What is a good salary in UK at present?

SixTwoSix said:
My wife and I had a rare few hours alone yesterday and after a few rocky weeks decided to nip into the local quiet Costa for a proper chat and have a coffee and breakfast, two paninis and two coffees at £19 and suddenly remember why we stopped going years ago.
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At the same time I'm sure the quality of the experience has gone downhill. I seem to remember coffee shops in the early 00s being cosy lounge environments. But nowadays the decor is very minimal and cold feeling to get you in and out as quickly as possible.
 
Chojin said:
At the same time I'm sure the quality of the experience has gone downhill. I seem to remember coffee shops in the early 00s being cosy lounge environments. But nowadays the decor is very minimal and cold feeling to get you in and out as quickly as possible.
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Tbf, it was a costa inside a Next so they'd put a bit of effort into the place.
 
I am the same. Missus makes me sandwiches for lunch (Sometimes if I am lucky she makes me toasties) and take a thermos full of tea for the day. Carry spare tea bags, sugar, milk and small 24v kettle if I need a top up.

Only time I buy food on the road is when I am at Costco Crick because they do a large hotdog with onions for £1.50 or a full English for £3.00 which is unheard of in this day and age.
 
mine is 2 pots of hummus a week, with a bag of salad /tomato's and wholemeal brown, chilli sauce vegan mayo on top, definitely under a fiver for my 4 days, flask of tea a day.
i have a very high chance of being unemployed next week but being on the very low end of the pay scale its not hard to get something else and us poor people (well some) fine tune our finances , yeah ok no mortgage helps but its nice to feel chilled about a spell of unemployment and i view it as a surf opportunity (plus i have a garden room and a mini barn to build)
so a good salary is one that lets you live your best life, not about collecting meaningless trinkets imho
 
Wizzkidy said:
I guess you could call me lucky because I liked computers but I worked at McDonalds for 3 years before walking into Fujitsu reception and handing them my CV. 5 weeks later I was working on a 1st line helpdesk learning the ropes.
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Sounds to me like you make your own luck. Someone might have done the same at the wrong time when they weren't hiring and not landed a job, but that just means they were unlucky rather than you being lucky. You had the gumption to make the first move to progress yourself, which is more than some do.
 
jeffk said:
Something crazy like 85% of the people in this country live paycheque to paycheque. It’s the norm even for most middle class people.
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What would be interesting would be to know how many do so out of necessity rather than by choice. I've known a few people that do this simply because they spend loads of money on socialising or gadgets or whatever. That's obviously their choice but people like that are arguably less vulnerable to rising prices, because they don't need to buy everything they do unlike those living in poverty (i.e. they have some 'low hanging fruit' when it comes to tightening their belts). What they are still vulnerable to however is losing their job because they don't have savings to fall back on.
 
Acting as though you're living paycheck to paycheck can also be a financial plan if heavily overpaying on mortgages or investing a lot into savings and other generator schemes. Obviously the choice to act this way is the huge separator between those who choose to do so and those who must do so.

e: woah, you fellas got a little spicy for a moment earlier. So hot.
 
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HangTime said:
What would be interesting would be to know how many do so out of necessity rather than by choice. I've known a few people that do this simply because they spend loads of money on socialising or gadgets or whatever. That's obviously their choice but people like that are arguably less vulnerable to rising prices, because they don't need to buy everything they do unlike those living in poverty (i.e. they have some 'low hanging fruit' when it comes to tightening their belts). What they are still vulnerable to however is losing their job because they don't have savings to fall back on.
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Take out income protection to cover job loss.
 
Wizzkidy said:
You got that right, wow if I would have thought back 20 years ago about 100k, wow I would have been thinking of epic holidays as well. The kids absolutely demolish my finances lol
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What age are your kids out of interest? If you're paying for childcare, private school or their uni costs, then I can see how they cost a big chunk. But otherwise I'm not sure how they would "demolish" a 100k income.

I've got 2 that have just started primary school. I reckon they 'cost' us around £500 a month as a rough ballpark. That's covers things like clothes, toys, clubs, extra food, the odd day out, etc. As they get older I'm sure the school trips get more expensive, so do the clothes and shoes etc, but I can't see how they would 'demolish' a 100k salary.

*Edit* - this is obviously very dependent on how many kids you have!
 
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