Across loads of subs its seems to be a constant question people seen to seriously ask. Is this something I am too poor to comprehend? I see loads of posts about £25K+ salaries not being good enough. (As in some vary from range but £25K seems to be the baseline.)
I lived in London for a little as £19K some years- highest I ever went was £27K and found it do able.
Or are these questions just by people who think the more zeros in your wage is the key to happiness?
Edit: I only mentioned London due to my experience living there. I was talking about general living wages across the UK.
Edit 2: Oh the irony. My intent was to see if those who consider £50k a bad salary were out of touch in general- as I see a lot of these posts over the years and it annoyed me to see a fresh graduate complain about being a a billion quid a week type of thing. How far of the point was I.
46 comments
It all depends on your background, experience and expectations.
When we’re you earning that? How much was your partner on? You’d struggle a lot on that little these days, cost of living in brutal
Add in mortgage, kids and so on. Then £50k alone without a working partner in London can be tough
Well, average rent outside london is £1,200pcm now- that’s over 14k a year.
There’s a cost of living crisis with huge energy and food costs.
So yeah, if you’re single £25k would be just about existing right now
They are trying to live a Middle Class lifestyle, probably overspending on rent/mortgage.. ultimately, it doesn’t matter what your salary is – if you spend what you earn, you’ll not understand how to get by on less’
Either these people have kids and mortgages or their priorities are fucked and they have no idea how to economise.
Worse still are those dumb, ‘Is £45k a good salary for a 20 year old?’ type questions.
Also bear in mind UK Reddit is rife with pompous, crushingly insensitive middle-class people.
2023 is not really going to compare to your “some years”
When i earned 19k in london my rent was 400 a month, you would not get that roon for less than 1k today
With a lot of stuff like that I think the posters are just using it as a way of patting themselves on the back.
Some people are so poor that all they have is money.
It all depends on one’s lifestyle, expectations, and priorities tbh.
A 25k salary is probably enough for someone in London who is a homebody, barely ever eats out, doesn’t care about fashion, doesn’t holiday abroad and doesn’t mean having an older, cheaper phone model.
A 25k salary is not enough for someone in London who has a busy social life and multiple hobbies that cost money, eats out alot, enjoys buying and wearing new clothes regularly, likes a couple of holidays abroad each year, and wants the latest iPhone.
Regardless, a 50k salary is definitely sufficient for London unless you’re truly trying to live a lavish lifestyle beyond your means. Obviously its not going to get you on the London property ladder, nowhere even close, but you can rent or houseshare and still have a fairly comfortable social life. It’s the position me and alot of my friends are in currently (late 20s).
However, I’d disagree that a salary of 19k is feasible in London nowadays. Perhaps 10 years ago, if you were frugal. But now with inflation across basically everything…I mean, is 19k even above the London Living Wage!?
In 2023 and beyond, I’d say 30k minimum is needed really if you want to *live* in London, and, well, actually get to try and enjoy the benefits of living there. What’s the point in living in such a city and paying the rent prices if you don’t have any disposable income to enjoy yourself at the weekends and after work etc?
£50k gives a take home pay of around £3100/month – which is not a ton of money if a household has a sizeable mortgage/rent bill. Plus gas/electricity costs are insane, and food in general seems to have gone up by 25-50%.
I’m fairly certain 90% of this sub just has some sort of poverty kink
People think of living in different ways.
If you’re happy having no children, living in a small place, no holidays, eating beans then yes you can “live” off very little.
If you want to have what most people would call a life then you’ll generally need a bit more.
>Or are these questions just by people who think the more zeros in your wage is the key to happiness?
I’ve certainly had a better class of misery as my wages have increased.
I find reddit seems to be the only place that has a problem with that kind of salary. In real life I guess I am friends with so many people who earn under 30k myself included. Wlget by fine.
I think the issue is that these higher salaries do tend to coincide with a higher cost of living/standard of living so that some people get in to the trap of ‘well I make £50k so I need to live like it too’ and get themselves into some financial trouble.
