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!

Of course threads such as these are going to attract a disproportionate number of high earners

I can't imagine why.

The vast majority of people on this thread are giving monthly after tax earnings of £4-4.5k

That’s 2 people on £35k.
Doesn’t seem huge when you put it like that as it’s around average for full time position and not much more than the overall average salary across the board

About half. Almost everyone else is £££££. Hardly any on minimum wage.

£2.5k a month since we both dropped a day after children.
We have a mortgage for our house.
We have a 10 month old and a 3 year old who go to nursery one day a week.
We can afford to go on holiday every other year.
We have takeaway/eat out when we want
We are able to add to our savings every month, so there is a substantial pot should anything happen to us workwise after lockdown.

About half. Almost everyone else is £££££. Hardly any on minimum wage

You know that it’s not pay-per-post and anyone, regardless of how much or how little they earn, is free to post on this thread?

Plenty of people posting with lower incomes.

Income: 4.8k a month after tax
Own our house with a mortgage - it's not a huge one though (£600 a month and that's because we recently borrowed to do 25k or renovations)
Holiday - we have a static caravan so we go there most weekends and a few extra days in the year. We go to Florida every other year and stay at Disney, we have to save around £300 a month for that
1 child - DD is almost 2. No plans for anymore and I'll be glad when we stop paying for nursery!
Lifestyle - comfortable, we can pretty much buy what we want, if we want it.
We should definitely have more savings than we do though.

@Hedgesfullofbirds wins the thread. Sounds like the perfect lifestyle. Dying to know what you do (scientific work perhaps)?

Thank you @PerfidiousAlbion - it is a lifestyle which suits me perfectly, though I know it would not be for everybody, but my needs and wants are few! I am very much a homebird, happy to share my house and garden with some of the wonderful plants, animals, birds and insects with which we are lucky enough to share the planet.

I don't, and never have, aspired to a life of chasing large salaries, a hectic social life, or tying myself up in knots, trying to maintain a lifestyle which is outwith my means or, indeed, wants. But we are all different and I am content!

No, not scientific work, I am a 'professional' gardener, working full time on a private estate, but have always had an abiding interest in, and fascination with, the natural world and everything which dwells within it.

Wouldn't mind reducing my daily commute and a slightly better salary though, as I do feel slightly under rewarded and undervalued at the moment, but such jobs are few and far between in my neck of the woods, and, of course, no one is recruiting currently...

We are on 13k a month after tax between us.

4 bed detached house (mortgage free)
Car is a Kia
Ds goes to a nursery 3 days at £55 a day
Dd goes to state school.

Not been on holiday for 10 years

Food shop is M&S, Iceland, Home Bargains and B&M.

Money is mainly spent on..

Technology E.g, Apple products, fancy T.V, sky subscription etc

Elemis skin care

Children’s designer clothing

Home help E.g, cleaner, ironing, gardener etc

Why no holidays PP?inknow each to their own so don’t mean anything by it but all that earning just to spend it on designer clothes, tech and home help without the fun stuff seems like a lot of work for not much gain

About 7.5 k a month, both working full time. DP earns considerable more than me.
1 DD in nursery and 2 DSS in primary school.

We have a lot of expenses! Mortgage about £1050, DPs car is about £500 a month, nursery 3 currently £580 but will increase as DD will go full time. I pay £300 a month on student loan repayments and DP pays £1500 for ex maintenance plus £10,000 a year on her mortgage...

We have one takeaway a month, dont currently go out. I dont have any disposable income except for savings for me and my daughter. Saving up to do courses for career change while working full time. Will be very hard but I owe it to myself and my daughter. Having so many high expenses have also made me save whatever I can I am slowly changing my DP's spendy mindset too.

@AllForAnEasyLife

I take it you don’t live in a very reasonably priced part of the country?! I remember you from another thread about when you bought your first home

2018 £382,000 for a four bed detached house! And mortgage free in two years

@Sodamncold That seems really reasonable! I'm wondering what thar poster does to get so paid so well where housing costs are lower.

Oh and forgot to say we go abroad about 2-3 times a year to visit my family. We also had one uk holiday last summer.

And paid so well but bought first house two years ago. And saved for it entirely through themselves whilst working according to the other thread.

It’s an interesting one!

I don’t really enjoy going on holiday.

My youngest is just turned 3 and the thought of packing, messing at airports, trying to keep him seated on a flight, watching him constantly around water etc just fills me with dread!

Besides I’m very worried about being burgled and I hate hot weather.

I would much rather have days out, lunch out etc.

We only started earning this much in the last 4 years or so. We had nothing 10 years ago, even the couch we sat on and the bed we slept in were the landlady’s.

