What income do you consider rich?

[Believer99]

Interested to know what household income is considered rich.
When I was younger (19) I remember telling my BF when he earns over 30k il be a SAHM 😳 because I considered that to be an awful lot of money

Now we are older & earning more of course my perspective has changed, I would probably consider a household income of over 120k rich now we live in the north of England.

Anything over 50K!

Bluebunny1 - your post just shows that you’ve decided to spend your significant amounts of discretionary income on purchasing schooling for 2 children.

You could have decided not to pay a huge amount on that every month, and instead have bought the second home and got your shopping from Waitrose every week instead of Aldi.

If someone is saying the equivalent of “I shop own brand in Aldi and have to mend my own clothes because the running coats of my Sunseeker Yacht are so high”, then I’m not sure that’s making the point they think it is.

But then it comes back to, how much do you think you should be able to afford if you’re rich?

To person A, rich is being able to afford private schooling.

To person B it’s being able to afford private schooling without having to forego a lovely little chalet in Klosters and a place in Antigua.

South East based.
A rich family I would deem being able to do the following -
Two foreign holidays per year
Private schooling from 3-18 for at least two children
A 4-5 bedroom house allowing room in the house for play room and office on top of a bedroom each
Two cars both less than 10 years old
Weekend / after school activities for both children.
Appropriate childcare - so wrap around or a nanny.
That to me would be the minimum definition of rich. That doesn't include the luxury of choosing one parent to be able to stay at hone, or any excess to invest for example. But if I could comfortably afford the above I'd call myself rich. Therefore in London / South East I'd say an income of £300k

@bluebunny1 I'm glad you took it in the spirit it was intended

@1940s

South East based. A rich family I would deem being able to do the following - Two foreign holidays per year Private schooling from 3-18 for at least two children A 4-5 bedroom house allowing room in the house for play room and office on top of a bedroom each Two cars both less than 10 years old Weekend / after school activities for both children. Appropriate childcare - so wrap around or a nanny. That to me would be the minimum definition of rich. That doesn't include the luxury of choosing one parent to be able to stay at hone, or any excess to invest for example. But if I could comfortably afford the above I'd call myself rich. Therefore in London / South East I'd say an income of £300k

I find this list interesting. I don’t feel poor for not having most of the things on your list because for various ethical, environmental and other reasons, I just don’t want them. I’ve no idea what we’d spend more money on if we had a higher income, but it wouldn’t be private schools, air travel, cars or a bigger house.

I would consider rich not so much being a level if income, but overall wealth, sources of income and lifestyle. To me it would be not needing to work, with a very comfortable lifestyle funded from independent income streams such as dividend, bond yields, investment portfolios etc. It would also come from net worth, how much they had in the bank, was their property owned outright, things like that.

My husband and I both have good incomes, some people would probably consider us rich, I know people who earn more than we do and I don't generally consider them rich. My husband knows someone who is a millionaire many times over, he does not need to get out of bed, a huge investment portfolio, he is someone I consider rich.

Anyone who pays 40% tax or above

Anyone who doesn't work, but is reliant on someone else

@MatildaIThink

I would consider rich not so much being a level if income, but overall wealth, sources of income and lifestyle. To me it would be not needing to work, with a very comfortable lifestyle funded from independent income streams such as dividend, bond yields, investment portfolios etc. It would also come from net worth, how much they had in the bank, was their property owned outright, things like that.

My husband and I both have good incomes, some people would probably consider us rich, I know people who earn more than we do and I don't generally consider them rich. My husband knows someone who is a millionaire many times over, he does not need to get out of bed, a huge investment portfolio, he is someone I consider rich.

This - rich people have a lot of wealth not the same thing as income. 'Rich' means not having to worry about money, ever. If you got fired tomorrow and the economy tanked you'd be able to maintain a reasonable lifestyle.

DP and I have a decent income, consider ourselves comfortable. Not poor by any means but certainly not rich.

Again this is in the interests of discussion and not a race to the bottom. The fact that people on NMW may have no savings etc etc isn't the point. It's what rich is from a financial standpoint and that's having assets. Which isn't just cash in the bank but investments etc - the latter of which of course has fluctuating values.

@Lovinglife45

minceandonions I too feel £750k to £1.5m is rich. As you say enough to live in a large 4 bed house, send your dc to private school (if you wish), pool, holiday home, 5 star hotels etc.

Interesting that you and dh, have no dc and still have to he careful with household income of £90k. Perhaps you over pay your pension, mortgage, have expensive hobbies etc. My stbxh and I had a similar income with dc, while we were no means rich, we were comfortable. We had to save monthly for holidays and other larger expenses. We lived in a very modest 3 bed that was too small for growing family. We could afford to shop in Sainsburys but chose to shop in Aldi.

Santasstuck
Surprising that you do not feel comfortable with household income of £170k (around £8.5k a month). I can only assume you have a large mortgage, you invest, over pay on your mortgage and pension. On £170k, you should at minimum be able to shop at middle of the range clothes stores (M&S, Next), eat salmon and beef at least once a week.

We actually have quote a small mortgage, we only went 3x our salary and that was a few promotions ago. I don't like risk. We both work public sector and have reasonably high pensions. Apart from that we save a few £hundred towards DCs' savings. The rest goes on commute and day to day living really. Nursery fees are a big culprit.

Some posters here need some perspective.
I'd feel comfortable on 30k and rich at 45/50k.

I feel rich now on combined income of around £70-80k with medium mortgage and no large childcare bills compared to when I was married to exh who was earning £150k+ but was financially abusive to the point I’d only buy second hand shoes if mine were totally worn out

I come from wealthy family (£300k per year dividends) but we didn’t live lavishly. One Uk holiday a year and second hand non fancy cars.