I started a new job in December on 26k which was almost a 20% increase on the previous job I had and I’ve never felt so well off, comparatively speaking. That said, I can also see little bits creeping in that wee me spending more recklessly or planning more expensive trips than I ever would before and really need to reign it in a bit
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20 somethings in London at the start of their career are slumming it, all their friends are slumming it. They typically living a student lifestyle. House deposit? Pension? Future problem.
That is completely different to someone who is trying to support a family and plan for the future.
If that’s the total income for a family of 3, it can be challenging. Depends on the circumstances. Definitely couldn’t survive on that in London personally.
Qualification: we left London in 2013 and our income was around that. Childcare (basically an entire wage packet for either me or my wife) along with the mortgage on our flat was unaffordable.
I think it’s also that for most people, lifestyle changes and it’s hard to go back, so even if you have a fairly high income, when stuff gets expensive it *feels* hard to make ends meet.
And of course an awful lot of people have financial commitments they can’t quickly or early cutback on, like car loans or expensive phone contracts, so when prices rise it’s hard for them to adjust quickly.
I’m now fortunate enough to have a pretty good income. In the past I had a very low income and I managed, and if I had to I could manage on a similarly low income now, but it would be hard, as I have got used to being able to afford nicer stuff. (for instance, I do my weekly shop based on what meals I want to make, whether I expect to have time to cook etc, I don’t, as I did when I was younger and poorer, carefully check all the prices, adjust my meal planning based on what’s on sale or what I can stretch to make more than one meal)
I would imagine that for people who have big expenses such as child care, or who are servicing big mortgages or other debts, it is even harder.
I think the other thing that is relevant is who people are comparing themselves to – if your income is £25K but you work with or are friendly with lots of people who earn £50-£60K then you are likely to feel much poorer, and that £25K isn’t good enough, than if you are earning £25K and most of your friends and colleagues are earning similar or lower amounts.
Of course, *feeling* poor is not the same as actually *being* poor, but I guess if you think if being ell off as never having to think about spending money, then you do need to go well above £50K to get to that stage.
It’s not necessarily the income that’s the issue, it’s their costs.
When you consider how much housing, childcare, transport and utilities have gone up, it’s not that surprising that people find that their salary – whatever it happens to be – isn’t going as far as it used to.
If you have two children in full-time childcare and a train season ticket at £6k per year, that could easily be £15k-£20k of your post-tax income gone (and remember that at £50k, you start losing child benefit). Then throw on top your rent/mortgage going up and you start to see how people who might even be on good salaries find things harder.
There is still this mentality in the UK that people on £50k are “minted”, and that’s really not helpful when it comes to talking about improving the shite wage growth we have in the UK. Yes, they’re better-off than many, but that doesn’t mean that £50k goes as far as it did – or indeed, far enough.
At the moment I kind of get where they are coming from. This country runs on mimimum wage workers who earn around £20,000 a year and they can’t afford to pay rent (I would say mortgage but there aren fewer owner in this earning range) pay their bills (especially heating) and afford food. We have more food banks than McDonald’s has stores. The government relies heavily on these workers yet refuses to acknowledge that they need to be paid enough to actually live.
Actually the more entertaining is ‘I’m struggling on £100k a year’, but with the price of champers and caviar I can understand…
The cheapest childcare option in my town is £1200 per month per child for 5 days a week. For 2 kids, you’d need to be on around £38k a year just to cover childcare
Being single is an added cost. Its almost worth being in a false relationship just to survive. Everything is much easier financially with a partner, but I suppose the trade off is you do more things.
>I lived in London for a little as £19K some years- highest I ever went was £27K and found it do able.
Unless you’re living in London earning £27k right now, your experience is irrelevant. The cost of living has gone up considerably in the past year in case you’ve been living under a rock.
