To think that a comfortable middle class existence is basically unattainable for the vast majority of people.

[joelm1776]

I was thinking today about how much someone would actually need to earn per year in order to have a traditionally financially comfortable middle class existence. This, to me, means having a family one parent being able to look after the kids, being financially secure and having some pleasures in one's life on a regular basis but not necessarily any extravagant pleasures ie. not having multiple holidays a year, or luxury items or fine dining meals out. I know these things are fairly subjective, but I would like to think that my judgements here are quite middle of the road. I'll show you my working:

2 parents and 2 child household

1. £17,000 per year in mortgage payments for a 3 bedroom house (average price of a 3 bedroom house in the UK is about £275,0000)
2. £8,300 per year in supermarket shopping
3. £5,500 rough estimate for running 2 cars per year (one for commuting one for short journeys) including fuel, tax, MOT, insurance and maintenance.
4. £5,000 utilities, internet and council tax for 3 bedroom house
5. £1,000 per year on clothing (£20 per person per month)
6. £2,500 repairs and long term replacement fund for house.
7. £2,000 student debt
8. £6,000 one family meal out at a mid-range restaurant per week
9. £1400 2 night out for drinks with friends per month for each parent.
10. £3,000 one week family holiday to mainland European destination per year.
11. £1,500 pocket money for kids
12. £1,200 sports clubs and gyms memberships
13. £1,500 general household items excluding clothing and food
14. £2250 large purchase fund (e.g two cars lasting 15 years each, 4 smartphones lasting 5 years each etc)
15. £2,000 saved for other contingencies

Total = £60150 net + 7.5% saved as a pension = aprox £64650
Total gross = £94000

so basically you need to earn £100K even if you don't live in London, and only the top 5% of uk earners earn around this amount and most of those people probably work in London.

I know the the mortgage figure ignores the fact that people often have equity from other properties, but that makes the calculation a bit too complex

I agree - DH and I are older and have individually benefited from the property boom in the 90s/00’s and free uni/no student debt etc. We have had a comfortable M/c lifestyle (5star family hols, 2 bmws, large house, private school, and now a 2nd city home to accommodate DH work/DC at uni) on mainly one income since having children, but no inheritances or family help financially as our families were not middle class. My DH works pretty much every hour, and has done so all his working life, as did I before kids (mine are SEN, so that didn’t stop, LOL).

Nursery fees were affordable 15 years ago. I bought my first property with a mortgage based on the flat being 4x salary (which was not great, I was 27/28, and a grad secretary on £27k pa in the late 1990s); the deposit was £4.2k so quick bank loan gave me the money, no savings required. Today, the very same flat I bought is on the market at 22x the average salary (which is £32k today) and requires a minimum £35k/5% deposit. How are people expected to get that sort of money without inheritances or gifts from family - ie by only years of saving on extortionate rents?

BUT I know that lots of people work the same sorts of hours as my DH, for a lot less money than DH now gets paid after 35 years; a lot of people earn good money but it is eaten up with childcare costs, student loans, mortgages that doubled a few years ago, energy bills that just keep rising. I cannot see how people in my kids’ generation will get to achieve a similar standard of living unless ours makes sacrifices to support them. We’ll be downsizing upon retirement to give them the money to buy first homes, because there is no way they will be able to without us setting them up. Fortunately, we have no great desire to go cruising or fritter our money away, and we’re happy to pass it to the kids before we die so we can see they are settled and happy during our lifetimes, but many in my generation just don’t seem willing to pass it down.

Older generations need to step up and help where they can, I’m afraid. And something major needs to be done about wage erosion - which take government action.

So you want to go to Nandos every day? I think that the sense of entitlement has grown with each successive generation.

I think what comes out in these conversations is that some people grew up with very high earning parents and didn't realise because they were surrounded by people who were the same so it felt normal.
If someone growing up in the 1980s was having annual family holidays abroad, eating out every week, their family had two cars, owned a nice house in a nice area it would have felt normal to them, but probably their parents were in the top 5% of earners as OP has calculated they would need to be now.

There is a big issue with house prices and the amount of time people spend in debt to buy their homes compared to the past. But I think the OP is comparing the present to a past that never existed and that doesn't really shed any light on anything.

110k a year joint income here, mostly earned by DH, I do a small office job 15 hours a week flexi around our child.

it is NOT the magical number we thought it was!

I’ve posted about this before only to be beaten down and called spoilt, out of touch and ungrateful….

but honestly it feels REALLY unfair, we pay massive amounts of tax and barely anything works in our area, so we pay extra for things ie private healthcare and dental.

we afford two holidays away each year, but I have to actively save money for those.

we can’t afford a new car!

it feels so unfair as DH grew up on a council estate, I grew up in social housing, we did everything right! Worked hard at school, went to university acquired all the debt, had no foreign holidays in our 20s because we wanted to save and rent, honestly it was a slog. Now we’re where we wanted to be, DH in the top earners catagory and the OP is correct! Middle class just doesn’t exist anymore. We are not living it.

would leave UK if the older generation in our families weren’t in poor health.

