What is a “great” Income to you?

[Chocstrawberry1]

In the UK, of course depending on where you live, what would you say is a great income if someone told you theirs?

I used to be on £65k before kids and I used to think anyone getting over £60k is on a great income (outside London). Now, with the CoL going sky high, I think a great income is anything over £70k.

I know the average is £25-35k but what would you think is a great income?

I’m a G6 working in a specialist role that currently relies on my advice rather than running a team (downside is I have no one to delegate anything to!)

I’ve led teams to get to this position (actually had a much more stressful job at G7), and as I want to progress to SCS I will need to get back into a more operational head role in my specialism so I can’t hide out here forever as it’s not very stretching (but is high profile so will still help my CV if I don’t stay here too long!) but it’s been nice in the meantime!

40k+

Anything over a 100k is decent income. Great income over 200k

My husband used to be on £10k take home a month, I miss those days! Enabled us to do very thing we wanted with freedom and without worry.

Thanks, that’s interesting. Unfortunately, my role isn’t really specialist so will likely always come with line management responsibilities.

I have a few friends who are SCS and they almost all describe G6 as the sweet spot - decent salary without all of the additional stress and responsibility.

Our G6s are department heads in charge of dozens of people, extremely specialist, often high profile work and multi million pound budgets.

It’s what you have left over after basics that’s the real issue.

There are many debates about what constitutes basics. Child poverty action group, Rowntree foundation and many other think tanks and charities have a baseline they deem acceptable.

After that how people choose to disseminate their surplus if they have any is down to the individual. I was involved with research in to poverty and educational outcomes many years ago so how people spend their surplus has always fascinated me.

We have retired now, the best year we ever had as a combination of wages and investments was 120k. We had many years where our income was far less than that but I have had no mortgage to pay for 20 years. Plus due to excellent flexibility in our workplaces we had a few years where we had very minimal childcare costs.

It’s a combination of region and outgoings, it’s a question that has too many answers.

£99,999

Due to the ridiculous COL, I'd say anything between 80 to 100k(household income for a family of 3). We like nice things( good quality food, clothes, 2 takeaways per week, a holiday per year and maybe 2 or 3 staycations per year). However, we are not bothered about having the newest SUV, living in a detached house( although we won't compromise on the area), we don't live in London(we live in the North, but house prices are rising at an alarming and ridiculous rate even here)

My number is going down as I get older, it depends so much on outgoings.

We are retired, own our house outright (2 person household) and live very comfortably indeed on less than £100k pa. Basically about £30k pa covers everything at home, spend on top of that is all holidays / luxuries.

North of £250k I’d say, though you pay over £100k of it in tax.

£160k, with £60k put into pension so as to be taxed on £100k. That's the best combo of standard of living now vs standard of living in retirement, for me.

Agree with this, that would be each person and a family of 4.

I don’t think there’s any need to put that amount into a pension. My DH and I paid about 25k per year and have ended up with 1.5 million in our mid 50’s.

I’d say two adults earning 100k.

Depends on where you start of course. If you only start on your 50s that amount is necessary if you can afford it.

When did you start putting 25k? And is it 25k each or for both? 1.5 million each or both? If you don’t mind sharing this

Enough to cover my bills, and pay for my hobby, (pets and second hand campervan) with a bit spare to spend on my (adult) DC (pay for meals and odd weekend away) I don't have any need for expensive cars, beauty treatments or holidays. I've never earned more than £25k and can manage really well on less than that. (No mortgage).

I don't think there is an answer to this question - there are two many variables. A person making the same as us, but living in the NW with no kids is going to feel our income is much better than we feel it is, because their housing costs are lower and they don't have childcare to cover.

I think the real measure is really how much you can afford to put into pension, into savings and have left over a month. So, essentially work backwards - don't start with the idea that £100k household income is amazing, but say what does that leave me after tax, costs and savings. If you still have plenty of play money a month - say £1000+ - then you have a great income. If more then a really great income and if less then maybe it is just good, for your circumstances. Which do change, so your perception will also change - my youngest goes to school in Sept and even accounting for wraparound, holiday clubs and other classes we'll be about £400 a month up. So our household income will suddenly feel better.

Being single means a great income needs to be a lot more. I’m on 85K live in NE and bought my house for 130K before prices where I live went sky high post covid. My flat is now worth 250K.
I’d need 50K minimum to just about maintain my lifestyle and pay the bills but this would be very tight and I’d likely have to give up holidays for example if an unexpected bill came in. I feel the pressure to keep earning and it’s a stressful job and I do sometimes get frustrated that a dual income household could have each person earn less in less stressful jobs. I also get frustrated that households with considerably more in take home pay than me can claim child benefit when I can’t.

We have a joint household income of £370,000 per annum plus share options.

At this point we are comfortable and don’t worry about money.

it’s only been since we clear a household income of £175,000 that we were managing without issue. At the current rate we enjoy a nice lifestyle.

If a single person 6 figures

Good invome 40k +, great income 60k+, excellent income 70k+. I have based that on the fact that my dh and my 4 adult children all have good degrees and are experienced in their jobs and they all earn just under 40k.

Agree now that NMW is £25K it kind of skews things.

I don't feel great about how close I am to that after 25 years working experience and 2 degrees 🤣

Whatever salary would allow me to take home £4.5k a month working 3 days a week. I think that must surely be close to £150k.

£45K - my DH earns this as a experienced, upper pay scale teacher. This is more than enough for me to be a SAHM in an expensive area - we were happy to stay in our first home, a 3 bed house with a relatively low mortgage and bills. We therefore have plenty of disposable income to meet our priorities of booking lots of nice days out and experiences for our children.