What is your household income/ lifestyle

[Lockdown12]

What is your household income and what lifestyle do you manage to have on it?

Do you have children? Own your own house? Go on holiday? Go out for meals?

I don't have children yet but am interested about how the financial situation might change when we hopefully do!

Ha! Yes, that's understandable @magnificentmillie
There is a balance to be had somewhere.

Anyway, OP, our income has reduced dramatically since we had DC but we were reasonably sensible and made hay when the sun shone. We started our family with no debts and, apart from childcare which is an eye watering cost, we actually spend less now than we did then.

That’s what’s I will be telling my dc to do when they are older, it has to make life less stressful in the long run.

I knew this would turn into the usual “don’t believe everything you read on the internet” drivel.

People have different incomes and posters saying they don’t know anyone who earns over tuppence is either probably lying, or maybe naive enough to think everyone is in the same position as they are.
My friends and family have no idea what DH and I earn. They’d have an idea that our jobs are high paying based on what we do and where we live, but don’t know the extent.

It’s like a race to the bottom on here some times.

I don't have children yet but am interested about how the financial situation might change when we hopefully do

OP, in case you aren't in the top 2% of earners like most of the replies you received, this is what you need to concentrate on, because if you have DC, this is where the big change happens to your finances - unless you are similarly well renumerated as others on this thread, you face either paying most or all of one of your salaries in childcare, one of you going part time or being a SAHP.

That's what you need to deal with, not the income of a lot of well paid people, most of whom are probably older than you. If you have spare income now, saving as much as you can will help, as will looking into what help is available with the cost of childcare - tax free childcare, childcare element of universal credit, etc.

Plus also, fairly sharing the cost and work of child rearing with you and your partner. If one of you goes part time or stays at home, it's will affect their pension, and the overall family income, so you need to deal with this fairly - keep making pension contributions for both partners for example, plus make sure joint costs are paid out of joint income, not having the SAH partner trying to pay half of costs out ofa much reduced income while the working partner has plenty of their own money to spend on themselves.

Dh is a high earner as posted earlier, our mini mum outgoings are 8k a month. All the rest we could cutback or stop if times got rough. As a last resort I could go back to work .

12k annually. lone parent, 2 DC (one severely disabled).
-Mortgage (not very big) on a small mid terrace

• no hols, no meals out, no takeaways, no treats
• not turning the heating on occasionally on cold days
• lots of clothes from charity shops/eBay

-diy haircuts for all 3

• 10 year old banger

so all very basic and stripped back. zero luxury but we are happy and content

100k per annum
Two kids 17 & 12
Small mortgage on a house we rent out in the uk
Live in Spain in a rented 8 bedroom villas
Travel on a monthly basis with two long haul holidays a year..
Run our own business so have the freedom to travel as we work remotely.
Eat out a lot but it goes through the business as does all petrol and travel .
Ds in private school so very long holidays.
15 years ago we were on minimum wage surviving on Tax credits and using a calculator to make sure I had enough money for the food shop .

I'm hoping all these incomes are true, because if they don't all lose their jobs they'll be the ones spending and keeping the economy going.
It's not going to be the unemployed millions.

bert

I do hope your not putting personal expenses like eating out, travel, and petrol through your business. Unless it's for business use only.

@Devlesko.....all legit for business purposes. Lots of meetings with clients 😁

Income 90k a year between us (pre-tax), about 5k a month take home. We save 2.5k a month each. No kids, 1-bed flat, ancient car, I am a super-scrimper and the main thing we spend our money on is brunches, holidays and hobbies. I don't buy clothes, make-up, furniture or "stuff" unless in charity shops. We have saved a fair bit for a house deposit, I don't want a 5% or 10% deposit as it seems a bit too risky, so we'd rather save for longer and have better LTV.

Sorry, not each, in total!

bert

I used to get this all the time, not so much anymore, but people were always so suspicious.
Glad it worked out for you, and wow what a salary now, after being much poorer. Really pleased for you

Great expectations just seen you commented on my post that I didn’t think people were lying and that I was in some kind of bubble. What a ridiculous thing to say- I am well aware that I am very fortunate and that many are not. I am a senior manager employing multiple people on minimum wage and work in probably the most socially deprived area of the whole of the uk. Don’t be so flipping judgemental.

Income 2.5k net for 2 adults & 8-year-old
Save 8K pa
No car - walk to work - use car club when necessary
Live in 4-bed flat (no mortgage)
Own small holiday flat (no mortgage)
Change internet/utilities/mobile contracts annually for cheapest deal.
Eat out once a month using itison deals for fine dining.
DS usually wears second hand, second hand bike, second hand games console, second hand games.
Used library extensively before lockdown.
Several staycations a year (in our holiday flat)
Overseas holidays annually visiting overseas family or friends.
Very happy and planning to retire @ 55.

