To think that on higher incomes, having no money left often comes down to spending choices?

[ThatGoldZebra]

Sometimes when I hear what people are earning, I’m surprised when they say they have no money left at the end of the month.
I understand that everyone’s circumstances are different but at a certain income level it feels like spending choices and lifestyle play a big role. AIBU to think that?

Often people forget that those on high incomes have to pay out for everything. No taxpayer funded school meals, childcare etc. They are also paying out a huge proportion of their money in tax. 30 years ago, two consultants where I live in a decent part of the North-East could afford a huge detached home with land. Now, two consultants have just moved into a 3 bedroom standard house - the type a single average earner would have bought in the 90's.

It applies to pretty much everyone at every budget point.

There’s almost always something that someone could do / have done differently to put themselves in a better position at the end of the month. Where those lines are varies massively.

There’s also a bit that’s back to front in that some of the costs in higher earners budgets are bigger chunks and more fixed than those who routinely operate on lower incomes. Eg. Downsizing / moving to cut housing costs when you own is far more involved and has higher costs than doing the same when you rent.

@angelos02 but so do people on lower incomes than consultants. I lost my job during Covid and we still had to pay for all those things and didn't qualify for any help at all because my partner (we were not even married at the time) was raking in a huge £35k as a freelance journalist.

I completely agree.

There have been multiple threads on here about people struggling financially but paying £100 for a face cream.
But they think that is normal and a non luxury product.

And don’t get me started on the fact that their child HAS to go to private school for X, Y, Z reasons 🙈
Like these reasons don’t ever affect poor people’s children.

They genuinely think that they are hard done by but can’t fathom that some people struggle to afford sanitary products or genuinely struggle to buy a pot of sudocrem for their baby’s nappy rash.

I never get annoyed at people earning high but I do get annoyed with the idea that they are just as hard done by as people who are actually struggling to make ends meet.

It’s frustrating when it’s ’poor me’ knowing full well they choose to have a higher paying career.
They could easily go and get a job in Tesco or work PT and volunteer the rest of the week but they choose to continue earning high because they know they are financially better off.

I get what you’re saying, but stress is relative.

Just because someone earns more doesn’t mean they don’t feel pressure, their outgoings and responsibilities usually go up with it.

And on the “they could just go work in Tesco” point… why would they? Most people don’t work hard to build a career just to step down and earn less on purpose. Higher pay usually comes with bigger responsibilities, longer hours, and more pressure. Plus mortgages, kids, commitments, it’s not that simple to just opt out.

It’s a bit like saying you can’t complain about rainy weather because somewhere else there’s a hurricane. Both can be stressful in different ways, one doesn’t cancel the other out.

I do agree there’s a difference between real hardship and lifestyle pressure, and people shouldn’t lose sight of that. But dismissing someone’s stress completely just because someone else has it worse doesn’t really sit right either.
Everyone’s just dealing with their own version of normal.

Nice to see all the usual bingo card tropes on here.

My husband and I are in the higher tax bracket. Between us we earn around 130k pa. That gives us a decent take home, but we also do a big salary sacrifice for our pensions as we know by the time we get there the state pension will be worthless. We don’t have a “massive house”. We have a good sized 4 bed with enough extra space to accommodate our disabled daughter. If we had a smaller house, she would really struggle. We have to have a bigger car for the same reason. We can’t have “cheap” holidays either, ever tried finding a caravan for a wheelchair user? Camping is equally as difficult.

Insisting these things are a luxury because some people in our position can’t afford them is like saying having a house is a luxury because some people are homeless.

My daughter is off to university in a couple of years. The additional costs of this to us are eye watering. We’re looking for accommodation that suits her, there is nothing suitable in the private sector so after she leaves halls of residency in 2nd year we’ll have to try to buy a property for her.

With the cost of living going up and up, we are having to think twice about our choices. We haven’t taken a holiday in the last 3 years. We don’t spend lavishly and the last tub of mosturiser I bought was £14, and lasts about 6 months. I haven’t bought makeup since the 90s. My clothes are all from cheap stores or Amazon. When I go in to the office, I bring my own lunch.

There are some bits we can cut back on, but these are not big spends e.g streaming subscriptions, IT stuff etc. The only major cutbacks we could do would be to reduce our pensions and put less into the savings we have built up, which are to pay for my daughter’s future, or protect us from job loss.

With all of that said, I recognise the privilege I have. I understand there are a whole lot or reasons I am in this position and not all of them are down to me just working hard and making good choices. I’ve long said I have no idea how people who are on low incomes are coping with the price increases. But I don’t feel guilty for managing, nor for talking about having to tighten our belts. It’s our reality.

This is!

DH and I earn very well and have all the trappings of what is considered to be a “naice middle class life” as portrayed by the media.

It costs way, way more than even a high professional class salary to achieve that perceived middle class life.

there is such a disconnect and it exists at every level.

I understand, but OPs point is that many people CHOOSE these things.
To even consider spending £25 on a single commute is not something someone taking £2k a month would consider. That’s the point OP is making.

I disagree, people do understand that’s not what is your pocket but they don’t understand what a lifestyle costs.

