£36k needed for Family of Four

[Xenia]

New survey found a family of four needs £36,000 a year on which to live comfortably.
Single working person £16,400
Loan parent one child £23,900
Pensioner couple £24,000 between them.

Is this right?
Joseph Rowntree Foundation

It must be hard to assess as the lower your income goes the more likely you receive housing benefit and higher tax credits so presumably someone on £30k might be no better off a family on £18k?

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-18770783

'Loan parent'

Tbh I am not surprised by this. If you're at either end of the scale- very well off or very poor- you will be either fine, or provided with enough to live on.

If you don't qualify for help, if you have to pay your own rent, childcare, council tax etc then you're in a really tight position nowadays.

Utterly meaningless given the huge variation in housing costs across the country. You could be very comfortable on £36,000 if your rent or mortgage is £500 a month, say, but that's not going to get you very far in London/SE.

If you earn a salary of £36k per year, you will be paying more than a quarter of that income straight to the taxman in the form of Income Tax and National Insurance alone.

Then there's Council Tax, VAT, Road Fund Licence, Fuel Duty, TV Licence and perhaps even Alcohol Duty, Tobacco Duty, Stamp Duty, Capital Gains Tax and Inheritance Tax too. Out of what is left, don't forget to put something towards your pension (which will be taxed), and put some savings aside for a rainy day (taxed) because this is what a 'responsible' adult does.

In short, by hook or by crook, the government will help itself to around half of your total income one way or the other. The irony is that part of this grand larceny will be given back to you in the form of tax credits because the 'cost of living' is so high!

A medieval peasant living under the feudal system had fewer impositions upon them by the state than we do.

Just Sayin'.

We earn about this a year between us.

And have 2 children.

If we weren't saving £500 a month towards a house deposit (which we will be doing for years) then i reckon we would feel pretty well off to be honest.

Here's a link to the rowtree foundation website on this survey

mis.jrf.org.uk/

It allocates only £82.67 for rent a week. I'm sure that can't be done in the SE, let alone London, unless you are in a council flat? I tried to find if there's a figure for each region, but couldn't find it. Without taking into account the huge regional variation, this report is meaningless. I was shocked how little my friend in Manchester paid for her canal side house. It wouldn't even buy a 1-bed flat where I live.

There's five pages worth of another thread on the same topic over here - can I sugest they be merged?

"unless you are in a council flat?"

Even then it wouldn't cover it. We're outside London and in a 1 bed flat and pay more.