Absolutely rinsed in this budget - almost £1k a year worse off.

[Mushroo]

Honestly in despair at this government. On a very high level calc, we are so much worse off!

We both pay a lot into pensions, so the NI change is about £700 a year worse off.

We have an EV car, so based on our 4k a year mileage, it’s about £120 a year. (Although how it will be enforced I have no idea).

Stagnating tax thresholds, probably about £100 a year between us.

Council tax F house (4 bed end terrace, not a mansion, needs renovating). So risk of revaluation after having paid a fortune in stamp duty. We didn’t get first time buyer stamp duty relief because we bought about 2 years too early, and we moved before Covid so no relief there either. So overall we’ve paid about £30k in stamp duty already over our lifetime.

Weve already had the private school hit (which is a separate debate and we’ve accepted that) but wow, we are just being kicked on all sides.

We are classic ‘middle earners’ - earn about £70k each, but have mahoosive mortgage and pay over £2k a month in nursery fees already.

Every measure just seems to have a negative effect on our lifestyle, which is ‘comfortable’ but increasingly squeezed.

Pensions salary sacrifice mostly affect employers NIC so not sure how that will cost you. Yes 2% employees NIC - but that won’t be much. For it to be £700 you have to be paying in £35k a year which seems a lot, I mean if you can afford £35k a year salary sacrifice into pension you must have loads of spare cash??

Is house worth £2m?
Ev cars I guess as no road tax so clearly this was coming.

Because so many children are living in absolute poverty. Parents will still have the children because the reality is that a lot of people who live on benefits are there because they are from disadvantaged families and are uneducated. Is it right that those children suffer for the choices of their parents and the cycle continues. The real answer though is to tax millionaire and billionaire wealth in this country - none of the parties apart from the Green Party will even consider it though. I wonder why...

Oh my word...get the hanky out and dab your nose, dry your eyes. However will you cope with so much going for you. Damn...you might have to buy bottom-shelf Waitrose produce.

Honestly...

So many more people are going to be affected by the mansion tax indirectly.

All homes in F,G and H are to be revalued. Those worth over £2m will be affected by mansion tax. Those which are in the wrong band (and there will be a LOT given that houses are banded based on 1991 values) will be put into the correct band. As a result, even if the council tax values remained the same (which they won't because these are set locally), then a very large number of homes will see an increase in their council tax bill.

Yeah all of those things are great bar the NHS, would be great if looking after scrounger's kids was opt in though. Same with disability, let people opt out on the condition they will never be able to claim for themselves once opted out. It's a shame for people with disabilities that actually stop them from working but they can complain to the ADHDers.

OP, this is MN. If you are anywhere on the scale other than the breadline, you will be absolutely annihilated. And if you dare complain about getting by on your income, you will be told to ‘read the room’, ‘check your privilege’ and all the other cliches.

Living in a country where resentment and hostility toward high earners, big houses, and anyone with more is so strong can be exhausting. Life’s too short to put up with this petty, jealous, and frankly unsettling U.K. attitude.

OP, think about whether your job, skills, and qualifications, along with those of other adults in your family, are transferable. Then consider the idea of moving abroad, leaving everything here behind, and researching if there are countries and companies offering opportunities and advantages you can’t find here.

We like many other employers, passed over the saving of salary sacrifice to our employees - they will wholly feel the hit - it will make no difference to many employers who saw salary sacrifice as solely a benefit for our employees.

You really have assumed a lot with your ridiculous statement as none of it is true. I actually have many friends who earn way over 100k and funny they don’t mention luck, they talk about hard work and dedication to their job which is the ongoing and I respect them for that greatly. But good luck in finding more of the “lucky” ones on to listen to on the TV

OP, this is MN. If you are anywhere on the scale other than the breadline, you will be absolutely annihilated. And if you dare complain about getting by on your income, you will be told to ‘read the room’, ‘check your privilege’ and all the other cliches

Do you agree with the OP that she has been rinsed by this budget then?

Fair enough to feel the sting of paying additional taxes, but use the right words.
It's people on high incomes saying they are struggling or feeling rinsed the irks most of the people on average incomes.

THANK YOU!!

This is the 2nd post I've seen today from someone claiming to be a middle earner when they're actually earning £140,000 a year...reality check much?

Part of the problem is, despite the high salaries, with private nursery fees and a big mortgage, this doesn't equate to a lavish lifestyle anymore.

I haven’t assumed anything - I’ve given my opinion based on my experience. You’ve misread and misquoted that, perhaps deliberately.

Yep. It’s incredibly hard to imagine that being the case but it definitely is. Our household income is ten grand less and we are very frugal indeed. Literally no luxuries, yellow sticker items, charity shop and Vinted clothes, no holidays abroad.

diddums

Maybe we need to question why £140k feels like the squeezed middle to those that are living it.

Of course you have. It’s quite clear you assumed I didn’t mix with successful people and that I should brush up on my comprehension skills. You said it. There’s no misquote

but we absolutely watch every single penny and £84 a month is a lot to us!

In this case OP, I suggest you are living beyond your means.

I don't believe you. I bet your lifestyle allows you access to many things that others would consider luxuries.

I’m talking about woman who are raped by husband/partner. More common than you think.

You earn 130K and can't afford good food, new clothes and a holiday?
What are your outgoing? Do you have a massive house, lots of debt?
Do you ever imagine how most of the country are managing when your income is so high?

Because they have limited life experience out of their well off comfortable bubble? Because they don't understand statistics? Because they know they are in the top 10% but prefer to claim to be a middle earner to get engagement on social media platforms?

Because they don't mix with people on actual middle incomes? Because they believe the bullshit narrative that the right wing media parrot?

Our household income is a little bit more than that and we are in no sense squeezed.

Your posts show such naivety. I worked my way up the ladder and did really well. I was lucky that my parents believed in the value of education and supported that. I was lucky that I didn't have any additional needs that were unmet. I was lucky that my parents could afford to financially support me through university. I was lucky that I genetically had enough academic ability to pass exams. If you don't recognise the luck required to achieve in today's society then you have spent too long in the middle classes. Can I suggest doing some voluntary work at a food bank as it would really aid you in understanding. For what it's worth I was raised with the whole "anyone can achieve anything if they work hard enough" adage, and life has shown me that it's simply not true.

We are a higher-earning household (c. £400k pa) and I am - up to a point - happy to pay tax. My hesitancy is because, despite paying lots of IT and other taxes (e.g. last year's household tax bill was well into 6 figures), our public services are still complete and utter shite. We have to use private GP's to fit around our work, locally the NHS hospital is not fit for purpose, you'll probably find the NHS dentist riding into town on a unicorn that shits diamonds, and (in our case) you'll have to take the LA to a Tribunal to obtain anything like acceptable support or education for our disabled DC, because they are happy to ignore their legal responsibilities. Oh and the whole "go private" mantra is pointless, because there is no private pediatric medicine in the UK outside London.

Where is the plan to reduce spending? Or to cut our trillions of unfunded public sector pension liability? Why are people like us, who pay and contribute and work hard and claim nothing, being rinsed for even more, just to shovel the money at welfare and debt interest, and then insulted for "complaining about tax" when suggesting that our lot is not an entirely happy one?

Even if I was paying tax at 20%, or paying none at all, I would struggle to accept that waiting 6 weeks for 10 minutes with a dismissive locum GP was a reasonable provision of primary care, or that a cancer patient waiting 16 hours in a corridor was anything other than barbaric and unacceptable. As a dual additional rate taxpayer household chucking >£10k into the public purse every month, it's absolutely insane.