What is a good salary in UK at present?

Totally depends on lifestyle, circumstances as well as industry/role. Go ask a Software architect or a AI developer is <£50K a good salary etc.

One kiddo is an AI Dev (full stack) in .au. She is on 110k aud (about 56k gbp) excluding other benefits - and thinks their salary is at the low end.
 
What do you spend on to not "lose out" if not contributing much to pensions or paying off your mortgage very quickly? Genuinely curious.

Childcare is £1400 a month
Mortgage is £1300 a month
Bills are about £500 a month
Food is £850 a month
The toddler’s extra sports and swimming are £150 a month
Going out / takeaways are £250 a month
 
My entire point is that prices going up is not inflation, So its not undermined, inflation is the money supply. The BOE causes inflation, Putin can cause price shocks.

Registrations is not indicative of anything, if you want to say car companies are doing badly, then tell me which car company is doing badly.

Its like trying to measure how many people are smoking by looking at sales of lighters.

Edit: In short, inflation is a money supply issue, and it has been combined with price increases due to other factors today.

This leads to the incorrect thinking that, Putin can cause inflation, he cannot cause inflation in the UK, he can cause it in Russia by ordering the Russian central bank to buy government bonds or corporate bonds.
The actual definition of inflation
‘a general increase in prices and fall in the purchasing value of money.’
Inflation is literally a measure of the rate at which prices are increasing.

Car companies are still turning large profits despite selling less cars because of inflation pushing up car prices and them maintaining profit margins so of course profits can still go up if you sell less stuff for more money.
 
Terrible decision. It's free money and should be a priority. Especially over cars and other expensive assets.

Holidays abroad are not a priority in life either.
We don't have holidays abroad or cars or expensive assets.

We pay standard pension but can't afford much more than this.

We do have days out, but then these don't cost us a fortune, usually an ice cream and petrol money, occasionally we'll go to a theme park.

This year we're splashing out and going euro Disney for a couple of days, and then that's it, eyes down to pay mortgage.
 
Childcare is £1400 a month
Mortgage is £1300 a month
Bills are about £500 a month
Food is £850 a month
The toddler’s extra sports and swimming are £150 a month
Going out / takeaways are £250 a month
Cool. Quite reasonable compared to your income really. If I was your wife I would definitely be looking at reducing some of that 45% tax paid!
 
Not sure if trolling, but if not:

I hope future you + family are happy with this poor decision making. With (I assume) 30 or so years to go until retirement, any contribution you make now will give you much more flexibility to make decisions based on circumstances later. With employer contributions and tax benefits, it isn't really that expensive to build a meaningful pot part particularly if you plan to work all the way out to state retirement age.

My wording may have been incorrect, we do the standard contributions. What I meant was we could pay more into a private pension but have decided not to so as we can enjoy life with our son rather than always watching the pennies.

My pay rise has only been recent to £42k, before that was on £32k. As I got the pay rise it seems the world got infinitely more expensive at the same time wiping it out essentially

There is a balance to it all, our mortgage is about to go up by £400 a month which effectively negates any ability to pay more and will severely restrict what else we do with life.

I took the decision not to pay additional amount so I could afford to buy a desperately needed new car. Also as we knew mortgage was going up, we took the opportunity to go Disney Paris for a couple of days otherwise we won't be able to do so for while.

I have no debt other than mortgage and small car loan, when I use credit cards I pay them of immediately or within the 0% time frame.

If you were to know us you would understand we don't have any extravagance really, only get new clothes birthdays and Xmas etc etc.
 
One kiddo is an AI Dev (full stack) in .au. She is on 110k aud (about 56k gbp) excluding other benefits - and thinks their salary is at the low end.

AI Dev (full stack) is not a very precise title - it goes from doing mainly front-end code with a few calls to stuff like OpenAI or Azure AI APIs, to implementing deep neural networks. But the devs in the Silicon Valley working on AI stuff for the like of OpenAI, Antropic, Meta nowadays start with at least 500K USD total compensation. There's a huge amount of investments currently going into AI startups and AI projects at big companies, driving AI stuff salaries up.
 
One kiddo is an AI Dev (full stack) in .au. She is on 110k aud (about 56k gbp) excluding other benefits - and thinks their salary is at the low end.
it is low, but then AI dev full stack doesn't sound like an AI engineer but a front end UI that works on a project that may use AI in the backend.
 
