In not having much sympathy with a couple on £45k plus per year having some benefits cut?

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There is loads of this on the news just now about how "middle income" families will be having some child tax credits cut and might be paying more tax. They news are showing what to me looks like comfortable off families having to do with a bit less. Is this really so bad? I know an income of £45-£50k per year might not be much in central London but will keep you in style in parts of the north, but how bad will it be? So people might have to change jobs/give up the second car/holiday at home instead of Spain every year? SO WHAT? There are plenty of us living on less than £25k a year who have had to cut back since having kids and take this as a fact of life.

I know MN is made up of mostly middle earners and I'll get pelters for this, but I don't really care. Anyone I know on a middle income can afford to give up some things _ its called life.

not having much left I mean

What I mean is, we aspire to having a 3 bed semi, but a lot of people on this thread talk as if its a God-given right to have such a house, and doesn't mean you are quite well off.

yes fanjo when I was pg with dd we lived in a 2 bed flat with combined income of £40-£50k.

the reason we live in the house we do now is because we worked and saved our arses off overtime/extra hours 2 jobs etc to afford the deposit. granted we were helped a bit by equity from said flat.

I know it's not always possible to gat extra cash but working in the NHS as a "non essential" (CAMHS will no doubt be deemed non essential) i've already applied for the bank in 2 private hospitals and enquired about joining an agency. Will prob do a few night shifts here and there to get my face known so they'll pick me for temporary work over anyone else.

I'm not proud I'll drop back to staff nurse level from senior sister to earn some cash, work shifts/overtime whatever. We'll (hopefully) manage but i doubt we'll be living "in style"

minxofmancunia - but it is relative style compared to a LOT of people, and compared to how you lived before.

I am not saying you are going to have a millionaires lifestyle but relative to many you ARE living in style. If I could afford a mortgage on a £349k flat but didn't have much money over, I don't think I'd say I was not well off, I think I'd say I was well off but had chosen to spend most of my income on myproperty.

(sorry can't type too well, have injured shoulder so hand is numb)

maybe it's just a glass half-full thing. I am just always aware we have a lot more than others and would not ever claim not to be well off.

minx - I am a notherener too (admittedly expat now) but posters are generalising abiout house prices in the north being cheaper than the south. Statistically, they are. Of course, there will be pockets of areas (such as yours) where prices are on a par with SE prices but on average prices in the north are lower. People aren't being 'flat caps and whippets' nobby about it.

The bloody bankers have alot to answer for. And as for the government,well, atleast Robin Hood wore a mask!

maybe it's a matter of perspective - I consider myself well off.......I have a roof over my head, food in my fridge, clothes to wear, very little debt to worry about paying off.........

FWIW - to those saying 'the people with big mortgages can just sell up and downsize'. Can they ? In a market that's still pretty much on it's arse in most places, especially for higher value houses which have traditionlly always spent longer on the market (because of the smaller buyer pool), even before the bottom fell out of the market ? Who is going to buy these homes ?

very good point Nom - not always as simple as "just sell up and downsize"

Purepurple if your DH only pays 25% of his salary in outgoings then you are very lucky and pretty well off. We pay at least 2/3 of our income on rent and bills.

"a lot of people on this thread talk as if its a God-given right to have such a house, and doesn't mean you are quite well off."

Actually although I don't consider it to be anything to do with God, I think it is a perfectly reasonable aspiration for all families to be able to live in a property with 3 bedrooms and a decent amount of space.

The fact that there are families living in overcrowded accommodation doesn't mean that people living in modest homes (and a 3-bed semi is modest) should be considered to be "living in style" and thus fair game for having their standard of living slashed.

This kind of competitive pooring is so destructive - there are seriously rich people in this country getting bonuses every year that some of you won't earn in your entire working lives and here you are squabbling over Sky Plus and 3-bed semis and demanding that anyone who isn't totally fucking miserable should be made so by losing anything they can afford that isn't entirely necessary.

I hate these arguments - there is such an attitude problem to people earning 50k plus, like they are bathing in caviar or something. Washing their hair in Chardonnay. If you earn a lot, you probably work very hard and if that's your bag, great. What is the point in working all hours if you can't buy a bloody latte when you want one. Some of these threads just seem to want to bring those in poverty up and those on higher incomes down until we are all entitled to exactly the same things and experiences. IME most people on 50k plus have bigger houses and cars, and not the smaller luxury items like wiis or flat screen tellies. And vice versa.

I think there's a big difference whether one or both parent is working. If this is joint income for both parents then their child care costs will be enormous (particularly if they have more than one pre-school child) and I certainly don't think it's unreasonable for them to have some sort of tax relief on this cost.

