How much money do you need?

[Fox111]

Cost of living crisis makes everyone poor even those with a six figure salary.

So my question is what is your comfortable disposable income?
Take away mortgage/rent, transportation and childcare what figure would you be comfortable with after these deductions?

That's not a large house, that's called a palace.

I have a 6 bed rural draughty house up north and it's £6500 / year including electric car charging. We do a bit of top up of wood when we don't have enough home-grown, so call it £7k. £100k must be a Palace and swimming pool.

Cost of living crisis makes everyone poor even those with a six figure salary.

How am I going to take anything said after this remotely serious? Cop on.

We're currently trying to work this out.

We're approaching retirement and have just paid off our mortgage.

However DD is still at Uni and DS is on a low stipend doing a PhD. So we are still financing them.

We need to know how much we need to live on with some fun money before we can work out when we can afford to retire.

Back of a fag packet calculation is about £3-3.5k a month. So retirement may be a while off.

We have an income of around £40K and our lifestyle is what I would consider to be very comfortable. We have no mortgage and DCs are grown up. We have nice holidays twice a year, and usually get away for at least one or two nights a month. We run two cars.

If you are talking just personal spending money per week then 1 would say £250 per week. If you are talking about housing costs, childcare, groceries, car costs, bills etc etc then that would depend very much on other things like where you live and how many and what age of children.

Well, I have £1240 this month plus £150 ish child benefit after rent/mortgage and childcare but before any other bills and it’s not enough (for me and 2 dc). I dont really go out or have hobbies and dc hobbies are cheap although eldest spends a bit much in the school canteen. Hopefully will have a bit more when the littlest gets 30 free hours as I’m just subsidising with savings atm.

Cost of living crisis makes everyone poor even those with a six figure salary.

Thank you, next.

Tell Charles and Camilla to downsize then

Cost of living crisis makes everyone poor even those with a six figure salary.

Don't be ridiculous.
Changing the word to skint doesn't change it either.

i really understand what OP said. My income exactly 100k and i have nothing left in the end of the month. Even though my mortgage only £500 a month. I can still feel it the cost of living crisis. I got 5 people in our house. 3 adults and 2 children. Before covid food cost £600 max and now can up to £1000 per month and i shop in aldi. children extra curicullar, petrol, etc. In the end of the month i only left with max £500 sometimes nothing.

I spend about £20,000 a year on myself. I have no mortgage, no car, rarely go on holiday (last time was 9 years ago), and buy mostly second hand clothes. My cat costs around £800 in food and vet plan and insurance.

In a BEST case scenario (which is what I assume you’re after) per month:
£300 entertainment (going out to eat, theatre, etc.)
£100 clothes
£100 massages and facials
£75 nails and eyebrows
£200 gym and subscriptions
£500 towards holidays
= £1,275

This is a lot of money of course but thought it an interesting task to do if you aren’t working to restrictions and thinking of that “dream lifestyle”

If you're literally asking what I'd want every month to feel comfortable, setting aside mortgage, transportation, childcare, but not including what I'd put into savings, I think I'd need about £2k a month to be comfortable and £3-4k to be happy 😁

Oh I just saw OP said it doesn't need to include groceries. Maybe a bit less. But it's terrifying when you start to add up all the things you'd have in a dream world. Top hairdresser, weekly massage, monthly facial, personal trainer, regular holidays, coach/therapist ... I feel like it's a bad idea to think about it all actually!

Thank you for all of the answers.

Dh and I leave ourselves 1k each per month for discretionary funds. So all bills paid and savings accounts are added to.
Most of mine is spent on eating out and socialising, skincare/makeup and travel. Very little in the way of clothes though because they don’t really interest me.
Anything that doesn’t get spend is added to one of the savings accounts which I then draw out another month if I need it!

That's not skint, it's choosing to spend your money on expensive things, private education, bigger house, fancy holidays and having no money left afterwards - all spending choices which actual skint people don't have.

Yes, this would be bloody good!

Disposable income? That means to me AFTER bills, mortgage, food etc. We spend probably about 500 a week on other things, but we are two adults and five children with dogs.

Some bills can be reduced, as can food if you are not already skint and frugal. So I see these as part of disposable income. Transportation to work and childcare costs are costs of working and more fixed.

This only deducts housing and council tax before comparing incomes.

https://ifs.org.uk/tools_and_resources/where_do_you_fit_in

What we could survive on monthly and what I'd want to survive on are 2 different things.

This'd be us "just surviving" and having got rid of both cars, kids giving up their groups, no gym memberships for us etc:

Gas and electric 95 (but due to come off a 3 year fixed rate shortly so God knows how high it'll go)
Council tax 185
Life and critical illness insurance 70
Union fees 5.50
Food 400
Miscellaneous costs ive no doubt forgotten 200

So around a grand after everything essential is paid would leave us "just surviving".

In order to feel comfortable, including savings for holidays, I'd say we need approx 2000 a month after mortgage paid.

Being 'skint' isn't the same as being poor though. People on 6 figure salaries usually have money invested in a home, pensions, investments etc. so they might not have a lot of disposable income, but they're still wealthy.

You’re still not poor, HTH.

@TinkerTiger i’m not saying i’m poor. Its a matter of lifestyle choice isn’t. I’m just saying there are lots of high earner also left with nothing in the end of the month because of this living crisis. I just give different perspective here even a high earner are not living as comfortable than before but I am still grateful and i know i’m lucky than so many people. Not saying i’m poor though. Just not as comfy as before