We’ve grown up seeing TV show where a GP and a teacher have three children in private school and drive an SUV and live in a house in Clapham, or reading a book where a PT florist and a journalist have a second home in the country and shop at the local butcher/baker/candlestick maker; or flicking through magazines where hotels are £400 per night and a cushion is £100.

we’ve been conditioned to think these are normal and average and the truth is they’re not

You do realise people on lower incomes also pay for school meals and childcare?
Of course we know that higher earners pay more tax.

Agree with this!!!

I think as well people focus on the gross figure too much not the net. The difference between the net take home of someone on £50k and £100k is not double due to the insane tax rate, loss of childcare and often higher student loan. It’s also so dependent on things like family support not just financial but things like childcare. If you have family willing able to provide holiday and after school care you’re so much better off.

When (some) posters query people having multiple children and struggling to afford them, others often reply that the decision to have children might well have been made when things were easier financially.

I'm not saying it's the same, exactly, but there are parallels with people who chose where to live, both geographically and in terms of house type, their commute, where their kids would go to school etc when they had much higher disposable income. As costs have risen (for us all), that disposable income hasn't kept pace. Yes it's much easier to sell a house than get rid of your third child, but it's still not exactly a spur of the moment type choice. Nor is it straightforward to get rid of an expensive commute.

I don't disagree with the OP, as such, but I don't think all high earners are out there eating wild salmon at each meal and buying a new pony each week then crying poor.

But are those choices not exactly the spending choices the OP is referring to?

I had my first child at 28 back in 2010. I wasn't working, DH earned about £30k. We lived in a rented house. A friend of mine was gobsmacked that we could afford a baby. We weren't swimming in money, but I had no worries about affording things. The same friend used to complain about having very little money and I used to think we were in about the same position financially. Then we went shopping and she bought £90 curtains. I remember thinking there was no way I could afford to spend that much on curtains - it was way, way out of my budget. I think it was at that point that it struck me how friend and I were basically speaking two different languages around money. I think that's the issue across the board - expectations, beliefs, priorities, all inform how someone thinks about money and affects their ability to manage it.

OP has been vague about both the income level and spending she's talking about, so we may have to wait to see if she comes back. There are plenty of daft apeths who'll dismiss either commuting costs or the costs of living near work as lifestyle choices, with no further insight than that. Maybe she's one of them.

Neither are many people because of a lack of affordable housing. Many on just over minimum wage are paying more (% wise) for their cramped, damp, overcrowded rental than those that can afford a mortgage. Also that having children, or rather rule changes around childminding, what age they can walk home from school etc is now more expensive. Thirty years ago we had no bedroom tax, under occupancy rules and WTC, which meant coupled with every child matters and every disabled child matters, life was better. There was a few names who agreed with austerity on the thread about a downstairs toilet, declaring they'd never contemplate a house without a ensuite, family bathroom and downstairs toilet. Many haven't got a clue what life is like at the lower end and don't care, either.

Ive been helping out my daughter and son in law who say they are always struggling until i found out accidentally that they were bringing in 3x a month more than my income as a single person. They went on two foreign holidays last year whilst I couldnt afford to go anywhere. Needless to say I have withdrawn much of the extras I was getting for them

Obviously spending choices affect disposable income at all levels. When I worked in a school one family, as an example, were on very low income. One of children was in my class. She wore too-small boots in the height of summer and her brother wore wellies every day. Yet both reeked of cigarettes. That was a choice.

And of course, the lower income people who did have those things 25 or 30 years ago are much more likely to currently be in SH or even have afforded a mortgaged home than those on NMW or similar now. Pretty much everyone is worse off in real terms now than their income and decile equivalents a couple of decades back.

Within reason spending and earnings at all levels is a choice.

We can (in most circumstances) earn more if we really put our mind to it and we can (again in most circumstances) spend less if we really decided to cut back.

Most people don't want to though.

I will say though location makes a massive difference. 100k per annum in a small Northern town or even Birmingham is fuck loads by more than 100k in London.

Having children is still a choice.

On one level what you say is obviously right, OP.

However I think people can be a bit obtuse about applying this to situations on this board- you get threads where someone is struggling on a higher income in part because they've bought an expensive house or chosen private school and then found their financial situation has changed. Of course it's true that they wouldn't be struggling so much if they hadn't made those choices but it's not a particularly helpful thing to point out. Selling a house and taking your children out of school are big decisions and not things that can be put into effect overnight. People apparently taking pleasure in pointing out to an OP that her problems are the result of her own decisions remind me of the people who pop up on the Relationships board to ask the OP why she married and had children with such a horrible man- a fair question sometimes but a massively unhelpful thing to say always.

IME it's better not to post about finances here unless you're on the breadline because there's a proportion of posters who will never have any sympathy for someone with a higher gross income than they have, and the helpful answers tend to get lost among a sea of dicks.

It’s tricky. I live in the southeast. I was born here. I don’t want to move somewhere cheaper away from everyone I know. But this means my mortgage is high. I don’t live in an extravagant house, just a 3 bed semi. I can’t downsize here. So yes in theory I earn ok. If I lived somewhere else in the country with a mortgage half the size I’d have plenty of money. But I don’t 🤷🏻‍♀️