To think people’s idea of what ‘a rich’ person is, is totally skewed?

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For example:

Who do you think of as rich?

When the government talk about wealthy people who do they mean?

Tax the rich. Who are ‘the rich’? Etc

It’s not unreasonable to want to live in the area you grew up but I accepted that wasn’t going to be possible for me, I ended up moving a bit further out and in turn displacing poorer people who subsequently couldn’t afford to live where they had grown up and I’m sure they did the same. And on and on.

it always puzzles me that it’s considered abhorrent for a Londoner to sell up and take their wealth to Dorset or Cornwall or wherever, buy a big house with the proceeds of their London home and WFH in their consultancy job, thus displacing a “local family” but conversely the answer to everything for Londoners who are stretched due to absurd prices is to sell to and move out

Many people in their 60s have assets without debt, usually a home with the mortgage paid off. Why shouldn't they have a couple of years without having to struggle? Why is it a race to the bottom?

Well, Rachel Reeves has defined rich as being anyone earning over £45k. So if you earn over this, she’s earmarked you as being able to pay a shit tonne more tax.

Yeah, she’s an idiot. Anything below 100k is not considered wealthy and in London and areas of the south like Oxford I would boost that up to 150k. When people talk about taxing the rich, they don’t mean a couple on 50k each, they mean multi millionaires and billionaires- something most of us will never attain.

The annual allowance for salary sacrifice into pension is a colossal £60,000, which is more than what the overwhelming majority of people earn to begin with.

Given that your salary is so astronomical that you can't even use salary sacrifice to mitigate against the higher tax bracket, then clearly you are extremely wealthy. You are delusional to believe otherwise.

@MidnightPatrol £100k after tax is £5700 a month. £150k after tax is £7000. A nice monthly income.

In London an ‘average’ house is going to be £3k+ a month mortgage. So most of that income

7 - 3 = 4. Where is the other £4000 going? I thought I was really bad with money, but I don't even come close to wasting £4k a month (and I wouldn't be able to, because £4k is a lot more than what goes into my bank account each month).

As for the £3k mortgage... it's not as if that money evaporates. The house will retain its value, and most likely grow in value, over time. So having an extremely expensive house means you have something valuable that I don't have.

I don’t consider 45 k a year as that wealthy ( I’ve never earnt that myself btw, far from it )
Rachel Reeves is living in cloud cuckoo land I think !

So as I said to another person, if your salary is so colossal that you can't even avoid the higher tax bracket by using salary sacrifice... well, I think that proves my point.

And also as others have said, it also depends on age. We should expect and encourage people to save during their lifetime. Therefore we should expect, on average, wealth to increase with age.

if a couple earned £140k, for example, and saved an amount such that with growth, after 10 years they had £500k, we may say they were wealthy. But should they be taxed more than a couple who earned the same but spent it?

Ok but what's the breakdown of this 65k? Is that 2 incomes? Before tax or after tax?

Sounds like the 1 in private school is subsidised or something like that, so not sure what the point of including that detail was if you're not fully funding the cost.

I think your comment is naive saying it's to do with priorities, as £30k is barely enough to scrape by for most families living in London, especially if that's before tax, especially as you claim, for a family of 5. I say this has someone who has rented and bought across London in the last 15 years and been on salaries of £25k to over £100k. I've always budgeted very carefully. I've also never had a car and rented very economical places so I know that the cheapest rents and mortgages in London, unless social, are still very high and alone would eat up most of a £30k salary if not more.

There's something not adding up about your claims - there is extra money coming from somewhere whether it be UC, inheritance, family help or extra income streams. I suspect you're not the one in the family who does the budgeting.

The depressing thing is, while we bicker amongst ourselves about who is rich and who should pay, the government spends billions on sponsoring poorly managed projects which line the pockets of a select number of highly wealthy individuals. These individuals, and many other incredibly rich business owners, pay a tiny proportion of tax and apparently that's ok 🤷🏻‍♀️.

I don't actually care about my tax going to asylum seekers or single mothers on UC themselves - the true wastage is the amount of our tax being sunk into poorly managed schemes and nobody being accountable for the outcomes. It makes me so angry that apparently I should pay upwards of 40% of my income as a single parent trying to cover the bills, while extremely wealthy individuals get away with paying pittance and the government gets away with pissing our money down the drain.

Well, I think the govt. try to sell "tax the rich" to the electorate and the electorate is supposed to think the rich are imaginary billionaires living in mansions on top of invisible mountains. But in reality, Labour consider the rich to be anyone who perhaps owns a property, has an savings, has a job paying >NMW.

Years ago, we were round at PILs and FIL proudly said, I'm definitely voting labour and the rich will pay for everything. FIL actually had been a NMW worker for a lot of his life, but seeing as though MIL also worked and they scrimped and saved and downsized their 3 bed semi to a 1 bed bungalow, they suddenly became the "rich". They had a fully owned bungalow, a fully owned car and tens of thousands in the bank from downsizing, state pension and pensions from work. FIL was utterly horrified when MIL explained to him that he actually was "the rich". And this is the trap!

You have quoted my post to exclude the rest of the comment, which explains that two private school places (you say on £100-150k people will be using private schools) will cost £4-5k a month.

Sure this person has more than you, but it’s not the lifestyle you yourself described people on this income level as having. Someone on £100k or £150k in London isn’t living in a flashy house with multiple kids in private schools, expensive new cars and so on.

