Circumstances are also a relevant factor. I'm a good example of that. I'm a minimum wage flunkey on £19K. But I'm doing pretty OK on that because my expenses are unusually low. No mortgage, no rent, no car, no children, no going away on holiday, no fashion clothing, etc. I have plenty of spare money even with the recent large increases in the cost of living. I don't even look at prices of most things before buying whatever I want and I waste money left right and centre. I don't bother looking at my finances more than a quick glance about once a month. No need - I know that I have more money than I need. I keep accumulating more and more spare money. But for many people here my income is horrifyingly low. By Nitefly's standards (chosen just because it's the post above mine) a "good wage" at my age would be about £80K.
The only thing that bothers me is that I have nowhere near enough money to buy a pension. I used to be in a pension scheme through my employer. I paid maximum contributions and extra contributions into another scheme. I was determined to have an adequate pension, even though it was costing more than I could reasonably afford at the time. I was due to retire on about 90% of whatever my wages were going to be when I retired. The main pension scheme alone would get me 39/60ths of my final wage. Then the schemes became worse and worse and worse and worse again, then they were closed entirely and replaced with nonsense. I got a projection statement saying that after paying in for 39 years my projected pension would probably be about £22 a month. So now I don't have a pension.
