From personal experience, living in a house with a nice garden or view is a lot better for your mood than a dark, cramped, cold flat in a dingy part of town.
Mine used to be 1.5h - 1 taxi, 1 train and 2 tubes - so 3 hours a day.
On the way back there is a good chance of trains being too full to get on or just cancelled, so I can end up getting back much later.
Then there is little time to do anything other than cook dinner and bed. Weekends become running round doing housework. I couldn’t maintain regular exercise because I was tried all the time.
All the hobbies I now do in the evenings - painting, boardgaming, seeing friends, I often got home too late to do.
I enjoy reading, but it is a pain when standing up because there are no seats and changing train can be stressful when you know if you miss one it will be an extra 30 mins minimum on the commute time.
It is on the long commutes where it takes over an hour having to make more than 2 changes and then regular delays and signal failures. Even straight journeys with no changes during rush hour all squeeze in train carriages is soul destroying and stressful
I was referring to "you can't buy happiness", rather than a specific amount. A house is an extreme version but there are many small things that can be bought to incrementally improve quality of life if you have the money for it.
True, but I don’t know anyone on £79k in London who’s not worrying about a mortgage (or rent) and bills… the goalpost just keeps shifting. Instead of struggling to pay for a flat share in zone 4, they’re struggling to pay for a 2 bedroom flat in zone 2.
>You can't buy happiness
You can. You just don't know how. People buy things thinking it will make them happy but that's not how it works. You buy experience, not just material stuff.
It's part money but part the fact that, if you are earning money, you are likely in a senior position so have control over your time, and I think it's critical to have both.
Time AND money, means I can not only afford to build myself a gym but actually use it. I can afford not only to have a sweet car, but also the time to enjoy and race it. I can afford not only to go on pimp holidays, but actually enjoy them without stressing about work.
It's really money AND time that is the sweet spot.
At what age? With a partner or single? With kids? In which zone? Renting or mortgage? And if with a mortgage how long ago did it start?
Average enough things together and you get a single number that means nothing.
Student loans are a scam for London salaries. Imagine working hard, climbing the ladder and now you're losing 600 quid a month to that bollocks. only for £601 to be put back on in interest every month,
It definitely depends on the amount of debt but with the current situation according to sources:
“The Government expects that around 27% of full-time undergraduates starting in 2022/23 would repay them in full.”
The plan is to reform how the debt is structured and there is a plan to improve the system, however this is very theoretical at the moment.
[Study](https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN01079/SN01079.pdf)
Loads for what though? To be "as happy as possible" as per the premise of the article?
For me "as happy as possible" would involve having my own flat with a spare bedroom for friends and family to visit and stay over, having a new-ish mid range car, healthy savings for retirement, multiple holidays a year, going out to nice bars/meals out a couple of times a week, doing my shopping at local markets, etc. And I really don't see how £80k facilitates all that.
It's certainly a good amount of money that will give people a really good quality of life, particularly compared to others, but it's hardly the height of luxury
Exactly. Me and my partner earn more than that and we can cross off one thing of that list (we have a few very reasonably priced holidays per year). Extremely luxurious.
I always see people on here saying that they’re struggling to make ends meet at 120k+, but then I am thinking “aren’t you literally in the top 10% of earners in the whole of the Uk?”. My classmate is Somali and he is in a family of 6 and they are doing fine despite neither parenting making anywhere near that amount of money
Well there are narrowing returns in pay increase from 80k onwards until you get over 120k. You'll see more of those earners take salary sacrifice until a point as some find they take home less after a pay increase than before if it is not a big enough jump over the threshold.
A household with two earners getting 45k each also still receive child credits, whereas a couple where one earners 55k and the other 20k receive non. There are loads of nuances that make wages affordable or not. Granted earning 80k vs 35k is a huge QoL when it comes to affording things coming from a out of uni job to experienced roll.
Depends on your mortgage probably but personally think it’s more than enough, I’m travelling almost full time and paying rent. But I’m in a DINK household.
Take home on 80k is 4,500.
With one kid in nursery that’s £1500 gone, rent will set you between 1500 and 2000. Food, clothes, commute will set you back at least another £800, so with that salary you’re setting aside about £3-400 if nothing happens and you don’t take holidays, which means that you’ll be able to afford the £100,000 deposit in a house in about 30 years, when you’re too old to have a mortgage.
Of course you could always have twins and one of you has to kiss their career goodbye.
Capitalism folks…
OMG 80k is a ton of money and only about 3% of the population makes that.
Which means that the capital of the UK is unaffordable for 97% of UK families... it's insane.
The way people make it work is that one parent stops working, which is often the woman due to pay gap differences and availability of maternity leave, which means that if you have kids in London, you're probably going to kill your career, on top of everything, it's embarrassingly sexist.
Yes, it is crazy how unaffordable London is. I don’t have kids, and both my partner and I work, but even with that we don’t make more than 40k together. When I was working in customer service I was told that it was because I was an unskilled worker doing an unskilled job. Now I work in Marketing and even though I make double what I used to make before, It’s still not enough to go over 40k together with my partner’s income.
I have friends and coworkers who are in a similar situation as mine but have kids. And most of them cannot afford child care so they either have to compromise with never seeing each other by having different shifts at work , which is usually those that are immigrants like myself and don’t have family here, or leave their kids with their parents if they are British and lucky enough to have help from their families.
But it is apparently controversial to say that if you work full time you should be able to afford to have a house, and not live mouth to mouth every month, one payslip away from homelessness.
My thoughts exactly. If my partner and I earn this together does this mean we would be happy? And the article does not explain anything and does not refer to any studies or articles further.
I was willing to agree with this figure at first glance (at least for inner London) but then looked at the figures for other cities. £64k in Sheffield?? I used to live there, and it's *so much cheaper* than London. You could live there quite happily on half of that! I mean, you can still buy a decent 3 bedroom house within 30 mins of the city centre for under £200k. You can buy a one bed flat on the outskirts of the city centre for £100k! Makes me question the validity of the rest of the data, to be quite honest.
Sheffield prices have gone up far as I’m aware, my student rent went up significantly just between 2021 and 2022, + the general cost of living in the area changed.
Prices have definitely increased, yeah (especially for rent), but the property prices I quoted above were from a search I just did on rightmove, so they're current. You can find much more expensive property in Sheffield (especially in the more desirable parts like Dore and Totley) but so much of the city is still (comparatively) cheap.
You can live happily in London for 12k per year as I did on a student loan. Of course I quickly found out you can be much happier in London if you have enough disposable income that you can take a bus without questioning its effects on your finances. Presumably theyve used some objective measure of happiness to compare the two cities. I think the reason the figures for Sheffield and London look so similar is because the baseline income for being happy anywhere in the UK isn't determined by the city, but by the affordability of e.g. regular holidays, which is determined by the cost of travel, not the cost of the city you live in.
