What is a good salary in UK at present?

For London I would say to live comfortably, have a mortgage, eat out semi regularly and go on a holiday or two a year 150K is needed. You can enjoy your life and not be too concerned about money.
 
So many strikes happening or happened. Economy all over the shop.

Take out variables such as sector, experience etc.

If you had to quote a good salary in current UK what is it and why?

For me, 100k is what I would start calling a good wage. This doesn't mean you are comfortable though. That's a different conversation based on personal circumstances.
 
Depends on location, age and commitments.

Age x1.5 doesn’t sound too far off for ‘good wage’. For a 20 year old house sharing or living with parents, £30k wouldn’t be anything to sniff at.

At 40, £60k would afford a more established lifestyle and mortgage.

Outside of London, that is.
Years ago I tried to come up with a rule of thumb formula like this. A simple multiplier is too primitive IMO, I found it ends up paying young people too much if you calibrate it for middle age, like a 16 year old earning £24k sounds optimistic to me. Something like (Age - X)*2 works better I think, maybe (age-8)*2. Even that probably doesn't factor in the plateau most people hit in the latter stages of their career however, it's probably not that common to earn £20k more at 65 than 55 if you adjust for inflation.

In my part of the country, if you want a mortgage, couple of kids, couple of modest cars, a part-time working partner, a foreign summer holiday, and some cash for activities/leisure, then maybe £45k-£50k is about where you need to start.
Sounds low to me for your area unless there's no childcare bills or the mortgage is small, but I appreciate you're pitching that as the starting point. "Good" is a bit subjective too, some people might consider a salary that means they don't have to live from one pay cheque to the next as good, whereas others would be expecting a life of luxury and/or the freedom to just go out and spend a five-figure sum.
 
So West Midlands and around 65k a year but I genuinely feel like I had more money when I was on like 30k 5 years ago.

I guess if I wasn’t single and my house had two incomes it would be different.
 
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£86,584 basic salary for an MP, not sure if they are on a 4 day week yet but its been mooted? Oh, summer recess is 20 July to 4 September but they are, of course, mad busy in their constituencies ;)
I call that a good salary.
 
It's very hard to generalise. What is a acceptable wage today for living may not be in future years. I think a lot of people (including me) underestimate how much money you will need in retirement in order to live vs exist.
State pension is c£10kpa so within the personal allowance but if you consider the inescapable costs of
Council tax c£2,000 = 25%
Utilities c£3,200
Food and Household = c£3,000
TV, Broadband and Insurance = £1,000

That's 92% of your income if you a re single person who owns a house but doesn't go anywhere.

The point being that in order to avoid this existence you really need another £10k a year net on top of a state pension. In order to get that you have to have a DC fund of c£300k, which means saving a decent chunk of money every month of your working life. With debt levels so high that will be a real challenge for people earning median wages as they will be servicing debt, running a car or using public transport, feeding and clothing children and having the odd holiday, pet or hobby.

I have mates who aren't actively paying more than bare minimum into an occupational pension and are relying on inheritance to fund their retirement whilst they spend money on new lease cars, solar panels, hot tubs, £3000 mountain bikes. At some point it will catch up with them when their parents care erodes any accumulated wealth and leaves them with £30k. I have a good income but ostensibly live the same way I did 25 years ago. Two children, one at Uni and a wife that works part time allow us a comfortable lifestyle but not one in line with our gross income. That's because I've chosen to try and support by keeping educational debt to a minimum and a goal of not working full time beyond 60. Sometimes I regret not living more for the "now" but hopefully there will be time for that in 5-6 years when time and responsibilities are freer.
 
£86,584 basic salary for an MP, not sure if they are on a 4 day week yet but its been mooted? Oh, summer recess is 20 July to 4 September but they are, of course, mad busy in their constituencies ;)
I call that a good salary.

Easy money if you can get it. £87k plus expenses and a free flat.
 
35-45k is my sweet spot. Covers all my basic needs, enough disposable for my hobbies and travelling, also at a level where I can have a good work/life balance without too much responsibility day to day.
 
Years ago I tried to come up with a rule of thumb formula like this. A simple multiplier is too primitive IMO, I found it ends up paying young people too much if you calibrate it for middle age, like a 16 year old earning £24k sounds optimistic to me. Something like (Age - X)*2 works better I think, maybe (age-8)*2. Even that probably doesn't factor in the plateau most people hit in the latter stages of their career however, it's probably not that common to earn £20k more at 65 than 55 if you adjust for inflation.

Yes my suggestion was ‘dumb / keep it mega simple’ - there’s bound to be good formula that tapers the skews in the younger and older parts of the spectrum :)

You’re right - the scope for increased salary growth probably reduces for many (not all) after…. maybe, 55-60 years old.
 
Depends on the lifestyle you're after. If you have expensive hobbies, want to holiday and enjoy yourself, I'd say you want a net household income of £5K+.

You could obviously have a great life on less but down South it's the mortgage payments that are crippling.
 
I don't think there's ever enough. You, or I'll speak about myself, tend to live to your means. When I used to get paid £13k, 24k, 35k I always felt like I was just getting by and now north of 50k I still don't feel like I'm 'doing well'. If anything I feel like I'm not doing well enough (though that could be me spending too much time on these forums where everyone seems to have everything!)

Between my partner and I we have a household income of just under 100k to cover us, our daughter cat and dog. I know we're not on the breadline but neither of us feel like we're doing much better than when we were getting our first jobs.

In my mind, in the South West, a combined household income of about 120-130k would probably make for some pretty comfortable living.
 
Depends on the lifestyle you're after. If you have expensive hobbies, want to holiday and enjoy yourself, I'd say you want a net household income of £5K+.

You could obviously have a great life on less but down South it's the mortgage payments that are crippling.

Perhaps, to make it a more comparable converstaion, we should remove housing costs and go from there e.g. I'd like £2,250-£2,500 nett a month plus mortgage costs
 
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