My entire point is that prices going up is not inflation, So its not undermined, inflation is the money supply.
The way I see it, money supply is a key factor in inflation but it is not inflation. "Inflation" is basically describing a symptom, which is rising prices. It doesn't care about there reason why prices have risen. It might be increased money supply, it might be an supply chain crisis, the reason doesn't change the fact it has happened, although it might influence the response to it.
 
Around £55k for me and £175k for my wife. Live very comfortably and it’s clearly quite a lot compared to the average and we know it.

Both currently contributing £8500 a year to pensions (which includes contributions from firms) but not trying to max out for a later life and lose out on now. House to be paid off in 15 years when we’re 55.

How big is your mortgage? Wife and I are mortgage free at 44 and 41 respectively and we were on about 80K a year between our two incomes. We started overpaying our mortgage a couple of year after we got the house (£229k in 2011) and still managed to have a 2-week holiday aboard each year.

The money I used to pay on the mortgage went straight into my pension the month after it was paid off, next plan is retire early.

To answer OPs question though a good salary is one where you can live a life without worry. For some people that might be 30k for other 60k or 100k. It all depends on your priorities, for me it has always been about not working long stressful hours and just having more time to myself. I definitely won't be on my deathbed wishing I had worked more.
 
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How big is your mortgage? Wife and I are mortgage free at 43 and 41 respectively and we were on 80K a year between our two incomes. We started overpaying our mortgage a couple of year after we got the house (£229k in 2011) and still managed to have a 2-week holiday aboard each year.

The money I used to pay on the mortgage went straight into my pension the month after it was paid off, next plan is retire early.

To answer OPs question though a good salary is one where you can live a life without worry. For some people that might be 30k for other 60k or 100k. It all depends on your priorities, for me it has always been about not working long hours and stress and just having more time to myself. I definitely won't be on my deathbed wishing I had worked more.

£220k left to go. Pay just over £1300 a month. Have 2-3 holidays a year which is where the majority of our spare income goes currently.
 
How big is your mortgage? Wife and I are mortgage free at 44 and 41 respectively and we were on about 80K a year between our two incomes. We started overpaying our mortgage a couple of year after we got the house (£229k in 2011) and still managed to have a 2-week holiday aboard each year.

The money I used to pay on the mortgage went straight into my pension the month after it was paid off, next plan is retire early.

To answer OPs question though a good salary is one where you can live a life without worry. For some people that might be 30k for other 60k or 100k. It all depends on your priorities, for me it has always been about not working long stressful hours and just having more time to myself. I definitely won't be on my deathbed wishing I had worked more.
I'm assuming no kids?
 
I'm assuming no kids?

We have 2 kids and have also been overpaying our mortgage. We bought in 2010. We have around 40k left and are both 37. We are similar on a slightly above average salary or a very good one for our area depending on how you look at it. We also hope to be done by 44 at the latest with overpayments.

Wages go as far as you want it to in the end. All 3 of our cars have appreciated in the past decade as an example whereas someone on a higher salary might be burning through 5-10k a year of depreciating assets buying new cars every couple of years. They might also get a decorator in rather than do it themselves or eat out 5 days a week instead of cook and entertain at home.

Add a car lease, £100 a week eating out, couple of grand a year on handymen and before you know it you are 15-20k worse off compared to someone who does everything themselves.

I have seen plenty of instances where richer people than myself come to my house and are a little surprised by what they see because they don't manage their money well.
 
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We have 2 kids and have also been overpaying our mortgage. We bought in 2010. We have around 40k left and are both 37. We are similar on a slightly above average salary or a very good one for our area depending on how you look at it. We also hope to be done by 44 at the latest with overpayments.

Wages go as far as you want it to in the end. All 3 of our cars have appreciated in the past decade as an example whereas someone on a higher salary might be burning through 5-10k a year of depreciating assets buying new cars every couple of years. They might also get a decorator in rather than do it themselves or eat out 5 days a week instead of cook and entertain at home.

Add a car lease, £100 a week eating out, couple of grand a year on handymen and before you know it you are 15-20k worse off compared to someone who does everything themselves.

I have seen plenty of instances where richer people than myself come to my house and are a little surprised by what they see because they don't manage their money well.
Tbh I'm quire impressed as we earn slightly more than you (only about 9k more), but there's no way we could afford a 2 week holiday abroad, that's 8k a year! Our cars aren't pcp, but I do have loans out for both of them. How do you manage to save so much, I would sat we are that lavish although my hobbies (lego and gaming) are a bit pricey. I do try and do most jobs myself, as it seems have to find good tradesman these days.
 
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