What would you call a good family income?

[Tblock1800]

Just wondering how everyone is coping in this current climate? And what would you consider a good family income? Obviously depending on which part of the country i understand. Me and my wife are a family of 4 living in Surrey with 2 young children ( 3 month old girl , 2.5 year old boy ) both own our property and have 2 cars. Our mortgage deal ends next month unfortunately like thousands of others and will be going up to a higher rate. We pay child care fees for our little boy too. Our yearly income between us both is roughly £76000. At the moment we are still able to afford a holiday abroad once a year, but obviously with our mortgage going up, we will need to just be a bit wary of overspending and budgeting a little with obviously meals out etc. Have people been budgeting since the ridiculous cost of living rise?

How long is a piece of string. Our income is more, but we don't have two properties.

Bit of a piece of string but a rule of thumb might be whether you can afford all your day-to-day costs without stress plus a few luxuries (eg a holiday abroad once a year).

Median income in the south east is £37k so you're pretty much bang on that.

I’d say if you have kids of preschool age then you are in that tricky spot financially that every working family struggles with.

Your income is good - the thing that’s killing you is childcare fees. Presumably you are on maternity leave and getting a reasonable amount of income yourself?

why do you have/need two properties?

I think OP is saying that he and his wife are co-owners, not that they have a property each.

How much is your mortgage and nursery fees?

Our household income is similar and we struggle with £1,000 nursery fees a month (one child, 3 days a week!)

Who knows. We bring in more but we have another child. We also sold our second property last year and that has been hugely beneficial for our finances. It seems ludicrous that we aren’t very comfortable given our salary but we also live in Surrey and it’s all relative, as a lot of the time I feel we are very limited with what we can do.

We don’t go on holidays but we have two children with sen and the additional care costs are huge. The pets don’t help either.

Our household income is similar and we are honestly very comfortable, but we live in a cheap part of the country and despite our mortgage going up we are still fine.

The main difference though is childcare - DS (only child) has started secondary this year so our childcare costs have in the last few years got lower and lower and are now zero. Hobbies are more expensive now of course but nothing drains the finances quite like school holiday childcare.

Sorry for confusion guys i mean me and my wife are Co owners of 1 property. I wish we had 2 properties 😅

Our mortgage was £696 on a brilliant rate but now going up to £1,090 month. Child care fees usually about 3/400 a month although we won’t be paying this for a while as wife is on maternity

Actually your mortgage (even at the increased rate) plus childcare costs seem really reasonable/on the low side for Surrey.

You should also remember that people's idea of a good family income on MN differs wildly and a thread like this is likely to descend into a bunfight

yeh true, although going up by nearly £400 a month still a fair amount but i appreciate others are on even larger mortgages. Things are fine for us financially, but just interested to see how others are coping in a similar situation. If people don’t want to discuss their finances is cool they can just ignore the thread

If people don’t want to discuss their finances is cool they can just ignore the thread

Lol that's not usually how financial threads go.

Exactly so shouldn’t be an issue then haha

I was going to say your combined salary was low for Surrey but goodness your nursery fees are very low! If you don't mind me asking- how old are you both?

Lots of MN are older so I understand the low mortgages.

I'm in West London and our earnings and outgoings are more than yours (kids similar age 23 months and 10 weeks). Still paying ft nursery as wasn't taking a chance of losing our nursery place.

I think you're fine as long as your nursery fees per child don't increase too much. I'm guessing you take home about £4k per month as a household (give or take pension contributions and student loan etc) but you also get tax free childcare and child benefits etc so still able to save each month which is a great start .

Depends where in Surrey you live and what sort of property you live in.

