers' and are 'professionals' on more than 50K...

So either people are lying through the teeth or this just shows that Mumsnet has an audience that is not representative of the general population.

If you look at salaries for the vacancies currently advertised for the civil service, the charitable sector, local authorities, retail, hospitality, schools and NHS admin, care work, people who work as airport security or ground staff, art and museum jobs...most of the vacancies available have salaries that go from 25- 35K.

The average full time UK salary is £32K.

Congrats! Please may I ask how you almost doubled your salary in 3 years? What sectors where the roles?

Yes! Glad you started the thread. I'm on £20k, part time to work around school hours. Single parent, 2 kids, mortgage, car. Kids are fed and have hobbies and toys and clothes. Car has petrol, insurance, tax. Bills are expensive and I'm definitely feeling the squeeze, but don't understand how people are "poor relations" "struggling to get by" or "not sure where their money goes" when their household income is 2x, 3x, 4x...10x more than mine is!

There's plenty of people who earn the same amount of me who have commented, and you've not called them out interesting...,..

Great thread. I always see those comments about not being able to survive in London on less than £100k and wonder how we Civil Servants survive. Most people are at EO grade so about £30k.
I feel pretty comfortable on my average salary but only because I have been trading upwards in property since the early 90s so mortgage is tiny.

I definitely think many factors come into play:

Job Industry - Working rewarding jobs may not necessarily pay well, whereas working jobs such as business/banking pay much more. Do i think it right? no. But that unfortunately the sad truth.

Location - if you are in SE/London- alot of salaries are upwaited to account for london living. Many grad roles start at 32k - 40k. (Google most companies grad schemes)

Age - often you earn more as you get older through experience

Family/Responsibilities - having children can make it difficult to progress career wise espc if you have in your 20s for example, but also if you have kids - you may not want to work full time etc or may not be able to justify certain jobs to only end up putting your children in childcare. Alot of the females I see earning 80k+ have chosen to have careers, many dont have children or have children at 40+ where they already earn more than average person.

Education: If you start working at 18 (not necessarily as true now with apprenticeships) - you often rely on experience and working very hard to get where you want to and often enter into lower paid industries. Whereas if you had further education - many start on higher paid jobs.

I dont think salary is remotely reflective of hardwork, effort, energy and lifestyle.

I think the quality of life (Health/Happiness) is WAY more important.

I'd rather earn minimum wage and be happy - than earn 100k and be miserable.

Leveling up where we live is all about our Tory MP in conjunction with our Tory County Council spaffing it on a dozen useless projects. eg £2 million on a pointless IT project for local museum that gets about 10 visitors per month. 5 new buildings with no specific purpose have gone to one crony contractor. Meantime the local swimming pool has been bulldozed down to save a relatively small amount of money on repairs. I could go on. Apart from the perennial housing problem, transport is a massive cost where we live. Obscene train fares on a decrepit line where passenger trains wait for goods trains as a priority. £20 return to the nearest big town 20 miles away if you meed to work as everything nearby has shut down in the last few years. There is zero Leveling up in the UK.

Lots of Londoners live in social housing or council housing, so have relatively low housing costs (£800-1500 a month rather than thousands).

So, slight tangent, but there is a thread where loads of people are saying how much they paid for cakes (posts ranging between £65-£200!)

One step closer to understanding how all these people bringing home £4k a month have no money left at the end of the month 😂

But people on MN say 'oh, I get by on 12 grand a year' but what they actually mean is after benefits have paid their rent etc... it's 12000. So that's at least another 12 grand in the mix. People who say they earn 40 - they mean covering everything including housing. In that way, sometimes the difference between households isn't always as different as some people like to make out.

Teaching salaries are publicly available. Low paid they are not https://www.nasuwt.org.uk/advice/pay-pensions/pay-scales/pay-scales-england.html

I clean part time and my husband earns about £30,000. Get a bit of UC monthly top up

Our rent is sky high (1250pm) but the cheapest we could find in our area, we live in a town where the rent is ridiculous.
We pay the bills and buy food and have sweet f.a all left over but we have a roof over our heads and a meal every night, it is tough but we get by.

