Income

We’re not living pay check to pay check and can go out for meals and do nice things, but budget our bills and food shops and don’t go abroad every year.

Our household income is around 50k, we don’t live comfortable per se but we budget a lot.

Our income is high but so is our expenses. Rent, bills and council tax is almost £4k a month so we live comfortably but we can’t afford to buy or buy a new car.

£85,000. Comfortable. But not saving as much as we'de like. Like we have enough for maybe 1 or 2 emergencies and then wede be broke.

Combined we make a lot of money. But also live in New York. So we’re not living paycheck to paycheck. But very very little to no money is being saved

Our income is pretty low, but our outgoings are low so we don’t worry about bills and can afford to go on a holiday this year.

Single mum here currently on 740 a month plus universal credit as maternity pay doesn’t go far. After maternity ends I can’t go back to work full time so it’ll be pay check to pay check lol

£80k and it is hard. After years of struggle, we are only just about starting to feel like we are sort of comfortable every month. It's crazy that on that salary, we struggle. But that's life now.

@ALI I’m a little confused at the euro part?

We make £43,000 and it's not exactly easy but it works

I’m a SAHM and my husband makes 100k, we live comfortably but we hardly save and we haven’t taken a real vacation in two years or do anything costly like go to Disney. Florida is crazy expensive with all of the transplants coming here.

I’m in the US… we make decent money but we can barely afford where we live. A recent study showed that a household would have to make $148,000 US dollars/year to be able to afford the mortgage of a median house in my city. That would be about £110,800.

Is there that big of a housing cost difference in the UK? I can't imagine making 40k. You couldn't even get a 1 bedroom apartment here for that living.

@Marina depends where you live. London is extortionate, the next zone out (home counties) a 1 bed apartment would be around £300k, in the south you need about £220k, midlands about £180k, far north, £150k. Minimum wage is around £22k a year full time. Average salary is around £25k. The problem is we are a very small country but the difference between the north and south is huge.

@Marina nope, our wages are shockingly low in the uk compared to others. We live in London and our rental house is worth £1m, we could never afford to get a mortgage on this place. The average UK wage is about £35k.

My husband is signed off from working due to mental and physical health at the minute, so we have to live on my wage of £1500 a month plus about £800 from universal credit. We are living pay check to pay check sadly, and I go on maternity in a month 🙈

My husband makes enough that I can be a SAHM, and we can go out to eat/buy fun things every so often, but we try to save where we can, like to not buying name brand things, and we don't really have a savings built up.

As a household we make a reasonable amount and way above the average but we live in Surrey and are about to move to a bigger house. Our mortgage is about to get a lot more expensive, we are comfortable but not flush by any means.

Around 57K, comfortable enough to buy little luxuries for the house and we have savings for our wedding. But not as much as we’d like and we go on family trips out very rarely!

Our income is classed as high at 130K (pre tax and pensions) but after mortgage, council tax, 2 car payments, and nursery fees there’s not much left. We are in Scotland so also pay higher income tax and don’t get funded childcare hours until the term after they turn 3. I wouldn’t say we are super comfortable but we do have a generous budget for shopping and general spending for stuff we want each month and do go a long holiday at least once a year but that comes at the expense of not putting a lot into savings. But life is for living IMO lol x

We are in the US. We make around 200k ish. We can pay our bills. There’s no extra for savings.

My partner earns around £43k and before Mat leave, I was on roughly £30k so as a household, we do well - not pay check to pay check but all our bills are paid and we have luxuries but probably couldn’t survive more than a few months if one of us was unable to work or lost their jobs.

I make 80k my oh makes about 30k. We're are living a modest but comfortable life. We only do free/picnic days out pretty much. But we're in a rough season, 3 toddlers in full time nursery means it's just not our live your best lives era here at all. But thankfully we also have no debt. I literally count down the days until my 3 are all in school.

I think together we make around £55k. We live within our means and aren’t struggling, we can pay the bills and put money into savings and have a bit of disposable income leftover

We’re doing ok, but haven’t been on holiday for a few years. My husband is a higher earner and is having to chuck a fair chunk of his salary into his pension so we can claim child benefit, and if his salary goes above £100k we’ll fall into the trap of losing all the tax free childcare and funded hours that makes it not worth earning that kind of money! I’m currently on maternity leave (the unpaid bit) but I go back to work next month. My salary is low as I work for a charity, so we need that funding. I feel like our money doesn’t go very far these days, we don’t have many luxuries at all.

@Kirsty That is crazy, idk if there are just extra expenses in the US or what. Because making under 100k here is like hardly making it by for most people.

@Marina mmmm some days i think we are doing really well and others I'm like wtf 😅 I think after pension, national insurance, tax, student loans, we have around £4800 a month. Mortgage and childcare is about £2100. Food seems to be around £500. Bills and others is another £500. We are really strict and save £150 (£50 for each) for the boys. Try to save a bit for us, but it's around £100-150. We have a loan and large credit card (my fault, i like expensive holidays! 🫣) Its nuts but that money just disappears.

