Please tell me how you spend £100-150k Incomes

[AkaWho]

I know I am in a very fortunate position to be in this band with my income.
At the moment I basically put anything over £100k in pension, but the increase in living costs is meaning I am spending most of my monthly post-tax income on just living:
Mortgage, bills, petrol and car costs, DC hobbies, gym and pt, the bloody grocery shop! Oh and holidays just seem to be more expensive too. I do have some savings and a DH who also earns/contributes but we were planning on private school for DC in a couple of years and sure we can afford it I just hate the thought of the amount of tax I lose for every £1 over £100k which means for a £20k a year school I could basically have put £50k in my pension.
Do I just have to get over this if I decide on the school fees being worth it? Is there any better way of doing things? Do others with the same salary also feel squeezed? Agreement with DH is my excess income (where exists) goes to school fees and his goes to overpaying the mortgage.
Please don't crucify me, I know I am in a fortunate position and also that there are state school options if I really can't stomach it. I just never thought I would be in a position where I need such a high salary (mainly big mortgage plus the interest rate increase, but also don't deny my family or myself anything)

I can't advise you. We manage to pay for everything on a total household income of £2500. Our DC go to grammar schools. Perhaps you could try those if you are so squeezed.

You feel squeezed on a salary that's in the top 5% of the country? And have a DH that earns on top of that?

🤣

I’m a higher earner and hated that dreaded 67% tax band of 100-122k.

you are right to keep it at 100k if you can afford it or power though until you are earning £140k+

to most it sounds like a lot of money but I still for the life of me don’t know where it all goes. I have no saving and spend it all every month. Mostly on mortgage, bills and things I probably have around £1-2k of disposable income which gets eaten up by my kids tapping me for cash all the time!

Surely if you're clever/experienced enough to command such an ginormous salary you can do your own sums.

I don't pay any tax, yay me! The downside is I earn less than 10% of your salary.

We’re on £110k and couldn’t afford private schools (but we have 3dc). One dc would be a stretch. The three friends I know with dc in private education:

Two families: Staff discount and no mortgage as it was paid off by parents who downsized

One family: owned 2 companies and sold one for 2.6m

with a £100k salary and normal mortgage the reality for most is it’ll be a stretch. That said, my dc are in a standard comprehensive and doing really well so I’m glad we didn’t even try to stretch ourselves.

I understand you must have worked incredibly hard to be earning that salary. I don’t begrudge you a penny of it.

You are going to get crucified on here however.

Suck it up, get your kids their brilliant education, pay your tax to help provide the services for those people that will never have yours or your DC’s opportunities. Then once the school years are gone you can go back to sticking it in your pension and have a fabulous retirement.

We have that as a household income and I'm also surprised that the money just goes. I grew up poor so for me it seems like a huge amount of money. Most of our income goes on the mortgage and bills. Apart from that we're really not extravagant. I buy second hand clothes, our car is an 11 year old Skoda, we don't eat out much. A lot of our money goes on travel as our families live far away.
I have no desire to send my kids to a private school. I'm very happy with the e state schools nearby.

If you are struggling now, there is no way you can afford 18k per year school fees. Presumably you’ll still need a nanny for afterschool care so add another 10k per year for after school care.

Do you have £2500 left of your disposable income per month now?

40k loan repayments, 52k tax, 4 kids. Next year 3 will be at Uni. Poof all gone.

We won't be doing private education, for various reasons, but finances comes into it. We have 3 DC however.

Taxes are eye watering at these levels, and we're in Scotland where it's even worse.

I don't really know where it goes tbh.

Housing costs (mortgage, utilities, council tax) are about £3.5k. Our gas and electricity are high.
Recently bought an electric car which is £550 a month.
Supermarket shop is around £1000 per month.
Childcare is around £500 at the moment - has been triple that in the past.
Kids clubs and hobbies I'm not sure but probably £300 a month for swimming, dancing, taekwondo, beavers.

Pensions, savings, investments takes the rest. We don't have very lavish lifestyles (no gym, PT, hobbies, eating out, holidays are holidays parks/self catering).

Day to day we don't live very differently to how we did on a fraction of the income. It's just our outgoings are big now.

School fees and mortgage, mostly. We aim to save about £1,000 a month, but it doesn't often happen. Never have expensive holidays, always camping or staying somewhere with self-catering in Europe, where we drive to. Still lots of home improvements to be done that we can't afford right now.

Never understand why people click on threads that they know will annoy them and then comment about how annoyed they are. You don’t need to click on it!

Our household income is higher than that range and I whilst we’re obviously doing fine I don’t consider it enough to afford private school fees for our two, so they go to the local state schools. Not going for private frees up a lot of cash to do things as a family.

We have 100k household income and we're comfortable. Dd has a pony on full livery! Do a budget on paper; i even do cashflow forecasts 😁 its no good relying on instinct, you just fritter.

If schooling is your priority, get a smaller house/car/put less in your pension.
The pot is what it is, and fwiw, it’s a fucking massive pot and you have nothing to moan about. Schooling will pass in the blink of an eye.

Well lucky you that you live near one.

Why the stealth boast. I am curious as to the rationale behind this.
You know what you’re doing. You’ve shown that.

We just accepted the loss in tax (my husband now earns over the annoying bracket, and I've just gone part-time so probably come just under threshold). We'd rather have the money now than put extra in pensions. Two of my colleagues recently retired and died within the year. Tomorrow is not guaranteed!

You just have to decide on priorities. Move somewhere with excellent schools / cut your cloth a bit elsewhere / suck it up and pay the tax.
Everyone has decisions to make whatever their income. I'm not really sure what the question is though, the tax has to be paid however you do it.

Mortgage. Travelling, lots of travelling. School fees. Life. Nothing extravagant though, I'm not into designer gear or flash cars.
Yes I often think that surely I should feel richer than that on my salary?

@Nesbi because it's entertaining reading how ridiculous "these posts" can be

Our household income is £130k. (£100k one and £30k the other) no way could we afford private schooling and our mortgage is relatively low at £1300pcm.

Edited to add I don’t feel “squeezed” I genuinely feel incredibly fortunate to be able to sustain the standard of living we do and the cost of living crisis not really impact us.

I'm on 142k and put the 42k in my workplace pension. Another 10k is car allowance, so then c.90k over the year via salary for bills, ISA allowances and hollibobs. Pension is the obvious play over 100k. My marginal rate ends up being around 20%.