We used to live overseas, both worked and earned about 75k pa net between us for 7 years. Spent about 50k on IVF over a few years, and saved the rest to buy the properties we now own.

Single parent £1460 (after tax) income per month working ft.

Learned to be very frugal and that helps.
Own small property
Own small car
Happy and healthy dc who are thriving. Not a given as one dc has many various disabilities.

However most of my income goes to housing which makes things very tight. Renting would be more expensive so not really an option to change things unless I did a drastic move. I bought at the right time and would never be able to buy now. The last decade prices have boomed. I think about 75% of my income goes to housing.

Each dc has one activity/hobby.
We eat out maybe 3x a year? Usually a treat from gps.
Days out are usually free
I cut hair at home, make all our own food from scratch, grow what we can, use clothes instead of disposable products etc.

On the one hand I think we have a lovely life, if a bit too city centric wishing so much we had a garden and more outdoor space. I go back and forth on whether we should leave the city and move nearer family, being able to afford a house with garden etc. But one dc very bright and got into an elite school and one dc needs children's hospital. It's undeniable being in a big city helps with many things like that.

We do a lot of things together as a family, I'm very close to my dc and they to me. We are very happy with a cabin holiday each summer at a lovely private park we found a couple minutes walk to a beautiful beach and quiet, same families go every year. Costs about £500/week and something we look forward to 51 weeks/year!

Weekends spent taking dc to parks, batch cooking, walking dog, crafts etc. We usually visit library and get lots of reading in. We are happy with very simple things. Not sure that would change much if we had more money.

There is a lot of hidden stress though. School shoes, uniforms, needing something, something breaking etc. It would be so helpful to have another £200/month just to build up for these things, and if I'm being honest would be wonderful to have another £250+ to save for old age! If I could bring home £1800-£2000/month, life would be so much easier.

The biggest thing I notice compared to my friends with 2 incomes and more money is that I'm far more tired and burned out. Some of that is due to supporting my dc with disabilities and all the hospital appointments, part of it is working 40 hours/week + with little rest and pinching every penny!

And while all that's true, it's also true we have a really lovely life as long as no emergencies happen. I try to enjoy each day and not dream too much about moving back to Yorkshire and having a home with a large garden and a space for chickens.

It's interesting to me as I would have thought this section had more people just trying to get by. But looks like it's predominantly high income earners.

@PoppyAnnie wow so after your housing costs your left with just over £400? How on earth do you manage that after water, gas, electric, council tax etc .... £400 wouldn’t even cover that for me let alone feed us, I’d be looking at moving somewhere cheaper

Monthly net income is about £6.5k and outgoings are about £1.5k. 1 property with a small mortgage though being overpaid, and 2 others mortgage free (1 inherited and 1 jointly owned with the inlaws, which either of us use at least every weekend but inlaws pay utilities for)

We save half of what's left, which goes into general savings for holidays, home improvements, cars and a rainy day. The other half is spent, or available for spending, on whatever bits and bobs we want.

We typically go on holiday 3 times a year, normally 2 long haul and 1 short haul or UK. We have nights or weekends away every couple of months or so, and tend to eat out once or twice a week.

No kids.

Even though we have a decent income and now have a nice lifestyle, it has been a stretch since DD arrived (and even before that). We did a lot of DIY on our house, scrimped and saved in all kinds of ways, didn't have luxuries many count as "necessities" (only got Sky 3 years ago when we changed broadband providers, for example).

We grow a fair amount of our own veg, I batch cook, I buy on specials/yellow stickers/BOGOFs/loyalty schemes. I make do and mend a lot. I buy clothes in sales. I shop around for prices. We are not out in the pub or at the movies every weekend (not even monthly). Many of our holidays have been in this country, and most are on a self-catering basis. We check utilities and insurances before renewing, and have changed providers over the years as we have found better value. We don't tend to buy the newest tech or designer clothes in general.

But we enjoy the life we have. We have put away savings, improved incomes, paid off mortgage and kept our unnecessary spending low over the years. We have been able to relax our spending in the past few years accordingly. But that was after we had put in the effort to get to where we were comfortable, and had a cushion to rely on. And while I have reduced some of the things I used to do to save money (and/or time), I still do lots of them to avoid wasting money unnecessarily.