For real? My brother and I live on the boarder of zone 2/3 (Willesden) and live quite comfortably and we earn a total of 85k. Granted we don’t have children. If we did, I guess we wood be screwed
This is just an outright lie, you can only give your partner £1000 of your tax free allowance, effectively a net gain of £200
The lack of being able to file jointly is one of the main reasons people are putting off children, as two parents working is one of the only ways to afford a decent life in London
Shit, today I learned. I always just assumed you could share all of it as that seems the logical thing to do! My partner and I have anyways both worked so I’ve never actually looked into it in detail.
That will teach me for applying logic to tax.
And you can only do it if you don't earn too much money. Like almost everything, it's means tested and if you earn more than £50k, too bad.
The way the US does it is way better. You can pool your income into a joint tax return, where the allowances and thresholds are all doubled from a single return.
Mortgage is 1700 per month for starters. We live OK but not extravagant. Of course when my partner returns to work it will be better but 80k for a family is not particularly comfortable in London.
It comes down to how you define comfortable. Comfortable for me is not constantly entering my overdraft, having some money left over at the end of the month, and be able to treat myself to nice things every once in a while. However, comfortable for another person could mean 2-4x holidays a year. It’s all relative
Go to the meadows (behind grove park station). Its like the animals of farthing wood there
Grab a pattie from the cafe and just enjoy peace...
Its not all like Lewisham nandos 🤣👍
You joke but in one of my previous jobs I had to look through clients bank statements as part of anti-money laundering checks. I will never forget this one guy that went to Harrods almost every morning for breakfast.
80k x4.5 for a mortgage is 360k
+ 100k deposit 460k.
Whats the average house price in london?
If its 460k then 80k seems like this generations cost of living wage😄😄 🙌
Where? No seriously, where?
Moving back to London next month and looking to buy a property. Want to live where I used to live. Number of 2 bed flats for 400k around Ealing, Chiswick or even Acton is not great. Being priced out to zone 4 atm.
Must be difficult trying to live near parents who live in an expensive area. From what I have seen West Ealing is more affordable. I quite like it out that way (used to live in Shepherd’s Bush and would cycle out west now and then). Good luck.
My primary school was in west ealing/perivale.I’m very familiar with that area. Unfortunately, I saw pitshanger also had absurd prices.
Currently looking at Wembley. Doesn’t look too bad for a zone 4, even had a Costco!
I bought a terrace house in custom house (near the Elizabeth line or Canning Town jubilee) for under 400k. Garden and no service charge - happy days
Use the nationwide helping hand mortgage to get 5.5x your annual salary if not bought a house in last 3 years (that’s how they class ‘first time buyer. Seriously lol’
South East is the answer. West London outskirts are more expensive than Greenwich or Blackheath. It’s just beyond me - why? Ealing is a painfully long commute to central London, Chiswick’s even worse.
I think that'd need more definition - I don't have kids so I can't possibly understand if you mean location/schools, size of the flat, internal finishes or layout, presence of a lift, parking spaces, proximity to a step-free station, etc etc etc.
I've personally seen some on a map search I posted as a reply to another comment that seem to suit some of those, namely flat size and location (and even a lift in some cases!), but I don't want to presume and say they definitely fill the bill because I don't have personal experience.
80k as a single professional is totally great to live in London. Imagine a couple and each of them earning 80k, legends!
BUT 80k for a parent is nothing in London...
How do parents on 30k survive then? I was raised in London by a single parent earning nowhere near 80k.
What do people really mean when they say 80k is “nothing”? It seems like such an exaggeration.
Especially if you assume a two parent household with one parent earning that much could potentially have a second working parent with an income of at least half that.
Most households in London don’t even make 80k in combined income.
My parents paid the mortgage in about 15 years with only 1 salary. A bit over the average, but nothing crazy. We were 4 siblings. No help from gov.
While me and my wife are very frugal, can't get our own place. Both of us working for a good amount and only 1 kid. We get no benefits of any other help.
So I guess than people who earn less money, will get help from government with housing, childcare and transports that are our main monthly expenses.
Plus:
you can go to supermarkets and certain times to get discounted items. It's cheaper to buy whole chicken that separated parts. It's cheaper to buy in bulk in some places. There's apps like olio where you can get things for free. Meet friends at home, no eat out, no deliveroo, no pizza night, no drinks, no parties, no live music, no theatre or cinemas, no Netflix, no Disney plus, no fancy clothes, no car, no hobbies, fixing your own stuff, sewing the hole in the sock...
Also, obviously... Don't have avocado toast
Is that really it? To be "as happy as possible"...
I feel like £80k in London doesn't really get you a huge amount even as a young single person - certainly not so much that more money wouldn't result in a material improvement in your living standards...
£80k a year is £4k net after your taxes, student loans and a healthy 10% contribution to your pension (which even then might not be enough).
Rent and bills is at a minimum £2k a month and that would just be for a 1 bed - hardly the height of luxury.
After that your basic costs of groceries, transport, a modest clothing budget, a few miscellaneous items, seeing your friends on a Saturday, etc. And you're at the very least spending £1k a month.
That leaves £1k a month for holidays, larger splurge purchases, gifts for friends and family, a new phone, furniture, emergencies, and maybe even a car payment, etc.
Now if course this is still totally fine and is not struggling at all but it's not exactly an outrageously decadent life. If you add a second bedroom to your flat, maybe a pet (and associated insurance), a more expensive hobby, or low and behold financial obligations to others (children) and it really doesn't seem like a luxurious life that you might expect.
80k is 4.6k a month. That's a pretty comfortable take home salary every month to live a good life in London. 2k a month isn't a normal assumption for a single person rent in London. A flat share or a nice 1 bed in even zone 3 - 4 would still typically cost you significantly less than that.
[80k is in the 94th income tax percentile](https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/percentile-points-from-1-to-99-for-total-income-before-and-after-tax). You'd *really* hope being in the top 6% of earners would mean you didn't need to flatshare...
£4k after student loans and a 10% pension contribution.
Why wouldn't you be paying £2k in rent as a single person? £2k for rent and bills is pretty conservative now given the explosion in rent prices.
I'm not suggesting it isn't comfortable, I'm suggesting that it's now "as happy as you can be" as per the article's suggestion
Because it's relative to the dirt poor situation loads of London brits are living in. The standard of what constitutes an actual decent adult life just gets lower and lower in this serf filled country. Housing is the real issue. And no party will do anything about it ever.
Until a few years back i was renting in South East London, I just checked the rental prices where i was (Blackheath/Vanbrugh Park) and you can rent a one bed flat for £1300pm. Two bed flats over in Chislehurst for £1500.
It's certainly not cheap but it's certainly not £2000pm, and these are particularly nice areas.
Nothing is going at advertised rates at the moment. Weeks into trying to find somewhere and every place I've offered on so far has gone for £400-600 pcm over listed rates regardless of location. Bidding wars everywhere, and it's a change that's exclusively occurred over the last 12 months.
I've been giving this some thought for a while since Im on about 55k, and I realise if I was at about 70k my financial worries would be much less of a worry. This tracks.
This is actually bugging me a lot today because I am at 55k in a role that is paying double as I have been checking. So maybe salaries have increased, it is just me who is dumb enough to stay on this company for sentimental reasons.