I live in Lancashire so nothing like London prices. No one in real life knows how much we earn or that our mortgage is paid for.

Dh worked for years building a business that didn’t earn much and then after constant working and building on the SEO of the business etc it finally took off which earns us the salary that we do.

We know it could turn dramatically at any point (as can any business) which is why we paid the house off so whatever happens we will always have our home.

This thread is fascinating

We take home about 4-4.5k per month, i'm part time (3-4 dats per week). Both mid level roles public sector.
Live in an inexpensive part of the country, our salaries would be considered very good within local circles, as a lot of local people would be on fairly low incomes.

We live comfortably - 3 bed detached house (mortgage), one child, no debts, 2 foreign holidays a year and plenty of weekends away in the UK requiring internal flights to visit family most months. Eat out 2/week. Save about £800 a month between us.

Its say we're fairly average. I don't feel like we live an extravagant lifestyle, I have no interest in designer clothes, expensive cars etc, hence why I am happy to work part time in public sector, rather than in private sector, in which I would earn double. Quality of life is good.

Really interested to know what jobs the high earners do?? ? Please tell, i'm curious, especially those of you in late 20s/30s.
I have plenty of friends who work as accountants/banking, a few in IT and pharma (other parts of country to where we live) who probably earn >100k/year, although no one ever discusses their salary. There are a few distant acquaintances in my outer circle who I know were earning 250k/year in late 20s, working in sales for global companies in London - that blows my mind - but also it's just so unrelatable to me as I don't work in the corporate world.I can see as your income goes up, you find more ways to spend it/more expensive house car/private school etc-so you don't necessarily end up with considerably more disposable income.

Happy with my lifestyle and choice, just curious about others !

Very wise decisions @allforaneasylife

My parents earnt huge amounts for many of their working years but we’re so sensible with it and made sure we lived very modestly. Low key cheapish holidays once a year, one old car and a mortgage paid off.

Was sensible as for all the years of good earnings there could be times where no money came in for a year or two at all.

As a child growing up like that it’s made me appreciate the sensible ways they dealt with money and we never felt deprived but were never spoilt either

@pocoyopocoyo my cousin works for a top law firm as a lawyer - on maybe 400k a yr

@Hedgesfullofbirds Sounds wonderful and so interesting. Have you ever asked for a raise? If not, then perhaps consider what you’ve done ‘above and beyond‘ your job spec and then look at historical job ads to see what the going rate would be for someone like you. I say this as it’s my field of work and time and time again I see capable and remarkable women undervaluing themselves in the marketplace.

I appreciate that given the current state of the world, now might not be the best time to ask but please do consider it when things improve.

@pocoyopocoyo I'm a business consultant. Currently on contract as a Chief of Staff at a tech company.

When I'm on a contract, my day rate is £850-£1,200. Those are the months I earn up to £24k pm (gross).

When I am employed (perm) my salary, for the same job, is about £110k p/a.

Prior to contracting, I co-owned a tiny tech consultancy, when my earnings (gross) varied between £120 p/a and...literally zero. For two straight years (we had ten employees to pay before we paid ourselves).

But as I noted in a pp my spending/budget is always the same - irrespective of my income, because it's unpredictable and so I need to cushion myself and my family by being relatively cautious.

We take home around 3.5k a month plus child benefit of 140pm. Two adults two kids. I work part time, H full time.

Not as much as some but our outgoings other than food and petrol are 900 a month so we have a lot of disposable income. We get a lot of help from parents too.

We have a nice lifestyle. I'm not into cars so we have a car which is paid off but not flashy. We've been to Florida three times in 6 years as well as other nice holidays abroad and in the UK. On average three holidays a year. Eat out weekly in normal times. Kids both do different out of school activities.

We have modest savings which we've just had to use as our boiler went last week but now we will build up a few grand over the next few months and not touch it.

120k ish
Pre kids
2 abroad holidays together as a couple
Multiple weekends away/ 4 day trips with friends etc
Mortgage on city apartment (London)
Buy to let elsewhere

@pocoyopocoyo my DH and I are lawyers. There’s a HUGE variation in income between lawyers, it’s not like the medical profession where you progress along a scale. We were both in the top 5% of our class at university/law school, both got “top” training contracts then have progressed through at profitable firms (which will look at your university grades when recruiting for at least the first 10 years after graduation).

What I’m trying to say is that unless you are very academically able with superb grades and have excellent writing and communication skills (and a dose
of good luck), only a small fraction of law graduates go on to the roles paying many hundreds of thousands (or millions) of pounds a year.