Should I feel richer than I do with a family income of nearly 100k?

[longestlurkerever]

Very conscious that this could come across very badly but I'm prepared for frank responses. I realise I'm very fortunate. Dh and I both have good jobs and are able to afford a house and all our bills comfortably. I definitely do not take that for granted.

I am just trying to make some decisions that hasve financial implicationsx and I'm trying to get a feel for what kind of lifestyle is realistic on our salaries. I used to feel quite well off really, but both our pay has been frozen for years now (public sector) and our expenses have gone up.

We earn just under 100k between us, roughly evenly split. Our mortgage is 1500 a month (London) and childcare is about 650 per month, with extra in the holidays (but will go up to about 750 a month soon when I run out of the excess annual leave I am using at the moment). Commuting is about 200 per month. I have no savings as I just spent them on building works but would generally aim to have 5-10k.

My instinct is I can afford to upgrade the car to a slightly newer and greener but not fancy one - like a ford focus 3 years old, but not a brand new one, that i can afford one European plus one UK holiday a year, but not skiing or long haul, that I can afford 2 hours cleaning a week but not a nanny, that I can afford music and swimming lessons but not private school.

Does that sound about right or must I be frittering my money away somewhere not to have more left over? I don't feel I do, except on nice food and wine. I don't buy expensive clothes for me or the DC, for example, and generally favour second hand. Most people I went to uni with seem to afford these things easily and have bigger mortgages than me, but I assume they earn a lot more in the private sector and i know they get significant bonuses every year.

I'm not moaning. I like my job and deliberately turned my back on a more lucrative career path, but I feel like I've been beating myself up a bit that my life seems more chaotic than theirs, and my house and general appearance much scruffier and am trying to work out if I could afford more help, or if actually i am comparing my life with people weith considerably more disposable income than me.

No idea if this makes any sense but all comments welcome.

OP I think you do need to a budget
I get that the building work is not reflective of everyday spending
but you say the house is full of junk and chaos...that junk, right there, is more money you could have had in your savings and then you would be less confused I think.

junk is just clutter which creates more spending as often you forget what you have already. Also you are obviously busy which makes it harder to track bargains.

There does seem to be a lot left over after the mortgage so you do need to work out where it's going. As for "should you cut back on outings" that's up to you. It's interesting you ask - it sounds like you haven't had a good sit down to think about where you want your money to go and that's probably why you feel out of control around it.

In that case include a line for "house fixing" in your budget. We put 250 a month in a separate account each month which pays for the smallish stuff (new lawn mover etc) but also build up a slush for bigger bills (new boiler) when they hit.

And don't be hard on yourself. You both work and have a young child which is knackering and stressful in its own right, but you're also renovating a house which is up there on one of the most stressful things you can do. The fact it's in your own home and you can't escape makes it all the worse. Don't even try to stay on top of the cleaning etc, you'll never win. Have one room that you're militant about keeping the dust out of (no builders allowed, shoes off before you come in, sheets/ old curtains on the floor if it's still bare boards) and just accept the rest. Focus on the fact this is a process and there IS and end. When you finally get the carpets down and the furniture in, everyone else will be jealous of your shiny new home X

We lived in this for months, but we got there in the end, there is light at the end of the tunnel!

The clutter isn't generally stuff i've bought but MIL's car boot sale finds ( I do need a way to politely clamp down on this) /dd1's craft and artwork, post, clean laundry that needs sorting, dd1's birthday presents....

Thanks Bristol! The loft isn't as bad as when we had no kitchen or bathroom (pre dcs, thank god) but it does involve dust everywhere and sudden requests to move everything out of a particular room for floorboards to be lifted, ceiling collapsing etc etc. Not to mention all the materials being stored in the hall, living room etc. MAybe I am being too hard on myself :-)

Example: This morning I have already sorted massive heap of coats that builders dumped in the middle of the living room so they could get stuff past where they were hanging in the hall. Not a biggie, but it's constant.

I haven't done it but a good friend has just gone Marie Kondo mad (decluttering book /life style change). and she sold the excess where she could.

We have similar salary and same feeling. Dp did something clever with bank statement and showed up all outgoings in categories.food shopping stuck out massively. I tried lidl this week and put the equivalent shop into Sainsbury's online (20% more) and Ocado (50% more). I was shocked. We're going to try and do at lidl more but that will require an investment of time which may not be sustainable for us.

You need to tell mil to stop immediately

We have very generous grandparents that seem to want to spend a certain £££ on children at Xmas and birthday. Sometimes that means buying just too much stuff toys etc.I'm trying to redirect them to pay for activities that kids want as they get older that really add up.

Would you ever consider/ would it be possible for you to move out of London and do the same job elsewhere? I live in Yorkshire with a combined family income of 90k and we're extremely comfortable (no kids yet though!)