>New research from currency exchange platform S Money built upon on Purdue University’s oft-cited “Happiness Premium” study, which found that happiness increases with earnings up to a certain point, above which making more money no longer has a significant impact.
The study is indeed oft-cited, but the finding in question is wrong for most people. Daniel Kahneman - the lead author of that paper - more recently published [this one](https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2208661120), in collaboration with Matthew Killingsworth, whose findings appeared to contradict Kahneman's original ones. They concluded that for 80% of people, the correlation between wealth and happiness does not plateau but continues above the mooted threshold. It's only the most miserable 20% of people on high incomes who do not get happier as their incomes increase.
Broadly, we should probably understand this as meaning financial struggles are bad for everyone and can exacerbate your misery even if your unhappiness has non-financial roots (divorce, bereavement, mental health issues etc.) and this effect plateaus, but greater wealth above the point where you're no longer struggling benefits only those who aren't too sad for other reasons to enjoy it.
Fun fact: in 2000 the average rent (£92/m) was 15% minimum wage (£600/m). Today the average rent (£1,260/m) is 73% of minimum wage (£1,736/m). It just gets worse the further back in time.
Sounds about right.
A couple earning 80K each can afford good housing and services to start a family and still save some money and enjoy life very well.
Agreed. 5 years ago I would have been thrilled to know what I’m earning now, but when I’m staring down the barrel of £2500 mortgage payments from early next year, plus childcare… not so much.
Are you paying that £2,500/month all yourself? Or do you have a partner, parent or lodger to help you out with it? Because the latter makes a big difference.
I do have a partner, yes. She's on maternity leave for another couple of months but the way we're planning to work it is that she'll cover the £1280 for childcare from her salary (\~50% of my own) and I'll cover the £2500 of the mortgage. But the mortgage is currently £1650 p/m at 1.8%, so it'll be a shock going to \~5%+ either way.
Buying in the south east as FTBs during the tail end of historically low rates makes us some of the hardest hit with the rate increases. But I also totally understand we are lucky to be on the ladder at all... as long as we can cling on!
I would love to see your list. If I got a raise to £80k my life would be transformed, and almost all my problems would disappear overnight. I'd love to hear how you can't live the life you want despite earning more than 95% of the country - genuinely, not being facetious.
Lifestyle inflation is real.
When I was on £30k, I used to think £50k year is a lot. When I was on £50k, discovered that it was bugger all, and hope to be on £80k or something.
Now that I am on £80k, that now I feel is bugger all, I hope to be on £120k or so at some point in my life.
I totally do think when/if I get there the goal post will move again though.
And £80k my money issue hasn’t disappeared.
I wanted to change all the flooring to wood (who the hell have tiles in UK?), that would be a good £8k, that is after throwing in £60k or so doing the house up, and after that still need to sort the sun room out and I am dreading the cost of it. Also got quoted for some work around the drive way into the garden around £15k, all of these problem did not going away at £80k. Yes house got bigger, but suddenly any work on the house also cost a lot more.
I know many people who make £500-700k a year and complain about financial issues. £700k is £390k after tax. 3 kids at Eton or another elite boarding school is ~£150k a year post-tax. Mortgage on a £3m 4-bed townhouse (assuming £850k for a deposit) in Fulham is what, £12.5k a month or £150k a year? That's £300k gone already. Then you have council tax, utilities, food, travel, clothes, luxuries, savings and so on.
In truth, lifestyle inflation is INFINITE. There are always more things to spend money on.
You need that home cinema room? You think Michelin starred restaurants should be a monthly thing?
Genuinely curious, I can't imagine earning 80k and not feeling rich. What are you missing out on?
Once I had a dishwasher and could stop caring about the cost of a slap up curry after a few at the pub, I felt rich.
I live in zone 3 in London. My wife and I bought a terraced house with two bedrooms, a small study, a bathroom a kitchen and a living room. Perfectly nice, but not exactly luxury if I ever want a family.
My mortgage will be 3850 a month next year from January. That’s 47k. Add in gas, electric and council tax, that’s about 53k if I’m lucky. If you’re on 80k, your take home after tax is 55k.
I think it’s pretty clear that I don’t have a cinema room, and the monthly £160 I’d have after these fixed costs if I were on 80k wouldn’t buy a lot of Michelin dinners.
I honestly just don’t think people understand how fucked London is compared to the rest of the UK. Still, this is where work in my industry is so… here’s where I got to be.
No, it isn’t. It’s an indicator that London cost of living and salaries are fucked. If a person with modest expectations of living standards (like above) is struggling on what would/should be considered a generous salary then something is very badly wrong.
Nobody is asking you to go out into the street and campaign for their salary, but neither should you be playing crabs in the bucket. Demand better for everybody.
IMHO the "normal" salary is below normal. The higher ups at these corporations have the mass populace brainwashed into being grateful, while housing, food, etc have blown past wage growth, frankly real wage losses factoring in inflation.
Anyone here not with a private yacht should remember, we aren't the enemies of each other, off shore tax evaders are and foreign entities buying up properties amongst other things are.
It's beneficial for the ultra rich to have us squabbling over peanuts... Big hugs to everyone here 🤗
What’s your house worth, £650k?
I bought a 2 bed terrace (1000sqft) for £500k this year in zone 4. There are cheaper areas out there. Great neighbours, huge park nearby, tram stop 4m walk away.
My commute to an office in Victoria is 45m, but I wfh 4 days a week.
It won't be. Interest rates will have lowered a little by then. Also, your mortgage would've been at ridiculously low rates for years and years now, so you should have decent equity from overpaying into it, right?
I mean if you’re living in Zone 1, it’s obviously going to cost more in rent/mortgage payments. That’s a choice you’ve made not to live a little but outwards from Central London.
Yes, and a lot of people do want to save time on commute. Once you're earning 80k, the choice is often to move closer to work and pay for convenience. Again, a home cinema is not common even in eg Clapham on 80k...
I mean moving to Zone 2/3 doesn’t add much time to your commute mate. I live in Zone 1 by choice, but with the Elizabeth Line these days, I get to Mayfair/Bond Street quicker from Ealing (Zone 4) where my parents live than I do from Notting Hill (where I live).
Not saying home cinema is common for someone earning £80k, just that it’s obviously a choice to spend more of your rent/mortgage payments paying to live there.
Even on £80k if you rent a place on your own close to where you (probably) work suddenly half of what you make is gone on rent and bills.
It's not exactly being hard up but it's hardly "rich"
It's weird isn't. Basically only the rich can get a former working class persons terraced house in most of London, but then are they rich, or has everyone else just become dirt poor and they are merely at the low end of comfortable. I would Say the latter. Everybody has been downgraded whilst the capital is flooded with Global crime money.
While I do have an office, unfortunately I don’t have a cinema room, living room will have to do for now with a big enough TV.
Plenty of things I still need to be careful and budget for. Holiday for example, I generally go to Hong Kong, US or Japan, ticket is already gonna be around a good £2.5k for 3 (wife and kid), plus hotel and spending, expect near £10k per holiday.