@Changedname78 - That meant to after household including bills (council tax, gas/elec/water/insurances). Calculating it carefully on my lunch hour, housing takes (including all that) takes up 70% as we have about £450/month for everything else. Most weeks it works, unless anyone needs anything not budgeted for and/or something goes wrong with boiler, one of the white goods etc.

I do keep two savings pots made out of small buckets. One for our yearly budget holiday at the park we return to and one for emergencies. I also usually make a couple hundred extra £ in June/July when an international program brings students over. It's a more nominal fee but works out to about £70/week and we host for a 7 week term so there's an extra £490 or so depending on dates each year. I put it in the emergency 'pot' with spare change through the year. Most years through frugality I manage to save about £550 towards emergencies/needed spends (mostly from the student programme) and about 1/2 the holiday money needed by putting £5 into holiday pot a week. Grandparents are quite eco friendly and don't gift toys so usually give £100 for Christmas and Birthday to put towards our holiday each year and always give the dc spending money of £25 or so. So far each year it has just worked out.

It's a very careful balance.

What’s amazing is that one couple could have one breadwinner on a huge salary of £90k with the other being SAHP, and then one couple could have both parents working with one full time at £40k and one part time at £30k so £70k in total and the take home is not far off the £90k

It really does pay to have two people working with both having a tax free element than one bring SAHP

Earn a fair bit (self employed lawyer). In my 50s, no mortgage on a nice large detached house. Fund twins at university without student loans _ which costs £50k a year which ends this summer and then will fund one at law school for 2 years which will be about £20k this next year.

5 children now all over 18, grandchildren as one child is married. We usually go somewhere hot in the summer - supposedly June this year.... (last year we had the family holiday in Italy and then the twins and I went to the Seychelles) and usually skiing over Christmas in France.
Going back a bit when we had our first baby in 1984 I took 2 weeks off work and went back full time and we spent 50% of each of our net salaries on her full time childcare. So it has not all be a land of milk and honey. I was able to express breastmilk in the loo at work for a year.

Counting bonuses we’re at about 9.5k/ month take home after tax, private healthcare and pension deductions.

It sounds a lot, but we have 3 children and live in an expensive area, so it doesn’t go as far as one might imagine. We have one family car that is nearly 10 years old and I do most of the weekly shop at Aldi/Lidl. We do have a 5 bed house in the countryside, mortgage around 3k/month. Activities and lessons for the children do add up during the school year. We’re in a good catchment, so children are state ‘til 8, and as I’m a SAHM that’s a savings for now. We’re relying on inheritance to fund private education when they’re older. At the moment we take maybe 6 holidays a year, most of which are low-key driving/glamping holidays but also usually 1 or 2 bigger trips further afield and a ski trip. We rarely eat out, but we don’t necessarily worry too much about price when we do. I suppose our clothes are decent—nice quality anyway—but nothing designer except the odd pair of sunglasses or handbag. We like to save where we can and give away to charity where we can. Overall, we don’t feel rich, just comfortable.

I think lifestyle to income ratio is a bit of a red herring. When we first got married and had no kids, we still managed a decent quality of life with a two bed flat in London (admittedly used an inheritance for deposit) and two holidays abroad each year on an income of less than 40k/year. I think it’s easier to fritter the money away on silly things when you have more to spend.

Income just over £3500 DH around £900 me. (All pooled).

Mortgage paid off several years ago but we pay DDs rent while she is at uni (£700 pm).

We have a comfortable life but save a lot. No debts, nearly all purchases are on a cash back credit card which gets paid off each month.

We usually holiday in Europe for two weeks and then a couple of one week breaks in the U.K. all self catering usually because of DS with SEN.

One car as DH doesn’t need one for work.

When we were starting out in the late eighties we were very hard up... I had three jobs at one point as our mortgage payments shot up to be more than my monthly take home! We were sensible and careful so reaping the rewards now.

250k annual income, one earner.
No kids.
One car.
3 bed house with small mortgage that cost just under £200k last year.
Between pensions and savings put away about £50-60k a year.
Go on holiday usually once a year but sometimes 2 or 3 times. Suspect it’ll be no holidays for a few years now though so might save up for an extension at the back of the house (sunroom).
Main luxury is food- buy organic and need to follow special diet for health condition.
Bit of private healthcare for health condition that’s not really treatable ion NHS (well it is, but treatment is out of date and isn’t really taken seriously, it’s just seen as an incurable chronic illness, whereas in the last ten years there are tests and treatments that lead to a cure for some people). Specialists are starting to be covered by BUPA but until recently it’s been out of pocket.