What is your household income, how much is benefits, and how are you coping?

[Gabrilla]

Genuinely curious after so many threads on here about benefit changes. Please feel free to name change!

I’ll start:

Salaries for both of us total 90k. Only benefits are £102 month child benefit, though we also get tax-free childcare and 15hrs free at nursery.

Total income is about 6k a month, mortgage and bills 3k, nursery 1k, commuting costs £500, groceries cost £500, husband pays CMS and other bits to his children totalling about £500 leaving us about £500 for everything else.

Feels like we’re constantly penny-pinching.

Just under £4000 per month. Own house so have to pay mortgage from this. Made up of PIP, DLA for children and UC

Same here OP, comparing my parent's quality of life when they were my age (I ended doing the same job as my dad for different reasons) and our quality of life now is disheartening.

Your circumstances will definitely improve once you stop paying child care. Mortage rates are also going down so you may be able to get a better deal on renewal.

I'm trying not to sound too negative but I think everyone's quality of living has dropped significantly over the last 20 years. Real wages have not kept pace with inflation. 90K sounds like a lot but its actually worth around 45K back before 2008 crash.

So really we (I'm in the same bracket) have no very spectacular wages and probably can't live the iconic middle class life John Lewis tries to sell us 😩

NB: I love John Lewis but I can't afford that stuff. I literally just go in to browse and then wonder who buys there at full price...😂

I'm on £74k. DH is self employed and makes between £40-85k a year. So say our household income is about £140k.

No kids. No benefits.

A mortgage of only £500 per month, thank god! £330 per month council tax though!

Our mortgage and bills come to around £1,500 a month.

We're obviously very financially comfortable. If we get a big bill, we can pay it without concern. We pay for large holidays from our current accounts without having to use savings. But our lifestyle looks dead ordinary from the outside. No flashy cars for instance (I drive a 12- year old piece of crap I paid £2k for).

Wow, I didn’t think mortgages were paid from benefits, only rent or social housing.

It’s not. I have a mortgage, I bought my house many years before my accident. I pay this from my benefits myself.

How is a joint income of 90k considered high - OP has clearly broken down her expenditure. She does not have any luxuries on here - high ish income but also lots of expenditures - 1k on childcare.

The same people who are supporting a 3k benefits a month on another thread will be bashing the OP on here! Mumsnet never disappoints

OP - I get what you mean!

That’s really interesting. It feels like we have a 45k household type lifestyle in my head!

I have no idea what my mother’s household income was but she was solely supported by benefits until I was 12 and our lifestyle was pretty similar to mine now. Occasional cheap day trips, three bed house, grow own veg, second hand clothes. Nothing wrong with any of that and we live to our means, but I just expected more from a university education and a “senior” career.

Makes me scared for the future to be honest.

I thought assets of over 16k meant you didn’t qualify for benefits?

Relative to the average income of the country, it is high.
She also has high expenditure (which was her choice to make), leaving her penny pinching and asking how others are coping.

Are you actually saying a 90K household income is low?

Our essential fixed expenses are only about £800 a month we pay around £300 per month for groceries then a further £300 on meals out and the pub. We are currently saving about £4000 a month but dh retires this year

Lots of senior jobs pay this much. CEOs, consultants, senior managers, lots of lawyers pulling this and more, lots of finance jobs.

Savings, not assets. A house you own and live in isn’t considered an asset.
You seem angry at me for being disabled through no fault of my own? Believe me, I’d love to go back to my previous career and 6 figure salary but hey ho, life’s shit.

Not angry, just surprised! I honestly thought that having any form of assets over 16k meant no UC. I understand PIP isn’t means tested.

Particularly in the south east. I’m on 65k in the north, my salary would be 80k odd in London. Degree, MSc, professional quals and several years of relevant experience.

if I didn’t own my own home, UC would have to pay my rent which In my area would be £1500+ a month. On top of everything I currently receive, so actually I’d be better off financially. Or I’d quality for a council house etc which the LA would have to keep me in until I die, upgrading kitchens bathrooms the lot and adaptations etc.
me owning a house is saving the state money- maybe direct your anger elsewhere?

A house you live in isn’t an asset.

to quote from Shelter:

The value of the house you own and live in is not counted as capital. The value of any other houses you own (and you don't live in) is counted. If you're eligible for benefits it doesn't matter if you own a house or not

Doctors, senior lawyers, finance directors, engineers, senior business development/marketing professionals, management consultants, coders, IT professionals, C-Suite or 'Head of...' or 'Director of...'.

Yeah, I don’t see as much entitlement anywhere in real life as I do on mumsnet.

To put people's feelings about 90K into perspective:

A lot of our persepective of what is a good salary are heavily influence by what we grew up with, and how the job market was when we first started work. Our lifestyle aspirations and expectation do not get adjusted in line with inflation over time.

If you ever have the joy of looking at real wages vs inflation graph since 2008 (pre-financial crisis) real wages have not increased at all (in fact it has fallen) but the cumulative inflation over this period is 80-100% depending on which index you look at. Most of that has actually come in the last few years and our psychological expectations of what money buys just hasn't caught up with the high speed of inflation.

Taking inflatation into account: this means the lifestyle we think we should have on 90K is actually a lifestyle we can only afford on 160K - 180K.

Conversely the lifestyle we can actually have on 90K is akin to 45K in 2008/2009

The face value of our salaries looks good but has far less purchasing pwoer than we think. This is the disparity that a lot of people are feeling right now, the paper says I'm comfortable - why don't I feel comfortable?

The same people who are supporting a 3k benefits a month on another thread will be bashing the OP on here! Mumsnet never disappoints

It's classic Mns

It's more practical for the state to disregard the equity in claimants homes than it is to expect them to run it down, potentially lose the house and then be on the hook for private rental. We all have a collective interest in benefit claimants not having any rental costs

Relative to the average income of the country, it is high.

But this is skewed because of an ageing population who will have earned a lot less but would have lower house prices etc.

Joint household income of 110k. One dc. This year only £300 in CB. No other benefits and never have been unless statutory maternity pay counts as a benefit?

This. I don’t know why the OP can’t see this? I am saving the state a huge chunk of money because lucky for them I got severely disabled after buying a house..

OK, then what is it?

I take household income as the total amount of money coming into the house (wages, benefits, investments).

Of course if you have children then your expenses will be more than someone who doesn't, but I wasn't considering children.