I think I live more lavishly now on less than a third of that and I’m not at all a spendy type

@DaisyDozyDee
I agree
I wouldn’t feel comfortable with multiple foreign holidays, unnecessary new cars and unnecessary large house just because I could afford it
The schooling around here is good too so I’m not too sure I would choose to put mine in private if we could afford to

I was enjoying my Uk breaks before COVID came along and meant that everywhere was 10x busier than before

Relative isn't it? I'd feel rich if I could own where I wanted to, could travel wherever, and afford x, y, z. But where I want to live is Chelsea, so I'd need a few million. And I'm sure many people think I'm rich already (I put two kids through private school and own my home mortgage free). I don't feel rich - comfortable yes, not rich (I earn about £50k, not enough for two kids in private, which I paid for with inherited money, and I don't have a mortgage as my husband passed away and I downsized to a house half the size of our marital one with the equity after selling it).

@DaisyDozyDee I agree that just if my income rose up to 300k I wouldn't immediately buy all of those things. I just use those things as a bit of a measure of what I'd deem rich. I couldn't afford those things now and reckon you'd need 300k to afford those things. None of which I think are particularly wild / super extravagant.

I suspect the thresholds in people’s eyes increase as they earn more.

Five years ago I would have been delighted if not surprised at our joint income, but I still don’t feel we are hugely well off, though that may come from having wealthy neighbours and colleagues.

It's all relative. 3dc in childcare and private school plus big mortgage and you can have a huge salary and not feel rich.

But equally a wise house purchase when younger and frugal living can feel rich on a much smaller salary.

If you've got a taste for expensive stuff and richer friends then you could feel quite hard done to.

If you pay off your mortgage and save well in pension you won't feel rich.

Was talking to boss today and he is easily on £150k plus bonus in Scotland, wife doesn't work. Grown up kids but more than average numbers of children. Even when younger he will have been on 6 figure salaries. They own a modest semi and a second architect designed holiday home. He was telling me how they could never afford flash holidays or days out when his dc were younger and I was thinking no way you just chose to spend it all on property and probably pensions.

I don't think you could pick out a salary as "rich"
They may have massive outgoings/debts so still be struggling.

To me, rich is a house and holiday home paid off, kids in private schools, top of the range cars bought out right, work because they love it rather than needing the money.

"Well off" would be 300k +

@BlippityHiggut

Some posters here need some perspective. I'd feel comfortable on 30k and rich at 45/50k.

Posters do have "some perspective" it is just different from yours.

You see this is why I don’t post on these threads. Because of the attacks. Let people post without the aggressive judgments and it will be more interesting.

I think the main problem with threads like these is higher income earners downplaying their income in some kind of misguided attempt at modesty.

What they don't realise is that it just comes out as ignorant, assuming these high household incomes are partially or wholly contributed by the posters here, to earn these kinds of sums, I would above thought they'd be more emotionally intelligent to reflect on how it comes across.

@HalfShrunkMoreToGo

I consider my salary to be almost embarrassingly big, I'd never tell anyone in real life how much I earn, but I think that's mainly because I've gone from £38k to £80k over the last 18months and can't quite grasp the increase yet.

I'd struggle to grasp that as well. Do you mind me asking vaguely what you do and how you jumped so quickly in wages?

@blackcoffeeplant I went from a customer service management role into Governance and compliance, then a few strategic moves and a lot of luck had me end up in a senior InfoSecurity role. I had 5 job titles over that time and a lot of knuckle bitingly uncomfortable 'I'm great and you really don't want to lose me' type conversations that I acted/bluffed my way through while feeling like an imposter.

I don't think anyone down plays their income. They point out that 50% of £300k might be taken by the state for example (you would have £170k left after tax but before 9% student loan), that 2 full time London nursery places would be about £24k per baby, that your London rent or mortgage might be £36k a year or the £90k interest only our mortgage was at one point.

However we don't say we are poor. We all know what most people have after tax. It is more people thinking if you earn £300k you keep £300k rather than the state takes £130,000 of it that people like to ensure is made clear.

I am comfortable witha mortgage and no private pension and just 2 student children living at home (and no savings). I woujld like to pay the mortgage off in the next few years (I turn 60 this year and will work until I die) so any spare money is going to that and that means I am very lucky indeed (and part of that is I have worked full time since 1983 even without maternity leaves and even today do at least some work on 365 days a year working for myself so it is luck and hard work and also choosing a kind of work which is better paid than others when I was about 14 and chose law over other things I also liked (I am a pretty good classical singer) precisely because I wanted a higher earning than singing was likely to bring).

Here in NI I reckon a family can live very comfortably on 45k a year. Let's assume a 4 bed bungalow, 2 cars, wooden floors and nice furniture.

What is clear is that everyone's definition is different and many people define 'rich' as 'other people who have significantly more money and/or assets than I do'.

But ONS statistics show that, once you have a household income above about £50k, after taxes and benefits have been taken into account, you are in the top 20% of households by income.

www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/personalandhouseholdfinances/incomeandwealth/datasets/householddisposableincomeandinequality

So if you have this amount or more, you have a lot more money than most people, so if you choose to spend a lot of it on what appears to be dull essentials like housing and childcare, you're still in a better position than people with lower incomes, because they also have to find these things, and they can't afford the same choice or 'quality' as you can, in that they won't be able to afford to live in as nice an area, or as close to work or other amenities, they won't be able to afford a nanny or nursery and are likely to be juggling several less convenient options, doing opposite shifts with their partner, using a larger percentage of their income etc.

So despite people on well above average incomes not feeling 'rich' they do look pretty rich to the people who are struggling through life on far less money.