I live in Richmond and our joint income is £150k but that’s probably at the low end in our area altho we don’t have a mortgage, so it’s all relative.

we are both 36 and 38. Yes, correct I take home roughly £2800 a month with Overtime which is usually guaranteed if I want it. My wife when obviously off maternity takes home about £1900 or slightly more, so we take home I would say £4,700 a month combined salary so more than your figure. Child care fees are small purely because i do shift work so when i’m on my days off, i will have the kids. So effectively in the month, my little boy goes to childminder half the month rather than full time

We're okay financially. We don't worry about money but every penny is accounted for.

Joint pre-tax income of £93k but most of that is DH because I'm a student midwife.

DH pays 40% tax rate and contributes to his own and my private pension (while I'm not earning). This is something we could stop if necessary but we are thinking of long term financial security.

We had savings from before I started training which we've had to use most of (to buy a car when ours gave up 😅). We aren't currently saving anything (except for known costs like annual insurance etc)

We live in a pricier part of Yorkshire, but we probably get more for our money compare to a lot of South East areas.

We pay £100 a month each into savings for two of our kids. Again something we could stop if we needed to.

We bought the cheapest house in a good area so managed to pay off our mortgage last year.

Which is good because our monthly childcare bill for 4 days is £1400 (not including holiday club costs 💸). As a student we won't qualify for any of the additional funded hours.

Once I'm qualified and we're not paying so much in childcare I imagine we'll feel quite well off.

Cool. I think we are ok financially and we can still go out for meals if need be, take our children out and do everything we did before, but I think with our mortgage going up we just need to be a bit more savvy with over spending if need be. I have a savings buffer luckily so if anything expensive were to happen like the boiler breaking down or whatever, i feel I have that buffer to compensate for that if need be so we’re lucky in that sense

Cool. I think we are ok financially and we can still go out for meals if need be, take our children out and do everything we did before, but I think with our mortgage going up we just need to be a bit more savvy with over spending if need be. I have a savings buffer luckily so if anything expensive were to happen like the boiler breaking down or whatever, i feel I have that buffer to compensate for that if need be so we’re lucky in that sense

Income has so many variables. I would feel uncomfortable if we had less than £1000 a month disposable income after food and bills but not including holidays birthdays Xmas etc.

How you manage your money can also make a huge difference.

There's such a massive variation what you could spend on many aspects, eg mobile phones, cars, subscriptions, groceries, clothes, accessories, grooming, lunches, takeaways, meals out etc etc, that the difference between careful budgeting and more expensive options could add up to hundreds of pounds a month if not more and in many cases you could make your money go much further by reducing costs without significantly changing your lifestyle.

@Tblock1800 i’m confused about what you want from this thread? You are coping financially, can afford the basics, can afford the niceties (meals out etc) can afford an holiday (abroad), can afford a mortgage rate interest rise, nursery fees, a car and have savings. Assuming you have pensions, I’d say you are doing fine.

Things I’d suggest you think about as kids get older: Nursery fees get replaced by kids activities/hobbies/ after school club/breakfast club etc. Schools these days seem to demand way more input than your own parents ever did (homework, assemblies, dressing up days, inset days), and trying to fit work in with school hours particularly with one that doesn’t offer wraparound care is exhausting. Holiday clubs are also £££’s. The teenage years are actually when kids need your time more so consider how your shift work might affect that.

We're on 100k but don't have a dependant child now from this year. We are ok. Live in the North and don't have an exuberant lifestyle. We are guaranteeing rent for the eldest though whilst she gets into a more secure job. We have a couple of holidays a year and we are putting money into pension and the mortgage as much as possible as retirement looms.

Oh my shift work means i see my kids a lot more than your average Monday to Friday- 9-5 worker, so that’s never an issue for when they are older. I get plenty of time off in my industry luckily so that will never be an issue.

We are 26 and 29, have two DC aged 2 and a baby and earn 78k basic plus unlimited OT so earn around 90k. Dh works full time and I do 2 days a week term time only.
We have a mortgage of 750 and pay 850 a month nursery with 2 fully owned cars. We still never feel like we have any money but also know we live comfortably and have no huge worries- we just can't buy every single thing we want sadly!