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

Immigration is always the elephant is the room. Economists will say it’s a net positive but it’s hard to feel that way when you can’t access housing, education or healthcare.

In Ireland people will say oh but Irish people don’t want to do X and Y jobs. And that is probably true, but only to a point. I’m sure more Irish people would be happy to take lower wage jobs if they were guaranteed council housing, wage supports etc.

(China despite having a very different economy and attitude has about the same levels of youth unemployment as the UK and similar issues with young people who worked very hard for.middle class lifestyles instead making do in low paid, informal jobs like delivery drivers for which they are overqualified for.) India, again a very different economy is also struggling with youth unemployment and disatisfaction. So is Japan despite having a different economy and different attitude to immigration etc.

It's odd because if anything rising ages globally should be creating a shortage in young workers. But it's almost like the opposite is happening. And none of the local issues people have explain it because it's happening in countries that are so different in their policies.

thats a really good point, and I think is missing from the conversations about inheritance tax, land value tax etc where the general line is "we worked really hard for this and want to be able.to leave it for our children/help our children". And I always think yes, but is that what your children actually want or would they rather have the opportunity to make their own success. It's very dispiriting to know that no matter how hard you work at university etc the biggest impact on your future comfort levels is whether and how much you are helped by the generations above you. It sucks if you are in the no help group and in the help.group

the biggest difference for us vs some of our old neighbours (we had to move areas) was family support as opposed to jobs/earnings. As mentioned Im a 2nd gen immigrant as is DH, there wasn’t any gps money/property help for my parents or us. We may benefit upon their deaths but the real push up is help when you are starting out in life.

I don’t think one party can change things, we need cross consensus policies because things will take time.

People are so funny with this 'middle class' thing. There are only 2 classes - working class and non-working class, or bourgeoisie - a social class that owns capital (in the form of money, means of production, land, patents, or other property) and exists on income derived from this ownership, including profits from entrepreneurial activity.

If you have to get up in the morning and work, you are working class, if you live off your capital, you are bourgeoise, or capitalist, end of. Even if you are a top surgeon - you are working class or, as Lenin said ' mental labour proletarian'. What 'middle class' - you are dicking around in guts and blood and can be hauled in front of an NHS shitty manager for bollocking - what middle class?

I hope this helps to answer your question about why you can't afford things. I can't either. But I don't hanker after non-existent notions, which helps me enormously.

Good luck with the three bedroomed house for £275k. Most folk can't afford a family meal out once a week in a decent restaurant.

Irrelevant but I honestly cannot imagine wanting to be/or wanting to have a SAHP. Yes handy over the preschool years. But I would hate to be financially dependent for the rest of my life on someone else and on the other side I’d be so resentful going out to work each day and being financially responsible for everyone while my SAHP dropped kids off at school and then pottered

I agree. 10 years ago, if I thought my household income would be £150,000 before tax, etc, I'd have assumed our family would be able to live a very comfortable life without worrying about normal living costs such as food, utilities, etc, and 1x 2 week holiday abroad to, eg, Greece..b&b not AI.

The reality is far different. Yes, we have more than many, and we're grateful for that, but it's not the fortune I thought it would be.

It doesn't go that far anymore and we still have to budget.

15 years ago £130K would've bought us a nice 3 bed semi where we live. Those same houses now sell for £450K+

It sucks, tbh, years of working upto 17hr days building up a business and whilst we are doing OK, we're far from rich (10+yrs ago, I thought that kind of income qualified you as rich).

I don't know the answer, though. You can't keep upping the tax of those on 100-300K as what's the incentive to earn more when half goes on tax?
Especially knowing that the actual wealthy ones on 7 figures or family money are rich enough to legally hide it and probably don't pay that much more in tax than they would on much less.

Good point comrade lol

What you describe is an extremely comfortable life. I would describe myself as ok, could do with a bit more slack. So yeah it is is unachievable but comfort ++

I think UK society will improve once the misguided obsession of class breaks down.

Standard of living in the UK is declining yes, we are starting to see the next generation as having a lower standard of living than previous which hasn’t happened in living memory.

Taking ourselves out of the EU was a dreadful idea, give it another 10 years and we will really start to see why.

We have exam year teens, our advice to them is to look to live outside the UK. It’s not as difficult perhaps for them (dual EU passports) perhaps but almost anyone can move if you are young and able and want to start and continue your adult life in another country, might take a few years, even a decade but it’s possible. Having another language, a solid education and a medical record that passes immigration. Not saying that other countries don’t have some issues but on probability because of our idiotic referendum we are guessing the odds are worse in UK than some other places.

I guess what I’m trying to say if more people were happy to accept an 80s middle class style lifestyle, many people would afford that.