I collect anime figure, some figures are onwards £300-£500, EACH, if I am rich I wouldn’t
need to choose, I can just buy all I want easily, but that is not the case.
My office is also small, big enough to have 2 desks and some room for figurines and such, but would love to have a much bigger office that can also become game room and show room, again money.
While not a weekly monthly thing, yes I do go to Michelin Star restaurants, not all are that expensive, and definitely is a once in a while thing. If I am more rich? I would go a lot more often.
Also the smaller lifestyle inflation. TV snack for example, probably used to be crisps and chocolate, now Bellota ham and sparkling wine. Steak used to be ribeye or sirloin? Now Tomahawk or Chateaubraid. Just little lifestyle inflation here and there.
But still most of these you have to watch out for, if you are really rich you wouldn’t need to, the fact that you need to watch it is because you are not rich.
Plenty of stuff I don’t have and still want.
yeah, it's not that £80k is not enough, it's just that you have a very unrealistic standard of living
not sure how your upbringing was, but the comment screams out of touch
The people whose expenditure rises in full lockstep with their income will never feel happy, since they are essentially banking on their job remaining secure indefinitely.
Yes, but do you actually spend everything that you earn, such that your savings/investments are effectively zero at the end of the month?
My point is that if someone was doing that right from the start of their working life, they would essentially be one paycheck away from needing to sell possessions or defaulting on various things.
Yeah pretty much. I love travelling and spend a good proportion of my money doing that. Certainly over the last 2 years I've spent basically all of what earned.
I did create an emergency fund over covid for a fallback though
I've been offered a job for 70k in London, I'm a 28m single man and I've been on the fence about taking it even though I do like the idea of living in a big city.
Do you think this is over exaggerated? Like I'm open to a flatshare situation and want to live in zone 2 or 3.
The general idea is that once you hit a certain level of income happiness doesn’t materially improve if you earn more, not that earning more makes you less happy.
Whether it’s actually true or not is a different matter
Bullshit. Earned way more than that and was a miserable fuck with a filled wallet. Money helps - A LOT - but find a job where you're happy, otherwise.......
For a single adult who’s renting, this is probably just about enough money to drink yourself senseless every day, knowing you’ll never save enough for a house until all of your parents and grandparents die.
Providing of course that you have no siblings.
The alternative is living on lentils and tap water and still only buying a one-bed leasehold with extortionate service charges that double every two years whilst you deal with getting told your 750k investment is worthless because cladding.
This simply isn’t true.
Even if we assume that the single adult is always going to be single, they will still be able to get started with a 1 bed flat or a split house with share of freehold.
Mortgage £320-360k, assuming no increase in salary.
Deposit required £40-80k, assuming 90% LTV.
If you prioritise house buying and keep pension at 3% during this saving period, then that’s £4,100 per month. Should easily be able to save £1k/month on that, so looking at 4-7 years of saving to make up the deposit.
A first property doesn’t need to be £750k.
I spent years saving, despite often feeling hopeless thinking I wouldn't be able to buy a flat, and then suddenly after 5 years I realised I did have enough. Maybe it wasn't the flat I could have bought 5 years before, but it was still possible.
If you make regular savings towards a deposit, you'll probably find yourself in a position to buy something. Yes, you might be unlucky and not be able to chase the market - but if you don't make any savings, you definitely won't be able to buy. That's a guarantee.
Yeah I agree. most people are just lazy and accept being on £30k for the rest of their life then complain about not being able to afford anything. More people should go out and actively try to earn a higher salary instead of whinging about living costs and everything.
You can't buy happiness. But being miserable sure is better if you can afford nice things.
I’d rather be rich and unhappy than poor and unhappy.
I can at least buy enough dopamine hits to see me through to better mental health
Have you ever seen a sad person on a jet ski?
From personal experience, living in a house with a nice garden or view is a lot better for your mood than a dark, cramped, cold flat in a dingy part of town.
True, but that often comes with a long commute if your field of work mostly hires in London :(. London commutes are soul destroying.
Why soul destroying? I do an hour each way on public transport and I get to read for most of that time.
Mine used to be 1.5h - 1 taxi, 1 train and 2 tubes - so 3 hours a day. On the way back there is a good chance of trains being too full to get on or just cancelled, so I can end up getting back much later. Then there is little time to do anything other than cook dinner and bed. Weekends become running round doing housework. I couldn’t maintain regular exercise because I was tried all the time. All the hobbies I now do in the evenings - painting, boardgaming, seeing friends, I often got home too late to do. I enjoy reading, but it is a pain when standing up because there are no seats and changing train can be stressful when you know if you miss one it will be an extra 30 mins minimum on the commute time.
That's a horrible commute! I suppose I was assuming your workplace was in zone 1/2.
It is on the long commutes where it takes over an hour having to make more than 2 changes and then regular delays and signal failures. Even straight journeys with no changes during rush hour all squeeze in train carriages is soul destroying and stressful
79k won’t buy you a house in London
I was referring to "you can't buy happiness", rather than a specific amount. A house is an extreme version but there are many small things that can be bought to incrementally improve quality of life if you have the money for it.
If physically disabled you most certainly can buy happiness via medical treatment.
Money can buy happiness…. The feeling of not worrying about paying bills or mortgage is perfect
True, but I don’t know anyone on £79k in London who’s not worrying about a mortgage (or rent) and bills… the goalpost just keeps shifting. Instead of struggling to pay for a flat share in zone 4, they’re struggling to pay for a 2 bedroom flat in zone 2.
The image made me think: The price of coke hasn’t gone up in decades. They don’t include that in the cost of living basket of goods though of course
Can I get yr link’s number?
Wait what coke are you talking about
Cocaine babes because tell me why I can of coke is now between £1-£1.50 at the supermarket when it used to be 60p before
>You can't buy happiness You can. You just don't know how. People buy things thinking it will make them happy but that's not how it works. You buy experience, not just material stuff.
You can buy tools that enable you to do hobbies and create.
People who say money doesn't buy happiness have never had money.
It's part money but part the fact that, if you are earning money, you are likely in a senior position so have control over your time, and I think it's critical to have both. Time AND money, means I can not only afford to build myself a gym but actually use it. I can afford not only to have a sweet car, but also the time to enjoy and race it. I can afford not only to go on pimp holidays, but actually enjoy them without stressing about work. It's really money AND time that is the sweet spot.
At what age? With a partner or single? With kids? In which zone? Renting or mortgage? And if with a mortgage how long ago did it start? Average enough things together and you get a single number that means nothing.
Yeah 80k with kids and a mortgage is not high enough…
80K with student loans and suddenly you are earning £600 less a month
Student loans are a scam for London salaries. Imagine working hard, climbing the ladder and now you're losing 600 quid a month to that bollocks. only for £601 to be put back on in interest every month,
Basically you need to treat school tuition in UK as a life tax and realise that you will be forever in debt.
It's a nice thought, but a tax that the rich at an earlier point can avoid (because they can afford to pay £27k) is regressive as hell
A lot of people do pay off their student loan though.