As others have said there's a difference between class and a comfortable lifestyle. I know several people who have a very comfortable lifestyle with expensive cars, holidays, theme park trips for their children and large houses but no way are they middle class. Nothing wrong with that, well done them that they have worked hard, often in their own trade type businesses, and can give their children maybe what they didn't receive in their own childhood.

I would argue that actually if you do have your own business, by using a good accountant, you can certainly achieve a more affluent lifestyle than someone on PAYE. You can claim all sorts of allowances which significantly reduce your tax bill. Also by paying yourself a small salary and supplementing your income by paying yourself dividends this avoids paying high National Insurance bills too.

Both my husband and I had fathers who were company directors for their own businesses. My husband and his brother both went to very good public schools - I passed the 11+ and went to a good all girls grammar school. We both had middle class childhoods - e.g. having telephones and cars before the majority of people in those days. We had holidays abroad, comfortable houses and were encouraged to appreciate and engage in cultural activities and the arts.

However both father-in-law and my father were from poor backgrounds with a very large number of siblings - through hard work and enterprise they got themselves away from their challenging beginnings. They wanted better for their children and were determined to give us both the stepping stones to achieve it.

Because we grew up in the times before everything became so expensive, we pretty much achieved our comfortable lifestyle on pretty average earning jobs - my husband in public sector management and me in various jobs - banking and latterly in education. We have decent pensions and so are still comfortable in retirement.

We try and help our only child and her little family where we can. Her husband has a very good job in banking middle management and previously my daughter was also middle management in a very stressful job for an American insurance company. No way are they as comfortable as we were, because exactly of the circumstances the Opening Poster describes. Since having the children my daughter has left her stressful job and gone part time, doing unsocial hours so work doesn't impact her time with the children. This has been invaluable during the holidays and we've all had a wonderful time together. But has she changed class now as her job is in a supermarket?!!!!! Are her family still middle class because of her husband's job and earnings or not because of her job?

So we gladly pay for days out, pocket money for the children, and other treats. I also passed on some inheritance from my father to enable them to put down a decent deposit on a house. We also pay for extension activities for the grandchildren, e.g. science club and residential trips.

Their house is a 3 bed semi, not the large detached we have. I think they have a fairly comfortable lifestyle with a bit of supplementation from us - but are they middle class? If you determine being middle-class by the size of their house, then obviously not. Maybe class is an outdated construct (apart from the aristocracy and Royals) and it's not helpful to categorise people by class any more. But of course the point of this thread about the difficulty of achieving a comfortable lifestyle absolutely holds good.

However as Oscar Wilde would say, knowing 'the price of everything and the value of nothing' there's more to a comfortable lifestyle than just income alone -so many things - like modern medicine, IT, housing standards for the majority and benefits are so much better now than in the past.

I disagree. I know many families where both parents were teachers lived exactly this lifestyle. And the houses are worth £1m+ now too. Laughable that today’s teachers could afford that.

Where would you get a one-week holiday in mainland Europe in half-decent accommodation for 4 people for less than £3000?!

You can find quite a few middle class areas with houses in this price range in Scotland.

Hah no! See my earlier points. I don't even own one car let alone two but where we are has decent public transport so don't judge people who do want/need one or two cars.

It was really that people don't so much compared their lives with the lives of people in other countries. Theu compare it with their or their parents past quality of life. That's much more healthy. Talking about India feels a bit like talking about "starving children in Africa" when someone complains. Of course remembering to be grateful for what you have is important but it's patronising to those countries more than anything. And India itself has changed a lot too, should they be comparing themselves to Bangladesh per capita income?

Perhaps the issue is globalisation. We now live in a global economy. Young people are complaining that they have been let down as their standard of living is going down in comparison to previous generations. But the standard of living globally is increasing, though.

I grew up in a now grotty large industrial town. My mother was from a wealthy family fallen on hard times. My father ex military but a family of farmers. There were four DC and absolutely nowhere to go. But we had a very smart town to the south and another to the north. We learnt to drive early and got the hell out of there most weekends. We had good schools looking back and sports facilities, all gone now.

Mass immigration and globalisation have driven down wages. If the jobs market improves, net immigration will rise again.

No one wants to go to Nando’s daily 🙄 They would like secure & affordable housing though, many forget how many families lived in council homes in the 70s & 80s.