I was earning 18,500 five years ago in London and it was tight but doable if you had very low standards (as I did, as a new grad). But even now just five years later you could not possibly do it. The room I was renting back then is almost double pcm now. And that’s not touching on groceries etc. Like you physically could not do it, unless you were living in a tent in a park.
My household income for 2 adults is around £55k and we live ok, but I was living hand to mouth on a crappy wage, living by myself, paying rent by myself for a long time and learned to budget and deal with bills and deadlines which I think people who complain don’t really realise exists.
I think people think being able to: Shop at waitrose, go out twice a week to nice bars, buy new clothes when they want, save 1/3rd of their wages, go to a fancy gym 4 times a week, have a nice car on finance, pay all the taxes that driving/living/working forces you to, go on 2 holidays a year, etc. Are all obligations that their wage needs to cover, rather than them being treats. So if they don’t pay rent, live at home with their parents, and complain that £25k isn’t good enough they’re self entitled idiots.
live within your means, prioritise what you need, work and then build the rest of your life around that. Don’t build an expectation of what you want life to provide you then pout when you can’t afford it.
Everyone is different.
I bought my first home up north all on my own in 2018 while only earning £14k. In the current climate you’d need to make at least 50% more to do what I did then with the cost of everything these days.
In 2011 I started my first job earning £36k gross
Inflation makes that equivalent to £55k gross today… but tax brackets haven’t changed
For reference that same job pays £37k in 2023
UK salaries have taken an incredible beating lately
£50k is still enough to live on for most people but at the same time it is not really a high wage
£50k after tax is £37k. But London is expensive.
Our really quite cheap mortgage is £12k a year. Rental for a 2 bed flat is 50% than that on average. Average utilities is £1,700.
So, assuming average single parent with 1 child (average £2.6k a year) you are looking at £1,700 a month.
Out of that comes food (£140 a month by the way), phone, broadband, clothes, entertainment, birthday presents.
£50k is really not poor. I’ve been poor. But it’s really not as rich as it seems.
Minimum wage for a standard 40 hour week is roughly £22k.
£25k as a salary is kind of ok, but it’s only just above minimum wage.
I’m convinced most of them aren’t real. However one thing I’ve noticed is people who have a lot of money are terrible at managing it.
I’ve just landed a job on £50k and feel like the wealthiest person on the planet. I even googled it to be sure – it’s a top 10% salary in almost the entire country (apart from London). I’m based in Yorkshire so it’s top 10% there too.
I consider myself very fortunate. Perhaps it’s because I’m new to it all, don’t have heavy outgoings and therefore can’t say I’m “feeling the pinch” because this level of income is a step up for me in all ways.
Anyone feeling sorry for themselves on 50k needs to give their head a wobble, or (I think it’s finally fitting to say this without sounding out of touch) live within their means.
I get £650 a month due to being on disability, I was due a little bit more but because the landlord sold my house a few weeks before I was put on disability I had to move into my mum and dad’s, and it was near impossible to get anything public or private even if ‘the job centre would support all they good’
After rent/ bill contributions, my phone bill, etc and a bit of food to tide me over for a few weeks I am left with enough money to treat myself to either a 50p chocolate bar or a small can of irn bru before I’m skint.
Keyways and private rent require a month’s rent in advance ( even if in my situation that could potentially be refunded after the fact) but how tf am I supposed to save?
Even though I’m unable to work, I’m unable to house share and I’m a high risk, I am still lowest bracket on council therefore when one of 4 flats/houses in my area appear on keyways, I’ll instantly be around 400th in the queue….and even if I wasn’t I don’t have the money to pay 1st month and I’m not allowed to work at all to make the money up so if the 1 in 150,000,000 odds I get a place did happen, I’d have to rely on my family ( who also don’t have a pot to piss in) to sub me the full amount until the JSA/ council etc give me the income support, burserys etc that someone in my position would be entitled to.
Every day I’m still at home I feel more isolated and more of a waste of life, which makes it harder and harder to get better. Then you take into account it’s also a lottery to get any assistance medically / you get shoved on 3 year backlogs and I just don’t know what to do.