And £3k a month is ~£600k will buy a very modest looking house in London! Have a look on rightmove, you will be underwhelmed.

I am a single mum - I stated things were tight on 30k- only since being on 65k have things improved but we live quite comfortably. I’m not saying my priorities are right over others I’m saying everyone has different things that things they spend money on.

I agree on the comfortable, wealthy and rich categories

We earn £200k+ a year and I would say we can afford a 4 bed and holidays. We are comfortable. I still shop at Aldi, use Vinted for the kids clothes etc.

My friends are wealthy. They earn between £250-£500k a year. Both kids go to private school. Multiple holidays a year.

I have a family member or two and several friends I would describe as rich. Multiple properties, stables, elite horses, tennis courts and pools. Multi millionaires. Never have to worry about money (but do as they came from a similar background to me (working class) and worked their way up).

Very rich (assets or otherwise) are landed folk. Yes they may only be asset rich but quite frankly, if things are that bad, sell the assets.

@MidnightPatrol You have quoted my post to exclude the rest of the comment, which explains that two private school places (you say on £100-150k people will be using private schools) will cost £4-5k a month.

That's because you explicitly said that private education would be unlikely on that income. If you're not paying for it, it becomes irrelevant.

"I’d say private education is quite unlikely on this kind of income - one place is going be £2-3k a month now in London. The same for a nursery place - which of course, you won’t be eligible for funding for."

So your income is £7k a month.

£3k goes into an asset (that most people can't afford).

Where's the other £4k?

And £3k a month is ~£600k will buy a very modest looking house in London! Have a look on rightmove, you will be underwhelmed.

It's not the size of the house that's important. It's the location.

So on your salary, you're able to live in an interesting place, which is London. I can't live there because I don't earn nearly enough for a £3k mortgage.

So you have something that I don't have because of your high salary. Yet, in a strange roundabout way, you're trying to argue that that's not the case.

If you can’t afford to privately educate a couple of kids, I don’t think you can really be defined as ‘the rich’, can you.

“You have something that I don’t’ pretty much sums up your argument here. And that’s not really very convincing in creating a definition of ‘rich’.

And - a £600k house in London is going to be interesting for different reasons to those you allude to. It’s not going to be Fulham or Islington. And people don’t feel ‘rich’ still having to spend half their income on a mortgage for a house which their equivalent earner 20 years ago would have considered a starter home.

This is the point - these are on the surface high salaries, but the lifestyle it affords isn’t the lifestyle ‘of the rich’ in the areas where they are usually attainable. They are badly off, but I don’t think they can really be considered rich.

@MidnightPatrol Let's try for the 3rd time.

If the post tax income is £7k, and the mortgage is £3k (which is a lot more than what most people earn after tax), then what's happening to the other £4k?

This makes even less sense than before as if you earn £65k as one person that means your take home is even less than split between 2 people. But to my point I'm assuming you're not including various extra income i.e. you get CMS or your ex pays for certain things for your kids, or you don't have a mortgage. You can't therefore say you are financing everything on a 30k or 65k salary.

If so, I'm genuinely very interested to see your breakdown of outgoings which means you can afford to send a child to private school, pay a mortgage on a 3 or 4 bed property in London and still save on that.

When did I say I had a 3 or 4 bed properly I literally said we have small accommodation again - it’s about what individual think is important which is not right it wrong.
for us the children having all their own rooms was not something I deemed worth the extra cost. Me and their dad didn’t split - not that its something I’m willing to discuss. But in a sole parent of 3 and we do just fine on 65k a year - the children have activities etc over “ stuff “
It’s not right or wrong what someone finds more important to finance. There is no child care costs as they are older now.

Well I am assuming, as unless all 3 of your children share a room, or you share with 1 of your children or sleep on the couch then you must by default have at least 3 bedrooms. And if you are putting all 3 of your kids in one room or sleeping on the couch that's quite frankly bizarre when you can afford private school. Also why do you keep referring to 'we' but claiming you're a single parent? Story seems to keep changing.

Anyway I'm going to leave this here as I think you're being deliberately evasive about what you actually live off which invalidates your condescending comments about priorities.

We as my family !
im saying our family unit do just fine - me and the kids.
I also spoke about the private school situation above.
sorry that we are not struggling like you seem to want me to.
I did used to have a DH to have the 3 kids so when I’m talking about us choosing accomdation it was “ us “

So can we summarise now: life is bloody expensive these days!

This is your original post I’m referring to.

You have said people on these salaries have expensive houses, private school fees etc.

I have proven to you that this is not achievable in London on that salary. Their lifestyle will look surprisingly normal given what is a headline ‘big salary’.

Even with the £3k a month mortgage - their lifestyle is going to look very ordinary, because they’ll have a very ordinary house in an ordinary area.

As for ‘where is the rest of the money spent’ - well my nursery is £2,300 a month and I get zero free hours or tax free childcare. So that’s more than half gone, immediately.

75% of the take home pay on eg £150k just covering a mortgage on an average house and a single nursery place is absurd - and means yes, their life looks rather ordinary!

As I have said - these people are not badly off, you seem to be implying they’re on the breadline - they’re just not ‘rich’ in the way one would
conventionally define it - because they cannot afford the trappings of that kind of lifestyle.

@MidnightPatrol As for ‘where is the rest of the money spent’ - well my nursery is £2,300 a month and I get zero free hours or tax free childcare. So that’s more than half gone, immediately.

Childcare is only for a few years.

So who knows what's happening to the extra money before and after those years...