I dont think salary is remotely reflective of hardwork, effort, energy and lifestyle.

This.

One of the most galling things about being in low paid jobs is the attitude some have towards them, that you can't be bothered to do better, telling you how you don't contribute, how you're uninspired, how you don't or didn't work hard enough.

Yet society wants demands and in some cases relies upon many of these types of jobs, and also insist prices for them are kept as low as possible - which is a large factor in what people get paid for them - what people are willing to pay for them in the first place.
No one seems to have a problem using the services provided by low paid workers, only with the people providing the service in the first place because the wage they command is low.

Ignoring the fact there aren't enough 'better' jobs for everyone, without those low paid jobs there'd be no social care, no shops, no pubs, no restaurants, no hotels or holiday parks, very few leisure facilities.

''@Maverickess · Yesterday 07:45

I dont think salary is remotely reflective of hardwork, effort, energy and lifestyle.

This.

One of the most galling things about being in low paid jobs is the attitude some have towards them, that you can't be bothered to do better, telling you how you don't contribute, how you're uninspired, how you don't or didn't work hard enough.

Yet society wants demands and in some cases relies upon many of these types of jobs, and also insist prices for them are kept as low as possible - which is a large factor in what people get paid for them - what people are willing to pay for them in the first place.
No one seems to have a problem using the services provided by low paid workers, only with the people providing the service in the first place because the wage they command is low.

Ignoring the fact there aren't enough 'better' jobs for everyone, without those low paid jobs there'd be no social care, no shops, no pubs, no restaurants, no hotels or holiday parks, very few leisure facilities.''

This!

The last thing we need as a society is more lawyers, accountants or edge funds managers...yet those are the people commending high salaries.

Society can't function with people working in schools, social care, hospitality, healthcare, transport and so on. But these essential jobs are undervalued and underpaid.

I can promise you HTs don't all earn that kind of money.

"The average full time UK salary is £32K."
^But isn't it that this the average, and those who are earning more are earning much much much more

I am depressed by it all tbh
^

With children you can get up to a grand a month in benefits on 32K though - you take home more than someone who earns 40K because they get taxed more.

What benefits? I get £200 child benefit a months for 4dc

I put in a single mother earning 32K with 2 DC into a benefits calculator and came out with the below.

Whether it's 'enough' is one thing but it's certainly a large enough top-up that you're better off than someone earning more but with less benefit entitlement.

Total benefits entitlement
£404.96 / weekly
Our estimate is based on the information you have entered and does not guarantee entitlement. It uses 2023/24 benefit and tax rates.
This amount is made up of the following benefits:
Universal Credit£354.15 / weekly
We estimate your monthly Universal Credit award will be £1,534.66.
Council Tax Support£10.91 / weekly
Your full Council Tax bill of £26.60 per week will be reduced to £15.70 per week because of your entitlement to Council Tax Support.
This estimate is based on your local authority's Council Tax Support scheme but there are some rules for how earnings are treated that we are unable to include at this time.?
Child Benefit£39.90 / weekly

£159 a month child benefit for two children. £269 for each child in the child element of UC as both mine were born after the 2017 cut off point. No way do most people get a £1k a month for their children. Some might if they have several children born before the cut off point but that is unusual.

UC generally only pays part of a rent and the claimant has to find the money from the rest of the UC or wage to make up the rest. We get roughly £20k before UC and they don't pay for mortgages. Slightly higher wage allowance allowed before they deduct it but I imagine most people on benefits do have a struggle to cope.

I'm here! Tired working single mum scraping by!

I posted the figures earlier from a benefits calculator. You get less due to no HB - not sure how usual it is for houseowners to be on benefits but IME it's not. Also what about council tax support.

Whether it's 'enough' to cover the entire rent is irrelevant the fact is someone who earns more will get no help at all and still have to pay the same amount, plus tax.

This is not meant to pit people against each other but to point out that when discussing income people should be saying their NET income. Not just their salaries....