What's a good salary

Freefaller said:
You have to factor where you live, your outgoing costs, any dependents you have, loans, insurance policies, bills, council tax, living (i.e. food shopping etc...), petrol, and all sorts of other expenses.

Personally I'd say 40k is a minimum for a "good" salary, certainly for London anyway.
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certainly wouldn't fancy trying to live in London on 40k
 
Rotty said:
certainly wouldn't fancy trying to live in London on 40k
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Erm, easily doable....

40k is around £2,400 a month after tax.

£800 can get you a 1 bedroom flat in Clapham.

£200 for bills and you still have £1.4k to play with for food and sundries.
 
krooton said:
Erm, easily doable....

40k is around £2,400 a month after tax.

£800 can get you a 1 bedroom flat in Clapham.

£200 for bills and you still have £1.4k to play with for food and sundries.
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but you wouldn't want to spend your life living in a 1 bed flat

also £200 for bills is no where near the mark
 
Rotty said:
certainly wouldn't fancy trying to live in London on 40k
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For a single bloke it's actually fine :) But you just have to save for a bit of fun and not go mad every month and just be a bit wise as to what you spend.

But 200 for bills? I agree that's way off for London, heck council tax is nearly that much!
 
I earn 31k, while my missus supplements the income with an addtional £8k. With this we are able to afford 2 cars, a house, and a far amount of luxuries. So I'd say 30-40k is the sweet spot.
 
Booner! said:
Haven't we had countless threads like this one?
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Yeah it is like OCUK is the new Google. It really isn't hard to do a bit of research and figure out what a good salary is, keeping in mind that it is all relative of course.

One man's good salary is not another man's good salary.

krooton said:
£200 for bills
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£200 for bills? That would hardly cover shopping. Do you live on your own or was the £200 for bils pulled out of thin air?
 
Freefaller said:
For a single bloke it's actually fine :) But you just have to save for a bit of fun and not go mad every month and just be a bit wise as to what you spend.

But 200 for bills? I agree that's way off for London, heck council tax is nearly that much!
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Whoops, forgot that Clapham is a different borough to where I live, and that the council tax is double, haha

Single man + 1 bedroom flat is fine, better than most people get, why would a single guy need a 3 bedroom terrace?

And as soon as you get into a long term relationship, joint income and bills makes things cheaper.

As soon as mortgages and familes come into the picture, things change drastically, but neither of those are on my current list for quite a while.

The fact that I am surviving, perfectly adequately, on considerably less than £40k, and with debts eating up a quarter of my income, £40k should easily give me a comfortable life at my current stage.
 
I earn just over 20k, I live fine.
Ok i still live with parents..... That just means i can bank more money into the savings tho :D

Edit b4 the flamers jump all over me: - I do pay my parents rent, I own a car which I paid for and still do.
 
Between age 20 and 25 I'd say £20k-£40k is good, any above that is rather successful. Over that age I'd push it up a bit more as you'd usually have more commitments and outgoings to nudge it.
 
I earn 32-35k at the moment, I live with my parents in London. I'm 23 and still here because I can't afford to move out (to anywhere half decent and livable).

I'd say 40-45k would be satisfactory for the south east for someone in their twenties.
 
As I've progressed in my job and earnt more my definition of a good salary increases as well.

When I started as a graduate six years ago I was on £20K and at that point I figured £40K would be a very good salary.
I hit that a couple of years ago and realised that, especially in London, it's not quite as much as I thought those years ago.

It's certainly enough to be very comfortable as a single bloke though.
 
Rotty said:
all this makes me wonder why I am skint all the time :(
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ditto - bloody mortgage :(

edit - in the south (london commuter belt) i'd say 50k is decent... but it all depends on your situation i guess, being able to save a fare amount (or just splurge it on stuff) is the thing really...
 
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I'm a single bloke living in a shared flat in Cambridge (fairly expensive, near London prices in town) on 25k. I struggle.

Edit: I'm 23, by the way, for people wondering about pay/age brackets etc.

And for those wondering more, i'm expecting (scaling to the average pay rises my company offers) to be on 27-28 next pay rise, 30 minimum after that.

If i'm not on 28-30 in two years time at my current place, I'll be talking to my manager (whom I'm on good terms with) or i'd start looking elsewhere, i don't think thats too much to ask at all.

I started in my current position on 20k just over a year ago (April 2007)
 
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