My husband has a take home pay of £930 a month and I take home £600. The only other money we have coming in is £80 child benefit which I use for food, and £355 tax credits of which all goes on childcare.

Our mortgage on a 2 bed flat is £655 but we still have loads of disposable income a month and get to do everything we want to. I dont understand how someone with £45k wouldnt be able to manage.

Dh earns about 17k & I earn about 12k (part time)
We live in a small 3 bed semi in one of the cheapest areas for house prices. So no option for downgrading.

We don't get tax credits becuase both Kids are at school, they also overpaid us a few yrs ago so we are still paying it back.

We do get Disability living allowance for ds2 who is disabled BUT that only goes part way to covering additional costs incurred in raising a disabled child.

Most of our income is used up in Mortgage, bills our HUGE heating & water costs partly cos of ds2's disability.

The only luxury I think we COULD cut is SKY but TV is the one thing that ds2 enjoys so it would be a tough one. We don't have expensive holidays (last family holiday was 5 yrs ago)

We work fucking hard, juggling work, kids & home (like everybody else) just to provide the basics, without getting in to debt.

TBH if they tax us more & cut the DLA benefit we would be fucked!

LeninG - really hard to find out how much money goes into Treasury from taxation!! I found this from the Institute of Fiscal Studies but not sure it's what you were after.

Quite an interesting read though!

Re: booyhoo: "if your income 45K income is all tied up in a mortgage and these new cuts mean you will be short money then maybe it is a case of reducing your mortgage payments or downsizing."

Erm.. C. 55K here. I live in a 2-bed semi d in a pretty rough, urban area, 3 door ford fiesta, no holidays abroad apart from the money we spend on getting ds back to see family in Ireland (a fair whack, admittedly), supermarket clothes, no Waitrose or Starbucks and about £3K in savings to stave off disaster in the event of unemployment.

For our 'opulent' lifestyle , dh works 55 hours a week and I've done a 3 hour return trip for my commute.

I am less concerned about our ability to maintain our current lifestyle than the fact it is looking like, despite all our hard work and time spent gaining qualifications etc, we will never ever be able to afford a modest 3-bed family home. We don't drink cappucinos or have fancy footwear fetishes and we are managing fine.. but I certainly feel about those who assume we are kicking back in a luxury pad, whiling away the hours until our next trip abroad.

My brother & SIL do live the life OP describes but are closer to the 90k+ inc. bracket.

I accept that there will be a tax hit; whichever party was elected, it was coming.

Once the cuts have been made, I will need to do some sums to see whether I can afford to carry on as a p/t teacher.

We're both key workers, can't afford to live nearer to work, have commuting costs of £350-£450 a month, plus mortgage, plus childcare = v small amount left over at end of month, which presumably is the spare money that's going to disappear. We don't claim CTC but use childcare vouchers which are probably going to go.

Kids clothes bought on Ebay, we don't have holidays, eat out, smoke, drink, cars are old, but to afford to have children we've CHOSEN to have a very pared back life. My SIL/BIL earn less but have different circs. e.g. able to use family for childcare and claim CTC - they can afford holidays abroad. Think you have to see the whole picture before you rush to judge.

Please do remember some of us got extremely small homes at the height of the bubble as our 'step on the property ladder' that have depreciated wildly, especially those of us who bought in less desirable areas that were once considered 'up and coming'.

Bear in mind that for the LibDems, far from taking a '5% pay cut' (for the cabinet ministers), they have effectively doubled their salaries by joining the coalition - as regular MPs, Nick Clegg etc would have earned about 65k, they are now on 130k.

And as a result of their insistence on the 10k allowance, and the resulting NI rise to pay for it, calculations say that we as a family will pay more tax to the tune of £1200. That's before any tax credit/child benefit cuts or VAT rises.

I posted this on Lenin's thread - but just for general interest

Figures from HMRC here show that the

Top 1% of earners pay 23.1% of all income tax
Top 5% pay 42.3% of all income tax
Top 10% pay 53% of all income tax
Top 25% pay 71% of all income tax
Top 50% pay 88.5% of all income tax

I am surprised to learn that to get into the TOP 10% of earners in this country, you just have to earn £49k. ONS data from 2009 here

The thing is, that even families who are wealthy don't actually feel wealthy. It's surprising really. There's an element of truth in that even relatively large incomes can get eaten away by childcare and housing costs, but still these are families where both parents can afford to work, when many families actually cannot afford that luxury. If that makes sense ...

YANBU. I don't understand why a household on £20,000 a year is put in the same bracket as £40,000 a year, when one figure is double the other.

Grumpypants - you can work your arse off working all hours and still earn a shit wage though
like shift workers
just cos some earn loads doesn't mean they work harder than people who earn less