I’m a SAHM and we are getting by on my partners salary approx £34k. We have enough every month to pay bills and live, and a few luxuries but we’re not really in a position to be saving anything monthly. But we’re certainly not going without.

We both have decent wages (£70k+ between us) but right now my entire wage is going on childcare (~£3k a month 😭), so it’s definitely tighter than we’re used to. Can’t wait for the extra funded hours in Sept & for my eldest to start school next year so we can start being a little bit more relaxed with money

We make a reasonable amount and live within our means, we didn't go to max on our mortgage and always manage to knock years off. I don't save as I get most of the bills and childcare but my husband does.

Now less than 40K but we paid off our house before taking the pay cut so we don’t have regular mortgage payments. When I was working full time we were earning 50-60K combined whilst renting and saving for the house. We live comfortably but still within our means I’d say. And anything other than necessities are thought over twice before purchasing.

Our joint income is over £100k and we both get decent bonuses on a yearly basis, we have a mortgage that may get bigger as we are looking to move. Our youngest is in pre school and qualifies for the 30 free hours and we are funding our eldest through uni. We have two cars, we own my husbands and I have mine through a car scheme at work. We have savings and pensions which we should probably put more into but we are very much of the motto “life is for living” and so money from our bonuses tends to go on holidays. I would say we are living comfortably, apart from our mortgage we have no other debt and don’t use credit cards.

Our combined income is £55k now compared to £45k last year, last year we struggled because we had nursery fees for 2 kids to pay for, this year we only have top up fees for 1 and now we do alright, we're focusing on paying off debt but we can now keep saving for a house so I'd say we're living comfortably now, we can't afford holidays or anything but we get by

@Kirsty you can get a 3bed semi in the midlands for under £200k

@Ema you can get a lot for £200k but it depends on how much you are willing to fix and put up with! 😅 It's all very subjective, with so many variables, i gave a generalised statement because who has time to go into specifics? It would take all night to cover the entire UK housing scale!

I think generally everyone is feeling the pinch, money doesn’t go as far as it used to. The more money you have the larger mortgages and other financial commitments tend to be so it can leave you feeling less well off but you are still incredibly privileged and will reap the rewards later. My mum and dad had a joint household income of 30k and raised 3 kids in the north … sometimes I wonder how because I make a lot more and our life is not as comfortable 🤷🏼‍♀️

@Kirsty I bought my 3bed semi newbuild 18months ago for under £200k. Generally midlands is a lot cheaper compared to the south and even cheaper the more you go up north.

£67K between us, it's not uncomfortable but we can't afford luxuries or holidays at the moment. Crazy times we're living in! When we rented our first flat 10 years ago we were both apprentices and had a combined income of £26K and managed to save for a deposit for a house 😅

I live in London- comfortable is the unobtainable dream 😂😩😳😬🫠😭

I'm in Australia, so I just did the exchange rate, and we are on 21,800gbp, which is 45k for us, and this is the most we've ever had, and we feel comfortable we get all bills and shopping and petrol in both cars and still have a bit left over for savings a bit of fun. For us, it's about budgeting and knowing where to shop and how to pay the bills. But also, maybe because it's the most we've ever had, we feel amazed at how much we bring in and how much we have left over.

@Meg where in Australia are you? We’re in Sydney and the cost of living here is wild expensive. Our rent is $67k a year for 2bed flat that desperately needs a new bathroom and kitchen! flabbergasted that you can feel comfortable with kids in Oz on 45k.

@Katie in Newcastle well West lake Macquarie much cheaper out here, but lately the prices have gone to about $800 a week so not far from you. We live in a private rental. we moved in 14 years ago, and our rent has only gone up $250(let's just say we are very close to the owners). We live in a 3 bed unit and same bathroom, and the kitchen desperately needs an update, but we are updoing the unit as we please, thankfully.

It’s hard. You have to budget . I have to rely on saving for kids activities and mini breaks away . All my 20s I put away a little bit of money each month for when I had a family . Around 20 % of most pay. I didn’t go out drinking each week which is common in the uk , I didn’t go on luxury holiday every year I did a few good holidays every other year or cheap European breaks .i didn’t have a fancy car. took the train or walked . Worked a lot of over time missed friends parties and saved a little each month to make things easier for when I had a family . Whenever my parents / family gifted me money I treated myself to something nice a good bag / little trips / entertainment . You have to make sacrifices if your not on a high income

With my husband’s signing bonus for his new job, combined we’re £518,000 ($692,300 USD). It’ll be slightly less after the first year bc his signing bonus is like £100k. Comfortable with that of course but we still live very normally. Wish we had a nicer house.

@Allie in a year?! That’s an insane amount of money. More than double my mortgage 😂

@Sarah right?! I’m in the wrong job clearly 😅

@Allie wow, what do you two do for work ?

Yeah we are very lucky! 🙏 I’m in a customer facing role at a cybersecurity company and he’s an engineer at a large trading firm

@Allie that’s amazing. What type of engineer is he? I’m guessing software?

Yep but it’s been an interesting career progression - at his last company he was Director of Engineering close to becoming VP, and in his new role he’s simply titled ‘software engineer’ 😅