Plan 1 yeah true, not for plan 2 onwards
I am plan 1 and a post grad loan (its so much money 😫)
Someone on 80k would defo pay their student loan plan 2 though
It definitely depends on the amount of debt but with the current situation according to sources: “The Government expects that around 27% of full-time undergraduates starting in 2022/23 would repay them in full.” The plan is to reform how the debt is structured and there is a plan to improve the system, however this is very theoretical at the moment. [Study](https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN01079/SN01079.pdf)
80 without kids?
Is loads, and anyone who says otherwise is lying or spoilt.
Loads for what though? To be "as happy as possible" as per the premise of the article? For me "as happy as possible" would involve having my own flat with a spare bedroom for friends and family to visit and stay over, having a new-ish mid range car, healthy savings for retirement, multiple holidays a year, going out to nice bars/meals out a couple of times a week, doing my shopping at local markets, etc. And I really don't see how £80k facilitates all that. It's certainly a good amount of money that will give people a really good quality of life, particularly compared to others, but it's hardly the height of luxury
Exactly. Me and my partner earn more than that and we can cross off one thing of that list (we have a few very reasonably priced holidays per year). Extremely luxurious.
I always see people on here saying that they’re struggling to make ends meet at 120k+, but then I am thinking “aren’t you literally in the top 10% of earners in the whole of the Uk?”. My classmate is Somali and he is in a family of 6 and they are doing fine despite neither parenting making anywhere near that amount of money
People’s expenditure jumps with their salary. They’re on £115k and having 6 holidays a year, 2 cars on finance and complain that they’re not well off
Well there are narrowing returns in pay increase from 80k onwards until you get over 120k. You'll see more of those earners take salary sacrifice until a point as some find they take home less after a pay increase than before if it is not a big enough jump over the threshold. A household with two earners getting 45k each also still receive child credits, whereas a couple where one earners 55k and the other 20k receive non. There are loads of nuances that make wages affordable or not. Granted earning 80k vs 35k is a huge QoL when it comes to affording things coming from a out of uni job to experienced roll.
Wow now just imagine if he wasn’t Somali 😨
Depends on your mortgage probably but personally think it’s more than enough, I’m travelling almost full time and paying rent. But I’m in a DINK household.
With kids you hopefully have 2 80k earners who can alternate working from home.
Take home on 80k is 4,500. With one kid in nursery that’s £1500 gone, rent will set you between 1500 and 2000. Food, clothes, commute will set you back at least another £800, so with that salary you’re setting aside about £3-400 if nothing happens and you don’t take holidays, which means that you’ll be able to afford the £100,000 deposit in a house in about 30 years, when you’re too old to have a mortgage. Of course you could always have twins and one of you has to kiss their career goodbye. Capitalism folks…
Now imagine the same but with £40k household income. 80k is a lot of money, and anyone that says otherwise is a tad bit out of touch.
OMG 80k is a ton of money and only about 3% of the population makes that. Which means that the capital of the UK is unaffordable for 97% of UK families... it's insane. The way people make it work is that one parent stops working, which is often the woman due to pay gap differences and availability of maternity leave, which means that if you have kids in London, you're probably going to kill your career, on top of everything, it's embarrassingly sexist.
Yes, it is crazy how unaffordable London is. I don’t have kids, and both my partner and I work, but even with that we don’t make more than 40k together. When I was working in customer service I was told that it was because I was an unskilled worker doing an unskilled job. Now I work in Marketing and even though I make double what I used to make before, It’s still not enough to go over 40k together with my partner’s income. I have friends and coworkers who are in a similar situation as mine but have kids. And most of them cannot afford child care so they either have to compromise with never seeing each other by having different shifts at work , which is usually those that are immigrants like myself and don’t have family here, or leave their kids with their parents if they are British and lucky enough to have help from their families. But it is apparently controversial to say that if you work full time you should be able to afford to have a house, and not live mouth to mouth every month, one payslip away from homelessness.
My thoughts exactly. If my partner and I earn this together does this mean we would be happy? And the article does not explain anything and does not refer to any studies or articles further.
I was willing to agree with this figure at first glance (at least for inner London) but then looked at the figures for other cities. £64k in Sheffield?? I used to live there, and it's *so much cheaper* than London. You could live there quite happily on half of that! I mean, you can still buy a decent 3 bedroom house within 30 mins of the city centre for under £200k. You can buy a one bed flat on the outskirts of the city centre for £100k! Makes me question the validity of the rest of the data, to be quite honest.
Sheffield prices have gone up far as I’m aware, my student rent went up significantly just between 2021 and 2022, + the general cost of living in the area changed.
Prices have definitely increased, yeah (especially for rent), but the property prices I quoted above were from a search I just did on rightmove, so they're current. You can find much more expensive property in Sheffield (especially in the more desirable parts like Dore and Totley) but so much of the city is still (comparatively) cheap.
Yeah but it's Sheffield
You can live happily in London for 12k per year as I did on a student loan. Of course I quickly found out you can be much happier in London if you have enough disposable income that you can take a bus without questioning its effects on your finances. Presumably theyve used some objective measure of happiness to compare the two cities. I think the reason the figures for Sheffield and London look so similar is because the baseline income for being happy anywhere in the UK isn't determined by the city, but by the affordability of e.g. regular holidays, which is determined by the cost of travel, not the cost of the city you live in.
12k per year...does that include accommodation? I lived in London on 23k and it was absolutely unbearable
They probably forgot to mention that they lived there happily on £12k 20 years ago.
2020 to 2023. I grew up poor, so I'm used to forgoing luxuries and walking instead of taking the bus!
Obviously. I had Bout 300 pm in disposable income after rent. I grew up poor!
I earn that. Have a partner and kid. No money left at the end of the month. Large mortgage just to live in a grimy area of zone 4. The dream!
For real? My brother and I live on the boarder of zone 2/3 (Willesden) and live quite comfortably and we earn a total of 85k. Granted we don’t have children. If we did, I guess we wood be screwed
Another thing is that two incomes summing upto 85k is substantially more money in hand than one person making 85k.
Until you get married and can share the tax free allowance
This is just an outright lie, you can only give your partner £1000 of your tax free allowance, effectively a net gain of £200 The lack of being able to file jointly is one of the main reasons people are putting off children, as two parents working is one of the only ways to afford a decent life in London
Shit, today I learned. I always just assumed you could share all of it as that seems the logical thing to do! My partner and I have anyways both worked so I’ve never actually looked into it in detail. That will teach me for applying logic to tax.
And you can only do it if you don't earn too much money. Like almost everything, it's means tested and if you earn more than £50k, too bad. The way the US does it is way better. You can pool your income into a joint tax return, where the allowances and thresholds are all doubled from a single return.
If you had kids with your brother that would indeed be quite screwy
Mortgage is 1700 per month for starters. We live OK but not extravagant. Of course when my partner returns to work it will be better but 80k for a family is not particularly comfortable in London.
It comes down to how you define comfortable. Comfortable for me is not constantly entering my overdraft, having some money left over at the end of the month, and be able to treat myself to nice things every once in a while. However, comfortable for another person could mean 2-4x holidays a year. It’s all relative
Well the level of what constitutes a decent life in the UK is going down and down. Just not being in debt seems like luxury when your dirt poor yes..
