What do you think is a ‘good’ income these days for…

[Greenlp]

Two adults and one child?

I am constantly being told that our income is very good (from online sources, media etc, small talk with friends who don’t know our earnings but make general comments on income/standard of living). I feel like our income is not good enough for a good standard of living. We constantly have to cut back.

In answer to you original question £60k. Private school is a choice most can’t afford. I am a single mum in the midlands earning £40k. You say there are no good schools in your area and you can’t move due to work. If you commute say 20 miles is there really nowhere within that radius of your work with good schools? Really?

Around 40k each so after deductions around 2400 each. My bills alone come to 2050

That depends on where you live, what your commute costs are, whether you need two cars, how old your child is and whether they have any particular needs, do you have family close by who help with childcare etc…

Ie. Could not possibly answer this question.

I think £60k.

But it all depends on your definition of "good".

My take home, which includes income from a lodger, is around £3k. Sounds like my mortgage is similar to yours, OP, so, after your school fees, you probably have around a few hundred more than me a month.

I'm a single parent (co-parenting) with two teens. Live in London and we have a budget holiday once a year. I actually think we have a reasonably good standard of living - we eat well (at home), we have a holiday once a year, go to the theatre maybe twice a year. But we don't eat out, don't go out for random coffees, don't get takeaway, we would even only have e.g. steak at home on a special occasion, we don't do much at the weekend that we have to pay for. I'm not really saving anything. That's more than I had growing up, but other people might think it sounds a bit miserable.

I'm trying to get into higher paying work and would need £60k to both no longer need a lodger and also feel a significant improvement in quality of life.

There shouldn't be a need for private education at all, more money should go towards making state schools better.

The fact that you are able to make the choice to pay for private school proves you do have a good income. No matter how 'bad' the state schools are where you live. The vast majority of people couldn't afford to make that choice and would just have to accept what is available in their area. Even if you struggle to make end meet after paying school fees, the fact you can pay them at all means your income has to be better than the majority of the population!

You have a good income you just choose to spend a big chunk on school fees. We also live in an area with shit schools but our DS did just fine and got all top grades at GCSE and A level at a state school that had a 25% pass rate for GCSE maths and English at C or above.

Our income was very comparable to yours when our DS was at that age. As well as no private school we did have a smaller mortgage and COL was less so we had a great life with plenty of spare money It’s very obviously the school fees that are stretch, it’s a choice. Let’s hope that it pays off. You won’t know if it was worth the outlay until results plus there is alway the chance they may waste their education. Only time will tell if it is worth the sacrifice.

I'm mostly surprised at how low incomes are in the UK and how shockingly low "good" is. London is comparable to NY in most ways, housing about the same, cost of living the same (I found nyc cheaper) school fees about the same, yet 50k to 80k a year would be considered on the low end of moderate in NYC with below 50 being low. Keep in mind US taxes also much lower than the UK Then you have answers here from people saying 20k is good, 38k is good. I'm genuinely shocked that people can live on so little in such an expensive country with such high taxes and such a high cost of living.

29% of working age uk households receive some sort of benefits. 20% of the population live in social housing, again lower rent.

As for those who don't live in social housing or receive benefits, something like 60% of first time buyers (much higher in London) receive money from parents or family members, these gifts early in life help to reduce the mortgage interest said couple would pay and allow them to borrow more or build more equity, putting them in a better position to upsize. This doesn't even take into account people like me and dh who got years of rent free living with parents, this is especially common for the children of ethnic minorities who will save up tens of thousands.

Free healthcare- this is a big one, it also frees up more leeway to save in early years. My MIL would probably have been bankrupted ten times over in the usa as a low income freelancer, my dh has 15 pages at least of medical records detailing all his various ailments including childhood epilepsy etc, his sister ended up in icu for 1 week, another sister has crohns, aspergers, adhd etc etc , she has never earned over 18k in her entire life but now she sits pretty in her house worth 650k and is mortgage free (did have some family help but mortgage paid from her salary)...she probably earns around 15k today and she has free public transport due to freedom pass and gets by though she has no pension, she even manages to go on uk holidays.

Only 7% of uk children go to private school and a lot of it is also paid by grandparents.

In summary:
Poor and vulnerable (single mums, disabled, low income <30k with families)- funded by state, social housing, nhs, will give minimum standard of living.

Middle income (35k outside London, 70k to 120k in London) - often gets help with deposit whether through rent free living or gifts, nhs; more likely to be dual income, those who don't will rent, space out children to afford childcare/move near parents for them to help with childcare

Higher earners- pay bulk of the tax, what they can afford will depend on where they live and their expectations..

