Middle earners punished

[Eucalyptus321]

I am feeling so disheartened and frustrated by how middle earners are constantly suffering at the hands of ridiculous government priorities. My husband and I have a greater household income than other families we know but have less cash in hand due to increased taxes coupled with the fact we receive zero benefits like child benefit or tax free childcare etc. ZERO. If they want middle earners to fund the country thought tax then at least support us with childcare costs. It’s a joke that two parents earning £99k each get childcare funding but parents with one £101k salary and one £25k salary receive nothing. I just need to speak to people who understand the burden of raising a family amidst the current financial climate and then the potential of further tax rises!

Don’t think you quite ‘get it all’ if you don’t work.

indont know your field but it’s clearly not very lucrative if you had to stay for years to find your earnings capped at 35k. Surely you went into this eyes open?

A lot of companies and career paths haven’t kept up with inflation. Perhaps 20 years ago, 30k would have been a good salary, and a career worth studying for. It’s now not enough to get by.

I said:

“The problem is that once you earn over £100k you don’t get any subsidiaries such as the tax free childcare or free hours (apart from 15 hours for over 3’s) and you end up subsidising everyone else as the nurseries have put their fees up dramatically to cover the shortfall in Government funding. With your household income, your fees would be subsidised.”

Your response was that your nursery fees were less than half of what some of my colleagues are paying. Now you have admitted that wasn’t for a non-subsidised place.

I don’t need to move anywhere. My children are in secondary school. I was referring to my colleagues who use nurseries in central London.

Please note that my post say that my mortgage was interest only only during the years DS was in nursery. It went into capital repayment as soon as he was out of nursery and after that every money not used at the end of the month was allocated to do over payments. We caught up on capital repayment predicted figures eventually.

I agree however that you need to be VERY disciplined about your finances or have some robust repayment vehicles in place for you not to land yourself in trouble.

Is this the help to save accounts? We had those, and have been around for a while (ours were 2021-2025). To get the full amount you have to may £50 per month in and not withdraw anything for four years (you do get part of the bonus payment after 2 years) so its very much a long term thing. It was great to have and we made the most of them but even with them we would have been much better off overall if we had never been on UC. Luckily we earn too much for UC now on average incomes, but still better off than the UC days.

You're right and what's shocking is that the median income is 31kpa.

But if you’ve been paid £30k for the last 10 years, I’m not sure you can beat the drum of unfairness because you’re accepting that rate of pay rather than looking at a career change

How old is your son? Because I’m unclear if that’s a viable option now.

to love to IO you need either a repayment vehicle which most don’t have, as it’s a lump sum of the outstanding mortgage balance in its entirety OR take a forbearance measure which is a declaration you can’t pay your mortgage. Plus you’ll have paid back 0 capital balance.

They earned the money to pay for their house (it would have been taxed) they have paid stamp Duty tax and now … oh let’s make them pay more as they’re better at being more wealthy than other people - and then the poorer people cheer that the rich have to pay more and then to rich leave the country . It’s a race to the bottom isn’t it ok England! 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿

This. The removal of the two child limit will help working people with more than 2 children not "scroungers" who will still be capped.

It’s not that easy to just ‘change career’, especially when you have spent money and time training for something. What should be happening is that pay should be increasing to keep up with inflation.

I also thought about changing career at one point, everything I wanted to do required training (and that costs) as well as potentially time off to study for qualifications. After paying a large sum for uni the first time around, I didn’t quite have the funds to do it again surprisingly!

And yet ppl in their sixties are frequently told to do just that on here because of the state pension age rise, especially if they work a manual job. One rule for one.....................

According to ONS data, if you earn over £40k pa you are in the top 20% of earners in the U.K, if you earn over around £70k you are in the top 10% so categorising yourself as a ‘middle earner” is actually quite inaccurate. I don’t think many people are aware of this.

That said, I do think that it being based on individual and not combined income must result in disparity & people being excluded when their peers are not.

Interesting that you describe people in this wage bracket as "not particularly rich". I must be simply impoverished by your standards.

I think if you can change careers to better your life and earn more, then great. That’s just not the reality for many people, regardless of age. It’s not impossible but it’s definitely not as easy as ‘just change careers’.

How is it "greedy" to want to keep more of your own money? Or to be a bit pissed at paying for childchare benefits funded via general taxation that others receive that you don't. If everyone got it it would be fairer.

If you and your EU partner lived here, did he not get settled status?

There's nothing aresholy at all about Brexit. Now your DP gets treated fairly like the rest of the world if they want to move here. Everyone is treated equal.

There's the family visa option for a long-term stay. There's always the visa free holiday option for short stays. You definitely are allowed to visit.

Sure, they should be, but when they aren’t. The choice is yours.

I had to career change from academic to finance

I think it's a bit patronising to suggest that those who earn less don't understand the issues.

Your childcare costs are temporary. You will be better off in the long run.

I am from a teaching background and now an education manager in LA. I don't mind paying my fair share of tax to support the essentials services I work with which are crumbling after years of underfunding. I'm surprised you don't see this as a teacher. Most of the schools I work with are on their knees, staff are breaking, kids are breaking. Your children will go into that system after the short few years you pay childcare for.

I have kids who are absolutely traumatised after going through mess that the current school system is; parents who are old and ill and I know will be stuck in a trolley for 2 days in A&E if they have a fall; so many colleagues in education struggling with mental health because of the pressure. Not to mention the number of homeless people I walk past in town.

I would much rather pay a bit more tax and see some of these things improve.

In which case there are two personal allowances etc.

I agree. Sometimes the deductions on my payslips are horrendous, I get more deducted than some people earn per month. And it’s frustrating because no matter how well I do at work, less and less of my money gets invested back into my life.

I get what you’re saying. I moved abroad and am paid much more for my profession. But I also realise that I am lucky and privileged to be able to carry on doing something I love and studied hard for, and be paid well for it now I don’t live in the U.K. - I would be earning 1/3 of what I do now if I was still there.

I think the same goes for switching careers, it’s just not doable for everyone. Maybe eventually, but when you are in throes of bringing up a family for example, it may not be.

Not everyone has the time, money or motivation to start over, and I don’t blame them. It’s not like they ever went into their careers knowing it would stay stagnant.

It's greedy if you still expect your children to go to a decent school, have access to decent healthcare, live in a country with good infrastructure etc.
Good services don't come for free. It's greedy to expect access to these things whilst keeping all your earnings for spends.

🤣

Millions of working, tax-paying people get child benefit and help with childcare.