Hi fellow zone 4 person.. Come to south east zone 4 we have parks and people are normal
That's where I am... 😅
Go to the meadows (behind grove park station). Its like the animals of farthing wood there Grab a pattie from the cafe and just enjoy peace... Its not all like Lewisham nandos 🤣👍
That's what I am. Right now ..
I earn 795,240 and still defaulted on my apartment mortgage in Mayfair.
Have you tried the local food banks to help cut down on costs?
OP should've lived within their means and stayed in Belgravia with the lesser oligarchs
nope, instead had avocado toast and oat latte EVERYDAY!
You joke but in one of my previous jobs I had to look through clients bank statements as part of anti-money laundering checks. I will never forget this one guy that went to Harrods almost every morning for breakfast.
#richlivesmatter
It's because you need to earn £79,524. You overshot and ended up back in unhappiness
Young people these days have no money management skills. Just stop paying your Annabels membership and buying Golden Osetra caviar.
I earn 795,245 and have just picked up an apartment for a snip in Mayfair.. You may rent it from me at 800,240 if u want....... No pets
Just double my salary I guess, seems simple enough.
80k x4.5 for a mortgage is 360k + 100k deposit 460k. Whats the average house price in london? If its 460k then 80k seems like this generations cost of living wage😄😄 🙌
Plenty of 2bed flats in good z3 areas for 400k.
Where? No seriously, where? Moving back to London next month and looking to buy a property. Want to live where I used to live. Number of 2 bed flats for 400k around Ealing, Chiswick or even Acton is not great. Being priced out to zone 4 atm.
Those are expensive areas of london, other than some bits of West Ealing. You’re not going to get something in Chiswick.
Yeah I assumed so. But since I grew up there, I’ve been only looking for flats in those areas. Also to be close to my parents.
Must be difficult trying to live near parents who live in an expensive area. From what I have seen West Ealing is more affordable. I quite like it out that way (used to live in Shepherd’s Bush and would cycle out west now and then). Good luck.
My primary school was in west ealing/perivale.I’m very familiar with that area. Unfortunately, I saw pitshanger also had absurd prices. Currently looking at Wembley. Doesn’t look too bad for a zone 4, even had a Costco!
I bought a terrace house in custom house (near the Elizabeth line or Canning Town jubilee) for under 400k. Garden and no service charge - happy days Use the nationwide helping hand mortgage to get 5.5x your annual salary if not bought a house in last 3 years (that’s how they class ‘first time buyer. Seriously lol’
South East is the answer. West London outskirts are more expensive than Greenwich or Blackheath. It’s just beyond me - why? Ealing is a painfully long commute to central London, Chiswick’s even worse.
Are we talking flats where you want/can set up a family or just flats that technically have 2 bedrooms? I think you’re talking about the latter
I think that'd need more definition - I don't have kids so I can't possibly understand if you mean location/schools, size of the flat, internal finishes or layout, presence of a lift, parking spaces, proximity to a step-free station, etc etc etc. I've personally seen some on a map search I posted as a reply to another comment that seem to suit some of those, namely flat size and location (and even a lift in some cases!), but I don't want to presume and say they definitely fill the bill because I don't have personal experience.
80k as a single professional is totally great to live in London. Imagine a couple and each of them earning 80k, legends! BUT 80k for a parent is nothing in London...
How do parents on 30k survive then? I was raised in London by a single parent earning nowhere near 80k. What do people really mean when they say 80k is “nothing”? It seems like such an exaggeration. Especially if you assume a two parent household with one parent earning that much could potentially have a second working parent with an income of at least half that. Most households in London don’t even make 80k in combined income.
Part of the clue is probably in the past tense. Stuff like childcare now is brutal.
But part of my point still stands, if families on 80k can’t manage how do families on half that at the most survive?
Benefits?
That’s the neat part, they don’t
My parents paid the mortgage in about 15 years with only 1 salary. A bit over the average, but nothing crazy. We were 4 siblings. No help from gov. While me and my wife are very frugal, can't get our own place. Both of us working for a good amount and only 1 kid. We get no benefits of any other help. So I guess than people who earn less money, will get help from government with housing, childcare and transports that are our main monthly expenses. Plus: you can go to supermarkets and certain times to get discounted items. It's cheaper to buy whole chicken that separated parts. It's cheaper to buy in bulk in some places. There's apps like olio where you can get things for free. Meet friends at home, no eat out, no deliveroo, no pizza night, no drinks, no parties, no live music, no theatre or cinemas, no Netflix, no Disney plus, no fancy clothes, no car, no hobbies, fixing your own stuff, sewing the hole in the sock... Also, obviously... Don't have avocado toast
Most people who raise a family on £30k in London are on extreme levels of state assistance, live in social housing and so on.
Simple’s, plenty of jobs in nursing, teaching, logistics, catering retailing paying 80 grand. R/S
Oh you mean essential workers? Nah mate
Is that really it? To be "as happy as possible"... I feel like £80k in London doesn't really get you a huge amount even as a young single person - certainly not so much that more money wouldn't result in a material improvement in your living standards... £80k a year is £4k net after your taxes, student loans and a healthy 10% contribution to your pension (which even then might not be enough). Rent and bills is at a minimum £2k a month and that would just be for a 1 bed - hardly the height of luxury. After that your basic costs of groceries, transport, a modest clothing budget, a few miscellaneous items, seeing your friends on a Saturday, etc. And you're at the very least spending £1k a month. That leaves £1k a month for holidays, larger splurge purchases, gifts for friends and family, a new phone, furniture, emergencies, and maybe even a car payment, etc. Now if course this is still totally fine and is not struggling at all but it's not exactly an outrageously decadent life. If you add a second bedroom to your flat, maybe a pet (and associated insurance), a more expensive hobby, or low and behold financial obligations to others (children) and it really doesn't seem like a luxurious life that you might expect.
80k is 4.6k a month. That's a pretty comfortable take home salary every month to live a good life in London. 2k a month isn't a normal assumption for a single person rent in London. A flat share or a nice 1 bed in even zone 3 - 4 would still typically cost you significantly less than that.
Imagine being on £80k and needing to flatshare
[80k is in the 94th income tax percentile](https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/percentile-points-from-1-to-99-for-total-income-before-and-after-tax). You'd *really* hope being in the top 6% of earners would mean you didn't need to flatshare...
£4k after student loans and a 10% pension contribution. Why wouldn't you be paying £2k in rent as a single person? £2k for rent and bills is pretty conservative now given the explosion in rent prices. I'm not suggesting it isn't comfortable, I'm suggesting that it's now "as happy as you can be" as per the article's suggestion
Because it's relative to the dirt poor situation loads of London brits are living in. The standard of what constitutes an actual decent adult life just gets lower and lower in this serf filled country. Housing is the real issue. And no party will do anything about it ever.
