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.

At some privates you do have to pay for extracurriculars.

My DCs current ones are about £400 a month at the minute (includes some tuition).

no most people have picked up on fact there is no “good” and very much dependent on circumstances

And become like 90% of parents?

I do think it’s impossible to say because there are so many factors. We are currently doing retirement planning and we need to clear £5k a month if we wanted to remain living where we do and have one nice holiday a year plus a few weekends away. We are mortgage free, don’t pay school fees but have factored into this that our children may still require some form of financial support from us. 5k to pay a mortgage, school fees and all other living expenses to me would not feel possible. I don’t believe that we live extravagantly, although fully understand that everyone’s concept of this is entirely different.

Well done you. Nice to have an example of perfect for the thread, keeps us all nicely in our places.

5K a month sounds good to me but as so many have said, circumstances vary. Where I live house prices are higher than in neighbouring towns but we’re not at London/Harrogate/Manchester levels. Our monthly income is around £3K and I feel pretty comfortable.

It's not about your income, it's about how much money you have at the end of the month.

Frankly if I lived somewhere that had schools so poor that I felt the need to send my child to a private school I would move. Put that £20k p.a. into the mortgage, holidays, family experiences and extracurricular activities and improve everyone's quality of life.

A 600k house budget could get you near some excellent states.

Our mortgage is £1500 a month, so I don't think it's low.
Our money mostly goes on travel. We have a lot of family all over the place (including Asia, southern Europe, various places in the uk). We spend many thousands a year travelling or flying them to us. This is entirely our choice, I know, but it's what we want to do.
Some months we do save quite a bit, other months, nothing!
I do worry about this. I think we should be able to save each month on this income.

Where do you live OP? What is your sector?

I think you need to look at both different schooling and/or changing industries/roles.

They are the only options.

The reality is that incomes are not going to rise as fast as prices for a long time. Everyone is grappling with this situation.

We have a family take home of about £5,000 too. We are absolutely nowhere near the territory of private school fees. Secondary is extortionately expensive when you take into account things like all the sports clubs and the trips and the uniform.

Our mortgage is £1300 and nursery £650. Our basics are £4k a month when you add in extremely high council tax and energy bills right now. Going on holiday last year (uk, 5 nights) meant spending more than we earned for two months. One of us is not even contributing to a pension rn.

The idea that you can afford private is absolutely bonkers.

You really need to reassess either income or schooling

Our nursery fees are £2200 (part time for 2) a month on an income of £4500. There's nothing left over but we're fine.

This.

The OP feels that they don't have a good standard of living and are 'constantly having to cut back' because they're choosing to spend over a third of their income on private school as there isn't a single school near where she lives that's good enough to send her DC to, despite the value of her house indicating that it's desirable enough for many people to want to live there.

That is a low salary if you are putting children through private school.

We take home about 7k and cannot afford to put kids in private (or at least wouldn’t be prepared to move to a smaller house to enable us to do so).

We are on 8.5k take home and no way could we afford private school for one. Granted we are in London where that would be 2/2.5k. My assumption is that only those on 15k/20k take home per month can afford private schools.

This 🤣

There was a recent thread asking how much people earned / felt they’d need to earn to feel comfortable paying for private school fees in London and the answer was £3-400k.

Incorrect assumption. We have take home circa 6K and send DD to indy.

Here is my personal view on it:

Good salary - 100K and up
Median Salary - between 70K & 100K
lower end salary - between 40K & 70K

Anything below 40K is approaching poverty levels where I live. It means you are reliant on social housing for which there are waiting lists anywhere between 5 years and 20 years. If you already live in one, then from day to day it might still be financially comfortable (as long as you don't have children, pets or someone else dependent on you), but you are vulnerable because you have nowhere else to go.

It's not all down to housing costs in OP's case. She's spending 20% of her take home pay on housing, which historically is pretty low, She's spending 34% of take home - just over a third of her income - on school fees, and they are going to rise substantially in years to come, partly because they always do anyway, but mainly due to the VAT that will be added soon. Something has to give.

I know people on 8.5k who pay for private. But their mortgage is more like 2k, one dc and they don’t spend 20k on annual holidays, etc.

It depends where you live. It is much more expensive to live in some areas of the country than others.

See we earn 6K and chose a small house + school fees. So it is down to personal choice.

100% location dependent. We make £82K combined as a two adult one child family and are very comfortable. Big house and garden, car, hobbies, holiday every year plus a good few weekend and nights away, UK breaks, etc. We are in Scotland. If I lived in London I’d be skint.

I earn 60k and am a single parent with 4 children and a mortgage of 1.6k. I budget and there are not many luxuries but we get by. Definitely doesn’t feel excessive - kids are so expensive!

But it would be a good income if you hadn’t decided to send your kids to very expensive schools. Most people don’t spend £50k a year on their children’s education, it’s not essential!

We're on around £66k take home pay with both our incomes, 3 dc (one working but still living at home, one at uni and one at school) and I feel as rich as I've ever done. We have some savings and can afford to do some of the basic maintenance we've not been able to do before. We're in the SE.

Otoh I have an old school friend who lives up in Yorkshire, who works 3 days a week for slightly more take home pay, dh who doesn't work and never has (both their choice), and 2 dc (younger than mine) who's always telling me how poor they are and how they can't afford things, or asking me things like "how on earth do you afford uni?"

So it's definitely how you perceive it. I would say maybe what you're used to, but she had a very similar upbringing to me, so it can't be that. I'd say if anything we have a slightly more luxurious lifestyle than she does, although neither of us is inclined for huge expenses as a general rule.