50k a year? I’m currently expected to get my life back on track and comfortably live on little more than that a ***decade***
I’m on £49k and I’ll be honest I’m struggling now, I live a largely modest life with a mortgage, but peer pressure from family and friends led me to developing my home, fast forward a year and I’m up to my eyeballs in debt. But fortunately the first loan will be cleared in a years time. The only problem is people still expect you to live as lavishly as you did before And I can’t do that. In the past I’d have just gone out and earnt more or got a promotion, but those doors now seem locked. My wages have gone up year on year. But never by more than inflation and rarely above 1-2%
This is the wrong place to be asking such a question, I find people on well paid salaries are quite sensitive to being called out about their complaints of not being paid enough, despite being on an comfortable living wage.
50K a year is me hitting the big time. The things I could do with all that money!
I have no debt or children though.
I’m on 20k at 35.
It’s liveable (and I don’t suffer or go without as I have no debts) but I am skint.
So when people who earn over double that post here, I think they’re just boasting and kinda annoying.
This sub and the financial ones are just full of: “I’m on 100k a year but can’t live on this salary. Help!” “I’ve been on 18k for the past 10 years, fk these people who make 50k/100k/etc and can’t live on it” and “I’ve been on 10k a year for the last 20 and I don’t understand how people are able to afford anything here.” These threads can fk right off.
I’m on minimum wage in UK and would love to have a salary at all 😂
£50k now with inflation is what £35k was in 2010. So if you earned £35k then and £50k now, you actually haven’t had a pay rise at all.
But the tax brackets haven’t changed so you’re actually earning less because the tax man is taking more of your money. People’s perceptions haven’t changed either so people hear £50k and think that’s a lot of money but actually not far off what many graduate schemes would pay 21 year olds straight out of uni 20 years ago.
The truth this there are hardly any good salaries in the UK anymore, and taxes are far too high. We are so, so poor as a nation compared to how we were only 15 years ago. We should be rioting in the streets.
Jfc all these posts “oh but 50k isn’t much once you add somewhere to live and children and food and all these expenses that the poors obviously don’t have”
Median wage in this country is £27k, meaning half the population earns less than £27k per year. If you are on 50k or more, you are netting minimum £1k more per month than the average person
I do genuinely wonder sometimes how so many people ended up on 50k+ incomes despite obviously lacking common sense, logic and the slightest amount of maths skills
Edit:ok so median wage amount was incorrect
https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/bulletins/averageweeklyearningsingreatbritain/april2023#:~:text=Average%20weekly%20earnings%20were%20estimated,(COVID%2D19)%20pandemic
yeah median wage is more now I’ll concede that, the commenter also pointed out “having a 6% conts pension pension and a student loan means those on 50k earn about 25% net more than the average person”……. meaning they earn even more than 25% of 49.99% of the populations earnings. Look at it this way, it’s the equivalent of someone on 68k truly not comprehending how people on 50k or less live. It’s tone deaf at best, just plain idiotic at worst.
But making assumptions like the pension conts and student loans bonuses etc. just doesn’t make sense
Higher earners are more likely to decrease their wages by throwing into pensions/salary sacrifice to decrease their tax burden so those on 50k plus are more likely to be on actually more than the tax man pays attention to so is becoming rich pensioners being taken into account? Also more likely to have paid off their student loans or not needed to take out loans in the first place. See why we aren’t assuming?
Every one of you who is fighting to show how you can live on less money than the next person is shilling for the capitalist class, whether you realise it or not. Boasting about how little you can live on is just sucking the boot leather of the oppressive class. Everyone who has to work whether on 15k or 150k, is a member of the working class. We should be talking about raising up wages and taxing wealth not income. This divisive and phony conflict between people on different wages only serves to obscure the huge disparity in wealth between the owners and the workers. Don’t slag off other workers who are actually in the same boat as you. Solidarity is what we need.
Christ. People like you are partly the reason wages are so low in this country.