2018: What's considered a decent wage within reason?

@D.P. What field of work is it, that you do? From top of my head, I can only think of jobs that reach 70-90k. If you don't mind me asking?
 
110k mortgage at 2% (luckily due to my age hit the market at the right time as that is a big 5 bed detached new build so we'll be in it for a good few years), 2 kids, 10k debt, 1 car, wages 50k+11k as mrs works part time.

things change when you are single, but buying a house on your own with little deposit these days will be the real killer, plus you want 1-2 holidays plus money for savings. You'd need a decent wage for that I think.
 
I'm surrounded by people who earn roughly the same as me, and have partners earning about the same, but they are struggling with their finances. Funny because they sure do talk a lot about takeaways, nights out and shopping trips :rolleyes:

I'm a single bloke with a 90k mortgage (pretty much the max I could borrow so easy enough to work out salary..), 2.5k car owned outright and inexpensive hobbies. Currently spending almost all my money refurbing the house but after that I'll be able to put a decent amount of money away every month after mortgage and bills. Plus I have enough to live for 2 months if I lost my job (ignoring income protection).

Most people are terrible with money.
 
MikeTheNative said:
We live extremely comfortably, we don't have expensive cars or clothes etc. But we have two holidays a year, go out often and if we want something we can buy it.
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The value of living like this can't be understated. That feeling of not being tied to unwarranted debt is amazing and a few changes to your spending habits mean you can feel really quite comfortably, quite easily.

Skillmister said:
I'm surrounded by people who earn roughly the same as me, and have partners earning about the same, but they are struggling with their finances. Funny because they sure do talk a lot about takeaways, nights out and shopping trips :rolleyes:

I'm a single bloke with a 90k mortgage (pretty much the max I could borrow so easy enough to work out salary..), 2.5k car owned outright and inexpensive hobbies. Currently spending almost all my money refurbing the house but after that I'll be able to put a decent amount of money away every month after mortgage and bills. Plus I have enough to live for 2 months if I lost my job (ignoring income protection).

Most people are terrible with money.
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+1
 
D.P. said:
Combined income 225K GBP
Rent £2600
Health Insurance £750
Childcare: £3300
General living costs for food, bills etc seem to be about 1K.
No loans.

Only thing is I need about 1.5Mil to buy a house around here so will be renting for some time.

My Epeen is this big <----------------------------------->
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Renting must be killing your soul, just throwing money down the toilet. What about rent to buy or the like?
 
Ayahuasca said:
Living like that is honestly one of my worst nightmares, do you ever feel trapped?
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Sometimes, fortunately, about £31k of the loans is to family members who helped us buy the house, I have a standing order set up for them.

squerble said:
Is that combined income the take-home, or pre-tax, if you don't mind my asking?
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Pre tax - boo.

IC3 said:
Thank you for sharing, its good to see a real life example.
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I don't mind sharing. Not sure why people get coy with money :)

I control the finances very tightly in our house, as you can imagine. Big spreadsheet, budget on food, fuel etc. Cheap mobiles, cheap unlimited internet, no TV package. Still have enough for a takeaway once a month. Forgot to add my student loan to that, I think there's about £14k left to pay of that too.

Thankfully, we bought our house coming up to 4 years ago, for £312k, it's now worth about £450k, we wanted to get on the property ladder ASAP (hence the family help). We're both 30.
 
30k
Joint 50k
No kids

This is what I would consider comfortable outside of London influence. But not the super cheap North.

You can still save for a house,
Have days out,
Maximise the 25 day holiday allowance,
1 or 2 holidays abroad
Have a car each
Not have to worry about bills

But you can't have an amazing car, you can't have two holidays to east Asia.

If you were to throw kids in to the mix I suspect you'd want 70k to match. Maybe more. Eek
 
Smoker said:
Got a job offer of arround ~30-35k in London and was wondering if I could live in zone 1-2 by my own.
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No. Well you could kill yourself to do it but it'd be a pointless existence. I don't think any young person should consider living in London on their own. Either flatshare or find a partner and shack up quickly :p

35k gives you £2,256.79/month takehome. Off the top of my head, rent for somewhere nice-ish in a non-stabby area will be around £1500/month in zone 2. Add, what £200/month bills that gives you £500 for everything else. Add transport that's £100/month. Now you're down to £100/week without having even included groceries. Call that £50/week and you're left with £50/week for socialising. £50 is barely a night/dinner out.

So no, don't try to live alone.

*Yes I know my maths is suitably vague but then again so is spending :)
 
A lot of my friends seem to aspire to owning a semi-detached or detached house, 2 car garage (or garage and enough space to park another vehicle out the way) and something like upper mid-spec Audi on the drive, two kids and two holidays abroad per year (along the lines of skiing in the Alps for one and a villa in say Mallorca for the other), etc. so you are looking at around a salary of 32+K (probably pushing on towards 40K now with the increase in house prices) around here to do that and not skimping to make it possible. Anything other than that isn't a decent wage to them.
 
I'd say 35k

I used to be on 35k living on london, single and renting a house with my brother.

one holiday a year, decent car, etc and I was doing fine, saving 500ish a month.
 
If you never want kids 30k for each person is a lovely work/life balance in my opinion

I also know people in my work who earn a lot more than me who seen to wonder how I can spend what I do on 3d printers, lego sets car etc.

I think it's bbecause I don't enjoy eating out that much, don't like clubbing, don't like wine.
And my hobbies are fairly cheap/one off costs like kayaking, board games, photography
And because I never want kids I don't need to worry too much about supporting that life
 
As many said to many variables. We earn 37K between the 2 of us, 2 kids, 2 cars, pets and we rent for the moment. No debt and we live comfortably now, but when i was the only one working earning 27k and loaded with debt that was a struggle for a time.
 
We earn about 64k between us (we earn with a few hundred quid of each other), we have about 110,000 on the mortgage however its a 3 bed detached so probably wont move. We are both early 30s and have a 4 year old and a 1 year old who both go to nursery 3 times a week. I think when the kids hit 3 is the biggest moneysave there is (anyone with nursery fees will understand as nursery is approx £45 per day for each of them). We have a 911 and a focus st (both paid for), the only debt we currently have is the mortgage as we pay off the CC every month in full (normally around £2k). My wife still has her student loan to pay off but its a real paltry amount per month. I would say we end up around £1000 left from wages at the end of the month. This is living in the north east in a relatively expensive area. I can totally understand why people struggle with kids and on low wages.
 
413x said:
35-40k if single - edited
Joint 50k
No kids
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other than a single person needing more I go with about those figures

not sure why people are talking about if living with parents needing less etc, i wouldn't consider having to live with parents as a reasonable wage.

reasonable wage should allow you to buy a flat/house(at todays prices), afford to live, afford to save, a Holliday, transportation etc.
 
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