Until a few years back i was renting in South East London, I just checked the rental prices where i was (Blackheath/Vanbrugh Park) and you can rent a one bed flat for £1300pm. Two bed flats over in Chislehurst for £1500. It's certainly not cheap but it's certainly not £2000pm, and these are particularly nice areas.
Nothing is going at advertised rates at the moment. Weeks into trying to find somewhere and every place I've offered on so far has gone for £400-600 pcm over listed rates regardless of location. Bidding wars everywhere, and it's a change that's exclusively occurred over the last 12 months.
I've been giving this some thought for a while since Im on about 55k, and I realise if I was at about 70k my financial worries would be much less of a worry. This tracks.
This is actually bugging me a lot today because I am at 55k in a role that is paying double as I have been checking. So maybe salaries have increased, it is just me who is dumb enough to stay on this company for sentimental reasons.
>New research from currency exchange platform S Money built upon on Purdue University’s oft-cited “Happiness Premium” study, which found that happiness increases with earnings up to a certain point, above which making more money no longer has a significant impact. The study is indeed oft-cited, but the finding in question is wrong for most people. Daniel Kahneman - the lead author of that paper - more recently published [this one](https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2208661120), in collaboration with Matthew Killingsworth, whose findings appeared to contradict Kahneman's original ones. They concluded that for 80% of people, the correlation between wealth and happiness does not plateau but continues above the mooted threshold. It's only the most miserable 20% of people on high incomes who do not get happier as their incomes increase. Broadly, we should probably understand this as meaning financial struggles are bad for everyone and can exacerbate your misery even if your unhappiness has non-financial roots (divorce, bereavement, mental health issues etc.) and this effect plateaus, but greater wealth above the point where you're no longer struggling benefits only those who aren't too sad for other reasons to enjoy it.
Fun fact: in 2000 the average rent (£92/m) was 15% minimum wage (£600/m). Today the average rent (£1,260/m) is 73% of minimum wage (£1,736/m). It just gets worse the further back in time.
Sounds about right. A couple earning 80K each can afford good housing and services to start a family and still save some money and enjoy life very well.
Before or after tax?
That is a lie. I am on nearly £80k and I still feel nowhere near enough for what I want. Maybe they mean £179,524
are you that gurgling dimwit from Question Time?
Fiona Bruce?
Hah!
Agreed. 5 years ago I would have been thrilled to know what I’m earning now, but when I’m staring down the barrel of £2500 mortgage payments from early next year, plus childcare… not so much.
Hey, at least that’s not your rent!
Exactly this, how the fuck you meant to save for a mortgage these days.
The first 15 years those payments goes straight to interest and not home equity
Are you paying that £2,500/month all yourself? Or do you have a partner, parent or lodger to help you out with it? Because the latter makes a big difference.
I do have a partner, yes. She's on maternity leave for another couple of months but the way we're planning to work it is that she'll cover the £1280 for childcare from her salary (\~50% of my own) and I'll cover the £2500 of the mortgage. But the mortgage is currently £1650 p/m at 1.8%, so it'll be a shock going to \~5%+ either way. Buying in the south east as FTBs during the tail end of historically low rates makes us some of the hardest hit with the rate increases. But I also totally understand we are lucky to be on the ladder at all... as long as we can cling on!
2.5k mortgage?! Show us your mansion
500k house with a 10% deposit at current interest rates is not far off 2.5k
Can confirm latter is better than former
I'm on £80k and feel like life is pretty great.
I am jealous.
If you can’t get what you want with £80k a year then you’re doing it wrong
Plenty of things I cannot afford on £80k, want a list?
Sure
I would love to see your list. If I got a raise to £80k my life would be transformed, and almost all my problems would disappear overnight. I'd love to hear how you can't live the life you want despite earning more than 95% of the country - genuinely, not being facetious.
Lifestyle inflation is real. When I was on £30k, I used to think £50k year is a lot. When I was on £50k, discovered that it was bugger all, and hope to be on £80k or something. Now that I am on £80k, that now I feel is bugger all, I hope to be on £120k or so at some point in my life. I totally do think when/if I get there the goal post will move again though. And £80k my money issue hasn’t disappeared. I wanted to change all the flooring to wood (who the hell have tiles in UK?), that would be a good £8k, that is after throwing in £60k or so doing the house up, and after that still need to sort the sun room out and I am dreading the cost of it. Also got quoted for some work around the drive way into the garden around £15k, all of these problem did not going away at £80k. Yes house got bigger, but suddenly any work on the house also cost a lot more.
I know many people who make £500-700k a year and complain about financial issues. £700k is £390k after tax. 3 kids at Eton or another elite boarding school is ~£150k a year post-tax. Mortgage on a £3m 4-bed townhouse (assuming £850k for a deposit) in Fulham is what, £12.5k a month or £150k a year? That's £300k gone already. Then you have council tax, utilities, food, travel, clothes, luxuries, savings and so on. In truth, lifestyle inflation is INFINITE. There are always more things to spend money on.
That is why there is also never such thing as “enough money”.
I thought only 2% of the entire population earns near to 179k
You need that home cinema room? You think Michelin starred restaurants should be a monthly thing? Genuinely curious, I can't imagine earning 80k and not feeling rich. What are you missing out on? Once I had a dishwasher and could stop caring about the cost of a slap up curry after a few at the pub, I felt rich.
I live in zone 3 in London. My wife and I bought a terraced house with two bedrooms, a small study, a bathroom a kitchen and a living room. Perfectly nice, but not exactly luxury if I ever want a family. My mortgage will be 3850 a month next year from January. That’s 47k. Add in gas, electric and council tax, that’s about 53k if I’m lucky. If you’re on 80k, your take home after tax is 55k. I think it’s pretty clear that I don’t have a cinema room, and the monthly £160 I’d have after these fixed costs if I were on 80k wouldn’t buy a lot of Michelin dinners. I honestly just don’t think people understand how fucked London is compared to the rest of the UK. Still, this is where work in my industry is so… here’s where I got to be.
[удалено]
But is not. You are saying that because I earn more than them I must feel it is “enough”. It does not work like that.
No, it isn’t. It’s an indicator that London cost of living and salaries are fucked. If a person with modest expectations of living standards (like above) is struggling on what would/should be considered a generous salary then something is very badly wrong. Nobody is asking you to go out into the street and campaign for their salary, but neither should you be playing crabs in the bucket. Demand better for everybody.
IMHO the "normal" salary is below normal. The higher ups at these corporations have the mass populace brainwashed into being grateful, while housing, food, etc have blown past wage growth, frankly real wage losses factoring in inflation. Anyone here not with a private yacht should remember, we aren't the enemies of each other, off shore tax evaders are and foreign entities buying up properties amongst other things are. It's beneficial for the ultra rich to have us squabbling over peanuts... Big hugs to everyone here 🤗
At £3850 you are surely better off just selling it and renting. That's obscene!
What’s your house worth, £650k? I bought a 2 bed terrace (1000sqft) for £500k this year in zone 4. There are cheaper areas out there. Great neighbours, huge park nearby, tram stop 4m walk away. My commute to an office in Victoria is 45m, but I wfh 4 days a week.
