exactly I quoted the median figure for full time workers and the other poster started bitching about agendas etc..
Are earnings too low / living costs getting too high??
- Thread starter Buffman
- Start date
exactly I quoted the median figure for full time workers and the other poster started bitching about agendas etc..
I'm not sure it is - 'his' businesses belong to his wife and she resides in Monaco.
"All three average measures are important, the idea that 27k per individual in a 2 person household is a good representation however is laughable."
a representation of what exactly?
What exactly are you discussing or trying to represent and why are you using 10 year old data?
The average salary UK for the tax year ending 5 April 2015 was £27,600. This is a median average and an increase of 1.6% over the 2014 median average which was £27,200. These averages are for full time employees with data taken from the ONS Annual Average Salary Survey. I used something called Google which I found after doing a search on Yahoo, which was linked to me via Altavista.
Did you look a the wikipedia household income graph, it was 2015, here is 2016.
Explain why you believe presenting 27k per person is more representative?
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/10/UK_Equivalised_Income_Distribution.png
Caporegime
- Joined
- 21 Jun 2006
- Posts
- 38,367
2 people earning the median wage should quite easily be able to afford a £200K property once they have a 10% deposit together.
however they won't be able to buy new BMW's every 3 years, go on luxury holidays every 3 months, etc. but they should have a comfortable lifestyle, so long as they aren't stupid with their money.
changing from buying the latest iphone every year to a moto G and a giffgaff sim for instance would save the average person £600 a year per person, which would be their mortgage paid for 2 months with the savings.
however they won't be able to buy new BMW's every 3 years, go on luxury holidays every 3 months, etc. but they should have a comfortable lifestyle, so long as they aren't stupid with their money.
changing from buying the latest iphone every year to a moto G and a giffgaff sim for instance would save the average person £600 a year per person, which would be their mortgage paid for 2 months with the savings.
Kiwisaver is indeed a good idea. However, you've had to be paying in for 3 years before allowing the funds to be used for your first property.
The earning numbers you quoted aren't great for living in cities, if I'm perfectly honest. Not if you want to be driving your BMW, coming home to a full Sky package and wear designer clothes. But, it's all relative. You can probably do all those things on 65k or whatever, but you won't have much change left at the end of the month.
However, it's no use talking to me about these things because I'm an ultra-obsessive saver and frugaleer. I refuse to buy things in VIDEO GAMES if I believe them to be too expensive or not enough value for money. So while you could probably live of what you've mentioned above, you'd be cutting it close for savings, in my opinion that is. Your financial tolerances might be different though.
House prices in NZ is out of control. I could write pages and pages on that. The only big city they're seemingly stable and remotely sensible is Christchurch. Wellington and Auckland is a giant casino and even in remote little dumpy Dunedin they suddenly have ideas that a 200k pile of leaky crap is worth twice its price.
Anyway, good luck with the move and keep us up to date. I made the move 3 years ago and still trying to decide whether it's been a good idea or not
As I said, it would be nice if they could be HONEST for once, why they're struggling. Screeching at 'bankers' or 'the rich' or unfairness of life is sadly being ignored by reflex. As if all of us don't have the same issues.
You point to the food bank, I ask what went wrong that they have to resort to such measures. I can name situation after situation where people made stupid and idiotic financial decisions that landed them in strife, despite a whole mountain of good advise. Some of those are bankrupt, some of those are on the edge of bankruptcy, some have recovered and are making a slew of new stupid financial mistakes. I'm sure you can provide ample situations that show the opposite.
Obviously there's going to be clear cut cases where despite your utmost efforts, you just don't earn enough. That's obviously a problem that need addressing and I'll be happy to help anyone in such a situation. I'm actually sorta helping someone right now. Not financially, but teaching good financial sense and advice. 19yo kid we've taken on as an apprentice. Typical case, from a financially broke and clueless household. I'd imagine the type that rail against 'the rich' and visit food banks. He was complaining about not having enough money by the end of the week. I've offered to help him look at his finances, we've made a few adjustments which I'm holding him against on a daily basis until it becomes 2nd nature. To date he's managed to save about 2k. The kid is taking it super serious now that he's seeing some results. On a salary that's not far off minimum wage.
He would've been another lost case with his hand out had someone not sat him down, taught him some basic financial literacy and common sense. I think they biggest area we're failing the poor is not teaching them how to work with money. You can keep giving them money which won't help if not put to good and intelligent use.
Until we can have an open and frank conversation about terrible financial literacy and common sense in this and other 1st world countries, the problems won't go away.
Never used to, but I started after realizing that a lot of the stuff I've seen in there are brand new or worn-once type clothes. Used to live next to a Salvation Army shop and got to know some of the volunteers in there. All of them buy their clothes there now. Most of my clothes are actually designer stuff, but only 2nd hand bought. Probably worn no more than your average 'new' clothes being tried on in store about 10+ times by others.
Agreed.