This. I had a middle class lifestyle growing up the 80s/90s. Parents were a teacher & a degree educated engineer & we lived in a 4 bed detached house in an ordinary town. We had music lessons and were comfortably off.

Holidays were in cornwall, in self catered. We only ate out once a week on holiday, not year round!

People were not driving round in huge expensive brand cars financing new car depreciation every 4 years. Lots of families we knew had two cars, my parents included, but they were older and more modest brands - fords, VWs, renaults, vauxhalls etc were common. A bmw/audi/mercedes/jaguar was a luxury and no one had these, or leather seats etc. People did not buy on finance so much, that availability of loan finance has given car manufacturers freedom to push up car prices where before they were constrained by affordability.

People were not living in show home style decor! Homes were clean and neat/pleasant, but it was big deal to renovate and posh new kitchens/bathrooms were rare. People did not spend on fancy light fittings & Quooker taps and the like.

We didnt eat out or get takeaways often and most people had far fewer clothes, less beauty products and spent less money on "grooming".

I thought camping in France was the epitome of middle class-dom? It certainly was when we did it as kids.

Absolutely.

There's only 2 classes - the working class and capital class

I must be same age as you. We didn’t have many of the items on this list back then - we felt decidedly middle class (mum was a bit “posh).

We went out for family meals every couple of months. Venue was the service station at the nearby M1.

I do think that it is not wrong to want nice holidays and full social lives. Just maybe we need to be a bit more realistic.

That is a v unMNs view

I live basically that lifestyle on less that the Op mentioned but I’m only able to do so because we bought out house 10 ish years ago. I couldn’t afford go buy my own house now and that thought is very sobering (Ireland).

Yes but lots of people are in both classes or in both classes at different times of their lives. There are plenty of people who have to work for a living but are slowly paying of their mortgage and at a certain point will reach a tipping point where they own more of their home than the bank. They will still need to work but now have a valuable asset. Likewise lots of people have pension funds through which they own stocks and shares and government debt. Even families not on "the housing ladder" might be expecting to inherit their grandparents or parents now valua homes at some point in the future. And possibly their parents/grandparents were hard working proud union members who shifted into the propertied class when they bought their council home and are now millionaires in terms of assets and think Thatcher is the best.

I do think we need to be more creative in terms of land taxes/wealth taxes. But one of the stocking points is people don't fit easily into categories of exploitative capital owner and exploited worker. Everyone's tied into the system in complicated ways and it shows in voting habits.

I consider our family to be middle class and comfortably off, your list is bonkers. Eating out once a week, running two cars, one stay at home parent, holiday abroad are all luxury things, not normal things, especially when your kids are small.

I'm using that income on just 1 person earning it, so with a sahp as mentioned in OP.

It would obviously go further if it was earnt between 2 people, especially if it was a fairly equal split.

Yep eating out a restaurant once a week? I spat my tea out on that.

I have lived comfortably all my life and never had more than £15k a year, usually <£10k. Under whatever tax threshold was in place at the time.

I have always had a car, a holiday if I wanted one..though I do hate holidays abroad in summer, and I own my house because I live in a cheap area. Rural, surrounded by hills and walks , river to fish, forests to meander through, tens of thousands of open acres seen from my window. 4 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms and cost 55K in 2017. Paid in full as I won’t have debt.

Children got to have whatever hobbies they wanted..usually involved in hunting, shooting , fishing and football or rugby,… Scouts, too.
Comfortably is subjective. I would never dream of spending thousands on a holiday, or hundreds on a meal. That would be very uncomfortable for me.

No wonder people complain about the cost of living if that list is an expectation essential to comfort.

I can't see how these numbers stack up.

I wouldn’t say we’re particularly well off and we don’t earn anyway near 100k, but we do have a decent life. We live in a 4 bed detached life with a 100k mortgage. I’m a nurse and DP works in the third sector. We’ve got a teenager and one on the way. We run two cars, nothing luxury but decent cars. We manage at least one holiday abroad every year and something like centreparcs in autumn/spring. We do most of our food shopping on Ocado and in M&S because I think it’s decently priced and very good quality.

I think people get confused and think that historically the middle class means average people.

it never has. Class is a pyramid. There’s a tiny amount of super wealthy at the top, then a larger but still small amount of people in the middle, and then at the bottom is a large amount of poor people.

that’s what the middle class has always meant — the people in the middle of the pyramid.

the middle class have always been much more well off than the average person.

things improved a bit after ww2 with greater social mobility and increased welfare, but now capitalism has gone completely out of control and everyone except the very rich are suffering.

I think people need to get their heads around the fact that the system wasn’t set up for us to achieve these things in the first place.