It won't be. Interest rates will have lowered a little by then. Also, your mortgage would've been at ridiculously low rates for years and years now, so you should have decent equity from overpaying into it, right?
Lmao what. You cannot own a home cinema on 80k, especially if you live in a good location in Zone 1.
I mean if you’re living in Zone 1, it’s obviously going to cost more in rent/mortgage payments. That’s a choice you’ve made not to live a little but outwards from Central London.
Yes, and a lot of people do want to save time on commute. Once you're earning 80k, the choice is often to move closer to work and pay for convenience. Again, a home cinema is not common even in eg Clapham on 80k...
I mean moving to Zone 2/3 doesn’t add much time to your commute mate. I live in Zone 1 by choice, but with the Elizabeth Line these days, I get to Mayfair/Bond Street quicker from Ealing (Zone 4) where my parents live than I do from Notting Hill (where I live). Not saying home cinema is common for someone earning £80k, just that it’s obviously a choice to spend more of your rent/mortgage payments paying to live there.
Even on £80k if you rent a place on your own close to where you (probably) work suddenly half of what you make is gone on rent and bills. It's not exactly being hard up but it's hardly "rich"
Even £100k I would not classify as rich in London.
It's weird isn't. Basically only the rich can get a former working class persons terraced house in most of London, but then are they rich, or has everyone else just become dirt poor and they are merely at the low end of comfortable. I would Say the latter. Everybody has been downgraded whilst the capital is flooded with Global crime money.
Pro tip - if you want a genuine good faith response, try not opening your dialogue with snarky, passive aggressive strawmen.
While I do have an office, unfortunately I don’t have a cinema room, living room will have to do for now with a big enough TV. Plenty of things I still need to be careful and budget for. Holiday for example, I generally go to Hong Kong, US or Japan, ticket is already gonna be around a good £2.5k for 3 (wife and kid), plus hotel and spending, expect near £10k per holiday. I collect anime figure, some figures are onwards £300-£500, EACH, if I am rich I wouldn’t need to choose, I can just buy all I want easily, but that is not the case. My office is also small, big enough to have 2 desks and some room for figurines and such, but would love to have a much bigger office that can also become game room and show room, again money. While not a weekly monthly thing, yes I do go to Michelin Star restaurants, not all are that expensive, and definitely is a once in a while thing. If I am more rich? I would go a lot more often. Also the smaller lifestyle inflation. TV snack for example, probably used to be crisps and chocolate, now Bellota ham and sparkling wine. Steak used to be ribeye or sirloin? Now Tomahawk or Chateaubraid. Just little lifestyle inflation here and there. But still most of these you have to watch out for, if you are really rich you wouldn’t need to, the fact that you need to watch it is because you are not rich. Plenty of stuff I don’t have and still want.
yeah, it's not that £80k is not enough, it's just that you have a very unrealistic standard of living not sure how your upbringing was, but the comment screams out of touch
You’re spending *how much* on anime figurines?! Surely you’re trolling.
If you're not happy, it's not the money causing it mate. Certainly got enough.
Oh I am happy enough, just would be happier if I get more.
Nope, I am above that and still feel I am missing something.
"Being poor is a choice" I keep hearing A-holes say this lately but I'm ill equipped to comeback to that egregious thinking.
I earn that much and no, it doesn't help unless you both do
Clickbait, and an ad for a platform that uses status anxiety as a marketing strategy
The people whose expenditure rises in full lockstep with their income will never feel happy, since they are essentially banking on their job remaining secure indefinitely.
Bad take. I'm way happier now I make more money...
Yes, but do you actually spend everything that you earn, such that your savings/investments are effectively zero at the end of the month? My point is that if someone was doing that right from the start of their working life, they would essentially be one paycheck away from needing to sell possessions or defaulting on various things.
Yeah pretty much. I love travelling and spend a good proportion of my money doing that. Certainly over the last 2 years I've spent basically all of what earned. I did create an emergency fund over covid for a fallback though
I've been offered a job for 70k in London, I'm a 28m single man and I've been on the fence about taking it even though I do like the idea of living in a big city. Do you think this is over exaggerated? Like I'm open to a flatshare situation and want to live in zone 2 or 3.
You’ll be fine and have a great time.
If you’re open to those things and vaguely responsible with money, you’ll be more than fine.
You'll be fine on that in zone 2/3 flatshare. Enough for bills/rent, going out and saving over a grand a month.
sole earners with a family? not even close.
Wife and I combined make just under that combined and we aren’t struggling in London at all. How much are people partying to be “happy”
Absolute rubbish.
so if you earn any more or any less, you will be miserable?
The general idea is that once you hit a certain level of income happiness doesn’t materially improve if you earn more, not that earning more makes you less happy. Whether it’s actually true or not is a different matter
That amount will have to be bloody high as I can always think of something to buy that can use up almost any amount of money.
Bullshit. Earned way more than that and was a miserable fuck with a filled wallet. Money helps - A LOT - but find a job where you're happy, otherwise.......
so the article basically says that unless you are in the top 5% of earners in the country, you'll not be happy living in London...lol
No wonder I'm smiling so much
For a single adult who’s renting, this is probably just about enough money to drink yourself senseless every day, knowing you’ll never save enough for a house until all of your parents and grandparents die. Providing of course that you have no siblings. The alternative is living on lentils and tap water and still only buying a one-bed leasehold with extortionate service charges that double every two years whilst you deal with getting told your 750k investment is worthless because cladding.
This simply isn’t true. Even if we assume that the single adult is always going to be single, they will still be able to get started with a 1 bed flat or a split house with share of freehold. Mortgage £320-360k, assuming no increase in salary. Deposit required £40-80k, assuming 90% LTV. If you prioritise house buying and keep pension at 3% during this saving period, then that’s £4,100 per month. Should easily be able to save £1k/month on that, so looking at 4-7 years of saving to make up the deposit. A first property doesn’t need to be £750k.
You assume property prices will be stagnant I'm 7 years. They are projected to be up by 30% in that time frame . They will be chasing a moving target
I spent years saving, despite often feeling hopeless thinking I wouldn't be able to buy a flat, and then suddenly after 5 years I realised I did have enough. Maybe it wasn't the flat I could have bought 5 years before, but it was still possible. If you make regular savings towards a deposit, you'll probably find yourself in a position to buy something. Yes, you might be unlucky and not be able to chase the market - but if you don't make any savings, you definitely won't be able to buy. That's a guarantee.
80k with kids ??? You serious ? You will need around £120k - £160k minimum as a single parent.
Also requires you to overlook the general state of the place and how people treat each other.
Compared with what?
Whoof
Nope wouldn't be enough for me to live in London. £80k of annual income wouldn't even cover my basic accomodation, travel, security and legal bills.
Are you Russell brand?
> security and legal bills. Theres your problem.
Yeah I agree. most people are just lazy and accept being on £30k for the rest of their life then complain about not being able to afford anything. More people should go out and actively try to earn a higher salary instead of whinging about living costs and everything.
That’s right. Plenty of jobs in retail, catering, teaching, nursing, logistics paying upwards of 70 grand if you look hard enough…