The housing market is doing massive damage to society and I think many things, such as mental illness, family breakdowns, financial issues, relationships breakdowns can find its roots in the housing market. If not directly, indirectly.
Here in NZ it's not enough that the market is essentially a massive casino when buying, it's also totally out of whack when it comes to rentals. Speaking to people at work about how hard they're finding it even trying to rent an overpriced POS here in Wellington or Auckland.
I've sold my place in Christchurch and we're just renting now until we've decided what we want to do (back to UK or staying on), but we've had to up our budget for renting tremendously just to get as little competition as possible. We got incredibly lucky on a place that had about 25+ offers from other prospective tenants. Just stupidly lucky for the price we're paying. But I'm not forgetting the fact that there's 25+ other good people out there that missed out and possibly still living in uncertain circumstances, trying to get a place of their own. All the while the entire market is treated as a cash cow.
Caporegime
Without knowing whether that's take home pay or gross income it's hard to be sure that you're not actually talking about the same numbers.
I see your point, but i know many people who you say who are min wage, who just awful with their money. They spend it quicker then they earn it and living well beyond there means. I am sure there many others like you said who have no choice and good with their money.
But you are right about the majority of people who live like that way are those who are earning substantially above nat min wage. I know many people like this, 2 nice cars on the drive that they can't afford, credit card bills they stress out about month to month and barely able to go food shopping without using a credit card. I am sitting next one just like that at the mo at work.
Froogle? Is that where you use online search facilities to find the best possible price for everything?
Soldato
Kiwisaver is indeed a good idea. However, you've had to be paying in for 3 years before allowing the funds to be used for your first property.
The earning numbers you quoted aren't great for living in cities, if I'm perfectly honest. Not if you want to be driving your BMW, coming home to a full Sky package and wear designer clothes. But, it's all relative. You can probably do all those things on 65k or whatever, but you won't have much change left at the end of the month.
However, it's no use talking to me about these things because I'm an ultra-obsessive saver and frugaleer. I refuse to buy things in VIDEO GAMES if I believe them to be too expensive or not enough value for money. So while you could probably live of what you've mentioned above, you'd be cutting it close for savings, in my opinion that is. Your financial tolerances might be different though.
House prices in NZ is out of control. I could write pages and pages on that. The only big city they're seemingly stable and remotely sensible is Christchurch. Wellington and Auckland is a giant casino and even in remote little dumpy Dunedin they suddenly have ideas that a 200k pile of leaky crap is worth twice its price.
Anyway, good luck with the move and keep us up to date. I made the move 3 years ago and still trying to decide whether it's been a good idea or not
I guess we're lucky because we'll move into the granny flat at my wifes parents house in Whangaparaoa whilst we save and decide whether we want to stay on the peninsula or move out to Tauranga or wherever. As a chef, $65k seems to be a decent wage and on a par with here in the UK at my level. My wife will be earning too and we should have an annual salary of about $110k between us all going well. My wife also has a kiwi saver which she's had for about 12 years with a nice little chunk in it too so she can use that straight away if we find a decent house. It's just a matter of fainding a balance of a decent job and a relatively affordable property. I worked out that if we had a joint income of $95k (underestimated), we could afford around $550k for a house, which still buys hardly anything on the peninsula, however, i'd love a renovation project.
House prices and rental prices are ridiculous, no-one can argue against that. But it’s the same for everyone.
Myself and my partner are relatively young (23 & 22) and we wanted to get on the housing ladder but still have plenty of month ‘left over’ a month in order to have the ‘luxuries’ mentioned in this thread. This means a significant deposit in order to reduce your borrowing amount and therefore interest rates, making buying a house more affordable.
The only way we could get the deposit was to use any skills we had to earn extra money on top of our main jobs. This meant almost a year and half with the equivalent of 2 full time jobs, staying up until 2-3AM and working all weekend. But we did it.
I guess what im saying is, everybody is in the same boat. If you want it bad enough, you can make it happen. It may take a lot of time and hard work but it is possible. But only if you’re willing to put the effort in!
Myself and my partner are relatively young (23 & 22) and we wanted to get on the housing ladder but still have plenty of month ‘left over’ a month in order to have the ‘luxuries’ mentioned in this thread. This means a significant deposit in order to reduce your borrowing amount and therefore interest rates, making buying a house more affordable.
The only way we could get the deposit was to use any skills we had to earn extra money on top of our main jobs. This meant almost a year and half with the equivalent of 2 full time jobs, staying up until 2-3AM and working all weekend. But we did it.
I guess what im saying is, everybody is in the same boat. If you want it bad enough, you can make it happen. It may take a lot of time and hard work but it is possible. But only if you’re willing to put the effort in!
Associate
actually i think it's not that idiotic, however quite a lot of changes will need to happen for it to become viable. Do i have answers on what needs to change? no
I was born in Germany and have lived in Switzerland for long periods and both countries rely on most people renting and it works (but also their pensions work differently).
Soldato
What?!
Caporegime
Froogle.com ?