Yes, I have started to tell MIL that it's too much. She has loads of dh's childhood stuff too that she keeps passing on. It's stuff that will be played with, up to a point, or worn, but it's just too much. We're drowning!

London. Well. It's certainly something I have considered. I am not from London originally. But I love London, on the whole. I feel like I'd be swapping one lot of (relatively minor) issues for another (issues you may not feel are valid but they are issues for me).

I know it must feel like if I've started a thread I must be very unhappy about all this, but I'm not really. I feel like a few minor changes could help, that's all.

De-cluttering is key. On maternity leave I did a room-by-room clearout, charity shopped loads and felt so much better, temporarily. But I've only been back at work 4 months and I feel like I'm back at square one (I had to empty the loft, for example). I'm hoping when these works are finished and dd2 gets to a slightly less tricky age (she's not 100% well at the minute but I literally can't take my eyes off her in case she climbs something or falls downstairs and she's so volatile from a cold/teething that the least thing upsets her.

Also am wondering about cheating on my current cleaner while she's on holiday and trying out a new one. She's lovely and I trust her and she will still clean next door so it's hard to break ties, but she's not the best at cleaning, and I feel like I don't want to extend her hours.

My mum used to/still does the passing on of stuff to me. All goes straight in the bin. You have to be ruthless.

100k isn't a lot in London. I would say that is the minimum you would need for a 'middle-class' lifestyle: 2 holidays a year, music etc lessons for kids, owned home and so on.

When we lived in Scotland, we had a combined income of 75k with no kids at that point and a lower mortgage than you have with overall lower living costs compared to London and it felt like we had to always watch the pennies and be careful to avoid building up credit card debt. Not an extravagant lifestyle either, except for the occasional holiday and tech products.

Looking back we were actually on average incomes for our area and we know now that others in our circle were on much higher salaries with bonuses, especially in the finance sector. I would imagine in London the disparity would be even more extreme.

It's all relative. Ultimately, we all live to our means be that on £100k or £25k a year. The difference is that on £100K a year it is possible to economise more but because you are high earners (bear in mind that only 1% of the population are on £100K a year) economising equals going without luxuries whereas on £25K a year it equals potentially going without essentials.

My eXH earns a six figure salary, and when we were together it was incredibly easy to go to the supermarket and just buy what we wanted without thinking about how much it costs. Nothing wrong with that in itself, but when you add it up it often equals spending money on frivolity rather than necessity, so if we needed to save then that frivolous spending could be cut back. For us then a holiday equated to a 5 star all inclusive somewhere for two weeks. Now that I'm a single parent a holiday equals three days in the Isle of Wight.

Childcare is a killer though for anyone, and I was fortunate to not have that expensE, but if you're spending £700 a month on childcare do think about the fact that there is light at the end of the tunnel in that when the DC start school your childcare costs will drop significantly.

I second what other posters say about making a list of everything you spend and you will be surprised just where money goes. E.g. £200 a month on coffee is an awful lot of money. Again, doesn't matter if you're happy spending that, but if you're wanting to cut down what you spend then that kind of thing would be first to go in my house.

cheating on my current cleaner while she's on holiday

Why do you see this as cheating? It is hard to break ties, I do agree; at the same time it is as if with the current set-up you are putting your cleaner above yourself and your family. If you do this, it is no surprise that you feel angst-y.

FWIW our flat is cleaned by cleaners from a company, and any questions we have about the quality of the clean go via the company HQ by email. This is less personal than having someone you know but also more reliable - when one of "our" cleaners goes on holiday, the company sends someone else, the company keeps handover notes with our preferences, and so on.

I don't think London all that relevant here actually; OP spends £1500 a month on her mortgage. You could do that anywhere, that's not even a particularly expensive property. Nothing else in the post is really specific to London is it?

It sounds like you could be happier with less stuff. Tell mil to stop the crap import right now. Stop all adult gift giving except things that vanish - food, drink, flowers. Pay a declutterer might be worth it!

Also my usual question - have you got a savings cushion? No job is safe.

we have a combined pre-tax income of 93k and due to how it is split we are both in the higher tax bracket.

mortgage is £1400 (not london but only had a 10% deposit on a 300k house). typical price for an average house where we are.
£500 on two car loans (thankfully one is almost paid off)
£800 in childcare - going up tp 1300 next year as about to have second baby.
£210 on student loan (again nearly paid off)
£180 council tax
£250 long term savings
car tax, insurance, phone and gas and electricity - £350 - gas goes up in winter
£200 on a few interest free purchases.
food, fuel £550

we eat out maybe once a week but usually no where fancy - we like to use tesco vouchers where possible. we buy one thing for our house a month as it needs a lot of work doing to it. we have a cleaner who is £100 a month. we dont buy new clothes hardly ever except when getting desperate.

i often wonder how people manage who earn less than us as by the end of the month we have nothing left. we are not extravagant and at the moment only holidays are in the uk. once we get the free hours at nursery it should help. i dont expect us to be able to afford holidays and more luxuries until at least one is in school and we have remortgaged in a few years and out payments drop. we have absolutely no plans to upgrade either car and any purchase is well thought out and discussed in advance.

we do have 55k in long term savings but we dont touch those. nothing other than money for car tax and insurance in short term savings. hoping to change that int he next few years.