But what you require has as much to do with the help you get and your circumstances earlier in life than your actual earnings. A civil servant on 35k who married a 56 year old guy who paid off his flat years ago and who lives in a 750k house she bought only 2 years ago is not wrong when she says that 100k is a very high income to live on though it may sound strange cos the person on the 100k income couldn't buy her a house..

in addition people on lower earnings would also have lower expectations than you re the kind of home they should get even with their luckier circumstances, I know a guy who is a graduate and his parents gifted him 300k to buy a home, he chose to buy a derelict 1 bed house in zone 4 and he told me he doesn't pay income tax (earns too little as a gardener) and has also never paid stamp duty, mortgage or rent. 300k may be a terrible budget in london but at the same time it would be unwise for someone with such unstable earnings to buy any bigger, he also went for freehold 1 bed so he wouldn't need to pay service charges. He is perfectly happy with his lifestyle.

Honestly though with the way things are, I don't think I could blame him as even if he did try to earn more I don't think he would achieve a substantially better lifestyle esp as a single guy and perhaps his parents may have given him less help.

Yeah salaries are super low here compared to the US. I follow some debt recovery subs on Reddit and I’m always amazed at how many people in the US are able to pay off large sums of debt and then save large sums of money in a very short period on relatively lite income jobs like being a teacher.

I think your housing market is cheaper too, and homes are larger.

But that's not happening is it? Labour have asked DfE to find £1 billion in savings. If you want state education to be better funded then you need to persuade everyone to pay more tax. You could means test state education as1 example. But that won't be popular so no party will do that which means education remains underfunded and people will always choose indy.

To be fair I’d say 5k per month. That takes into account extortionate housing costs in the south east and gives money to save/spend. This also covers childcare in south east

You’re a classic case of earning enough to have a comfortable life but insisting on private schools so no longer have a comfortable life. My ILs did this too and DH and SIL are honestly no better for the private education. DH got a first and has two masters but same and also have a PhD and I went to the crappest failing state school ever.

We cut our cloth accordingly in life. You have a good income but you’re opting to blast it on private school so of course you’re going to have to cut back on other things.

Around our area 25k is a really good income! But there are no grammar schools or private schools nearby… the nearest is about 18 miles away. None of the schools themselves are dire, but the behaviour of the children is awful. (We see them in our school in year 6 and feel sorry for the year 7 teachers. It’s got progressively worse over the 17 years I’ve worked in primary.)
My kids all went to these schools, all went to University and have degrees and jobs. If you are an average “bright” kid then you will learn and come out with decent results wherever you are. I think private school just preps you for a certain lifestyle, not for the realities of real life.

Absolutely your choice on private ed. Most kids go to state schools and with parental support do OK. Also your choice to work part time. Can you imagine how single parents manage?

If it is that much of a struggle do what most parents do and put them in a state school. It is entirely a choice no matter how you dress it up as not being one. Personally I don't think it is worth paying for private school if you constantly have to make cutbacks.

@hennypenny if you are working full time and earn less than £20k then your employers are breaking the law and paying you less then minimum wage
How much UC do you receive?

If she is single, no children then probably none.

The high cost of living is very unevenly distributed, by region and also generation. You won't necessarily get a good picture of this on MN, because it's very south east England professionals centric, but there are large swathes of the UK where you can get a family home with plenty of change from 200k. Sometimes lots less. And that's just today, plenty of us were able to buy for much less. I think my house in a northern English city is worth about 200k, but it would've been half of that a decade ago. The increase isn't a good thing, but it does mean there are lots of us who have pretty cheap housing because of our age- and I'm a millennial, so not a particularly skewed example of this. Add a decade or two and it's even more pronounced. My mortgage isn't far over £500 a month. We also have much less in the way of property taxes than most places in the US, which from what I can tell makes a difference. My council tax is about £110 a month.

People in cheaper areas are disproportionately likely to live near family members as well, and free childcare is very common. Again something you don't necessarily get the full picture of on MN. The people talking about how 38k is good aren't the ones living in London/commuter towns paying full whack for childcare and privately renting or recent home purchasers. It's people who are living somewhere it actually goes a fair way. The comparison would be to somewhere in the interior of the US I guess, rather than New York.

Ignore that. I have read she has kids.

@IVFmumoftwo she said she has 4 teens

Under 20k for full time work sounds illegal, unless maybe you're paying into a pension and that's the figure after the deduction? Because £11.44 x 35 x 52 is £20,820.

Uk taxes are higher

But the indirect taxes in the us - like private medical insurance - can mean that you need to earn a lot more in the U S to be on a par with the uk

Previous threads worked it out but it was soemthing like double

Why don't you manage to have a holiday ?

I mean not a 10k luxury long haul but a tent in France should be well possible

It may depend on the other expenses too. OP has told us they have 2.3k a month left after mortgage and private school, but there's still room for substantial variation there. They could have two expensive commutes or work locally/from home, might need holiday care for DS or it could be included, might need two cars cos they work in different directions or manage with an old banger they own outright etc.