Headteachers could do that today. As could teachers in Private schools. The average teachers salary today is about 51,000 so two teachers earning together would be on over 100,000 which is a decent income that gets you a lot. Maybe not everything the OP lists but as discussed it's not that realistic. Of course, newly qualified teachers earn less substantially but then they are less likely to be at the having a young family stage, and if they are, it's a matter of forgoing some luxuries.

I think teachers salaries are one example where there has been a real term decrease in salary since the 1980s. It's an undervalued profession. But even in the 1980s unless your teacher friends were high earning teachers (head and deputy head) or had money from elsewhere (family inheritance, investments whatever) they would have been unusual to have had all the things the OP listed.

If you take the 1980s as an example, cheap package holidays were popular and you could go abroad much more cheaply than in the 1960s. But the cheap package holidays people remember are the equivalent of the cheap.package holidays we have today and that's not what the OP is thinking of. (That's the flipside to the people misremembering how rich their parents were. We also remember holidays leas critically so a week in Benindorm would have felt like an exotic paradise at 9 years old but cheap/tacky/the hotel room was dirty at 39 years old).
Overall people go to Europe more frequently these days and take more holidays abroad a year than in the 1980s or 1990s https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/leisureandtourism/articles/holidaysinthe1990sandnow/2017-08-07

10 million people have entered the UK since 2000. That won't have helped people's chances of social housing. Labour won't even build enough social housing to cover the increase in the population due to year-on-year immigration.

@dustabsorberyou think pensioners would be happy with the Indian pension system?!

Define half decent accommodation?
Because people are comparing the present to their childhoods and childhood holidays. But I can remember the first flight I ever took and it was when I was nine going to Cyprus. I remember that holiday as so.amazing. It was like a wonderland. But speaking with my parents they remember it differently. They really liked the food (which I missed out on as I lived on burgers) but the accomodation was cheap accomodation not palatial.

Your expectations and the things you notice as an adult are different to as a child. And children are easily impressed by eg Butlins. You can easily find accomodation that 9 year old you would consider half decent for less than 3000. Grown up you would notice the lack of working air con, the dust under the bed, etc etc.

These are bonkers. we earn just over 61k net (we both work FT) and basically don't have to constantly check our accounts, the kids (4 and 6) do 2 clubs each. We have one week away UK and multiple weekends away (Europe). Go out for dinner and cafes whenever we fancy, probably dinner once a month (Harvester costs about £75 for the 4 of us) and café weekly.

Food shopping is about £70 a week, if I wanted a girls night out I would just have it. No idea how much I spend on clothes etc, I mainly buy on vinted/charity shops but that is for the sustainability not the price.

We have one car that is old old but only has 40000 miles on it, bought outright second hand.

We only have about 2k in savings, we have a credit card but use it for big purchases and then pay it off... our mortgage is cheap that is the big factor. My half of the bills (mortgage utilitys etc.) is £660 I save a little bit of my wage so does my husband, the rest we just enjoy.

Agree with this, I think it’s been a long time since upper middle class families usually has a parent at home. I grew up in an affluent area and had (and have) much more than you’re describing but it was and is really contingent on 2 people earning £100k +.

@AnonyMumAuDHD do you mind saying how old you are? I'm 60 and earnt more money at 34 than I would do now.

We married young 23/25 but had DC in our thirties.
I think the world's gone to pot.

The original net wage suggested I think is pretty bang on for MC lifestyle with 1 child in 2026. Add in another child and it would up another 6k a year possibly.

Although as many have commented each person to their own in terms of how much each category gets.

Our expenditure is 66k a year with the 1, but our holidays are many weeks long and often far afield. Housing is also double the value than what’s suggested (300k would buy a misery in most places nowadays). But MC people often come from MC backgrounds with a chunk of deposit or more being offered for their property from family as early inheritance (I don’t think we know anyone in their 30s with this kind of property that hasn’t had help).The first wage in our house is to cover all this and second part time wage is for investments / new car / new kitchen / long term savings etc. We could not reasonably live on less than 48k without downsizing to a box.

It's just a goody intro to some goady comments about immigration.and globalisation. The thing is there are already a 1000 threads on Mumsnet about immigration levels and whether they should be higher or lower. It's not really relevant to this thread anyway.

There's an awful lot on there you assume folk will WANT not need.
Frankly gym membership would be wasted in our house. Dog walking is a major contribution to family fitness.
As would a family meal out EACH WEEK!! We'd only go for a special event, far far prefer homecooked and yes it is me cooking.

@Persephonia1966youre right, I should have ignored.

How do you think we’re going to pay fewer taxes when we’re barely managing to keep together basic infrastructure and public services on the taxes we do pay?

I was paying 33% basic tax when I started work. If anything we need to pay more taxes to be able to stay still. You might want to not have a functioning A&E department or police service when you need it, I’d prefer we had one.