Would having a notebook to write all the lists in help, do you think?

I have one in which I write absolutely everything that needs doing. It's a bullet journal for ease, look up bullet journal if you haven't encountered it before.

Stuff like toilet seat goes under :'Needs replacing'. So have a whole page with just that: stuff that needs replacing.

I would also break everything down into some sort of SMART goals.
Think of a timeframe, say 6 months to removate the house. Then schedule, on paper, month by month and week by week and revise it regularly to make sure you're on top of it.

Budgeting is another key element. I was taught to save 10% of my income, it comes out the minute I get paid and I think it's a good habit to have.
Have a separate account for your direct debits and feed that account monthly with a bit more than it needs. It's the BILLS account. Everything from gas to insurance to children's playgroup/childcare.

Then an account for food and petrol/travel expenses.

What's left divide into two: entertainment and birthdays, clothes etc.
This way you'll have a clear idea where your money go.

Another thing: I have a built in wardrobe. Half of it is empty. I have 3 summer dresses, for example. They are years old now, but I still get asked where did I get them from. I bought really good quality in a good cut for me. I only have 3!!! Jumpers I have 3 as well. Good quality cashmere. Yes, they were eye watering expensive. But I bought them in sales. My only pair of sandals is a Chie Mihara one, bought one winter and down to £100 from £250. You get the idea: quality over quantity.

Hope that helps.

Thanks everyone. Will definitely try a declutter and hope we are at peak chaos and things settle down soon. If those 30 free hours happen then my childcare bill will reduce drastically 2 years from now and maybe I'll feel rich!

Reading back, I was being a bit harsh on dh as he does do his best. The lack of sleep is hard on us both but takes a toll on his health so early mornings and night wakings tend to fall to me, but he does his bit in other ways.

One good thing. I found a piano in a charity shop 😀. It is being delivered this week.

On expensive clothes, do they really last longer? Primark I find a false economy but I am wearing a dress today I bought 11 years ago in the French equivalent of topshop and it's fine whereas my suit from Hobbs lasted 5mins before the hem fell down. The one cashmere thing I had got eaten by moths . The kids' supermarket stuff seems to wash better than some gifts I had from Petit bateau. Actually i have one outfit from Muji that has lasted years and years through countless wears so I'm wondering about shopping there more regularly.

We went from this kind of income to one of less than a third of that a few years back.

A big way of cutting back has been swapping Waitrose for Lidl, dropping any brand loyalty, eating out less and drinking less alcohol.

These things really add up! Into the 10's of thousands a year.

how much do you spend on groceries and eating out?

YANBU to think that it sounds like a lot of money, and so you imagine it should FEEL like a lot of money.

Groceries I spend about 100 quid every three weeks or so on a Sainsburys online order to get tins, loo roll, dried goods etc. I buy fruit and veg from a market stall and the international supermarket- it's cheaper and better than the supermarket - but we do eat a lot of fruit. Meat and fish I buy locally and do pay extra for good quality, though often pick the cheaper cuts or species. I do eat a lot more fish and meat than I used to but dh can't eat pulses, lactose, gluten among other things so it's necessary and I am happy to pay extra for welfare / sustainability / general flavour. We don't have an Aldi locally. I do sometimes use lidl but there's no parking or online ordering at our local one so it is not great for a big shop.

Thanks everyone for the advice. I will take it on board but tbh I am living within my means, and it doesn't sound like any of the suggestions are suddenly going to magic me up enough to change my lifestyle drastically, so I'm not going to beat myself up about it and rather will concentrate on the decluttering, talking to my cleaner, etc to try and get a sense of order back.

Savings is one thing I lack at the moment, so a budget would be a good idea to work out what I can afford in this regard. Otherwise it would be credit cards and the bank of DM and MIL if disaster struck, pending releasing equity in the house to pay them back if it turned out to be longer term.

Eating out is where I need to keep track. Certainly less than I used to, partly for childcare, partly because of dh's diet, but it is possible I'm failing to account for all the times the kids and I eat in the park cafe or whatever, and if I meet with friends it does tend to be at a restaurant - not usually a fancy one but as I've said, my friends are all rich!