To ask what your life would look like on 60k

[Thecherryhotel]

What do you think your life would look like if you and your partner earned around 30k each per annum? Would you both work full time or would one of you be able to go part time? Would this be enough to support you and the children you have? Would it be impossible? How would you feel?

I earn £60k (well, have done for 2 months) and my take home is £3,200 after pensions, tax, NI and student loans. With rent or £1200/month on a small 2 bed terrace we could not live on just this salary, although having no childcare fees (currently ~£800/month) would certainly help

We're just under this now (57k combined), and get UC top and child benefit. Rent social housing. Can't say we struggle, but also can't afford to buy a family home in the south east on it (we'd struggle to buy a 2 bed flat in our town!).

Couldn't survive on £60k. (£3654 pm take home)
Mortgage £1100
Council tax £350
Energy £500
Utilities £50
Food and drink £1000
Clothes £200
Health and beauty £100
Cars x 2 £800
£4100 already

Plus days out and takeaways and birthdays and holidays and and and

I'd have to declare myself bankrupt.

Then I'd probably just about be able to cope.

Impossible to answer without knowing location. I’m in Central/Northern Scotland and this would be a very good wage for one person and fairly easy to live on split across two. In Central London I imagine you’d be pretty skint.

We make 81K between us. This gives us a 3 bed home with a big garden, quiet area, one car, not new but decent, one child in state school with three expensive hobbies, no wraparound childcare costs thanks to flexible working options and grandparents though. We go abroad once a year and have 2-3 UK breaks. Small amount of savings. We’re definitely comfortable but not rich by any means. We really prioritise travel and experiences though so we spend a lot on big days out, nights away, weekend beaks, big holidays. Could definitely be more cash-rich if we were more experience poor!

Wow how many of you are there to go through 1k a month in food?

Lots of that is luxuries though so couldn't "survive" is a bit extreme.

The take-home pay would depend on many factors - the two main ones being student loan and pension contributions:

www.thesalarycalculator.co.uk/salary.php

no we couldn’t live on that. Our necessary bills alone need our joint income £100k, in the south east.

Husband ears 30k and that's a take home of £2150. Double it so £4300 and many families live on that successfully. It wouldn't be enough for us as we have expanded into our outgoings.

We’d lose about £40k so would have to make some pretty significant changes.

To be honest, this was a bit tongue in cheek, but actual cost of living leaves very little leftover income for anyone, once you do the numbers it is surprising. I see £60k as a minimum for a couple with 2 kids, even though it sounds a lot.
Not a surprise we struggle to get ahead. 🙂

I think the addition of the partner and children which the OP seems to have assumed that everyone has would have more of an impact on my life than the difference in salary...

We would have to pull our children out of school. But other than that, we would be ok.

Early retirement here, due to health 62, mid stage Parkinson’s, 7 yrs in, get pip, and have some private money, £12,000 a year.
Harder for to do stuff, so more stuff done, luckily no housing costs, just cat and i

Single so a bit different. But for me this is asking 'what would life be like if you earned over double what you do now?'
Pretty nice, thanks very much!!LOL😆

Its a choice for me though. I could easily double my earnings and have expensive holidays or a car or the latest tech but I like a simple life and Ive managed to live comfortably til my early fifties whilst only ever working part time.
Ive paid my mortgage off and now only work 2 nights a week and enjoy 5 day 'weekends'.
Its what you are used to I suppose...

These figures look awfully high!

By comparison :

Mortgage £235 (I'm aware how low that is)
Council Tax £200
Energy £153
Food & drink £800
Clothes £0
Health & beauty £0
Cars x 4 £0 (all paid up)
= £1388 versus your £4100

Really goes to show that outgoings vary massively!

I agree it’s all relative, but I can’t agree that a drop in standards is the same as “struggling”, which is what some people are calling it. If you have a high income and very large mortgage, a drop in income is going to be a problem, but not in the same league as struggling to eat and pay bills. I do understand that people aren’t generally suggesting it is, but words like “struggling” suggest hardship where there is none.

Yes it does, I pay for cars over 4 years then own them, just a snapshot of today. Mortgage fairly high but coming down quickly. Food and drink is high but I've a big extended family.

I would struggle as my childcare bill and mortgage payments combined cost me more than £60k a year, in post tax money!

It’s ages and stages and irrelevant unless that is a known quantity. Our outgoings last year with zero childcare, zero mortgage as paid off and zero debt to pay off was exactly 28k.

We'd be a lot worse off

We would really struggle on that salary. Our outgoings on mortgage, bills etc is £2500 a month. We don't have car finance and use our credit cards mainly for protection in big purchases that we then pay off but we enjoy meals out, day trips, holidays and I like to have my nails done every few weeks and spend a fair bit on hair and beauty treatments.

If we massively changed our lifestyle i suppose we'd manage and cover our bills bug it would be a big change.

Nicer environment. Countryside with sheep in the next field, birdsong, a campfire. At home in a town I can just hear cars and trains and crows. My garden is small with no space for a campfire (and it wouldn't be fair on neighbours). I can put up with a camping mat and sleeping bag for all the positives.

As that's twice what we've been living on for the last couple of years (before that it was about 25% less than that) we'd be able to go on holiday, buy a decent car, go out for meals, not have to count pennies and live on 'yellow label' food; it would be absolutely life-changing to have that kind of income.

That’s more than double what I’m on so it would improve my life massively.

One of you could both drop a day to look after your DCs and still have a decent income, if that’s what you want.

But if your DCs are older, then you may prefer to keep earning a higher amount and pay off your mortgage, have holidays etc.

It depends on your lifestyle and what’s best for your family.