A Decent Annual Salary

[TheGoodEarth]

The VAT thread has got me wondering, what do people think is a decent annual salary to be able to live comfortably. E.g not relying on benefits of any kind and to be able to afford one or two luxuries and an annual holiday?

[gregorach]

Depends hugely on where you live and what you're used to. I reckon I make pretty good money, but I'm not sure I could afford what most people would regard as an annual holiday. (Well, I probably could if I didn't spend it elsewhere, right enough.) And I have no idea how anyone can afford children or to run a car... But then I have expensive tastes and a lot of hobbies.

[fifi folle]

As Dunc says it depends on a lot of variables. Expectations have a large part to play, what one considers a luxury another may consider a necessity. My husband and I have been living on his salary alone for the past three years, he earns a few k above the national average of £26000 pa (Office of National Statistics) but we have a small mortgage and have not had a foreign holiday in years (well apart from going to a wedding in Czech for 4 days last year). If we lived elsewhere in the UK I am not sure we would have managed to survive so comfortably.
I don't think it's an easy question but I am sure there are economists out there who spend their lives (and earn a comfortable salary) calculating this very amount!!!

[fifi folle]

Interesting to note it's all Scots on this thread!?!

[Green Aura]

Difficult one - what you need to survive (in its broadest sense) depends on so many different things.

Our income dropped by 2/3 when we moved up here and we certainly weren't in the high earners bracket by a long shot. Yet we still manage to pay the mortgage on our old house - still unsold - and have just bought another (very cheap) property for our daughter. And we still manage to cover all our other expenses, although we don't have much in the way of savings.

We've not had any sort of holiday since we came here, but as our 2-3 annual holidays were spent coming up here anyway (to get away from all the stresses of our real lives) I don't know where we'd go And we don't have anything like the same stresses now.

Our hobbies are very cheap, just the odd DVD and CD really.

So, although we don't have much money I certainly don't feel poor.

[crowsashes]

... i think mine would be around £20k . itwould cover the bills and rent with enough left to consider moving.

my hobbies are cheap/free walking, reading, knitting etc ... and i dont go for all the big new gadgets ( although i want a new macand camera... ) cant really afford them and i dont do holidays ... i prefer day trips via the train than a full week wherever and trying to fit a lot of stuff in to see it all!

but i could see that figure dropping...

[bonniethomas06]

Gosh, this has made me think - we earn £40k between us at the moment and we are constantly skint...we run out of money well before the end of the month, don't have annual foreign holidays (we went woofing last year instead), have one old banger between us and I can't remember the last time I bought new clothes.

I think it depends on how good you are at managing your money (dreadful) and how much debt you have (lots), although I have a feeling that no matter how much we earn, we will always end up spending it all.

[niknik]

the more you have.the more you need. most people lways seem to manage to spend up to their income.

Im on a pension, ( early mediaclly retired) it´s pretty good as such, but with the increase in cost of living etc the last few years it´s a struggle. another 200 or 300 a month would be fantastic. but TBH i´d rather have a large lump sum in one go. then , it would be possible to set evrythig up for minimum outgoings for the rest of my life. get solar/wind power, a f biggergarden so nearly self sufficient for food, and wood for heating. etc etc. if I could cut out all those costs then my pension would be more than sufficient, and allow LOTS of treats.

[Jerseymum]

This one is really close to our hearts: the main reason why Jerseymum now lives in Shropshire (ooh, talking about myself in 3rd person, feel a bit sociopathic, now )
I think it really does depend on where you live.
In Jersey we had a combined salary of 60k and when a childminder suddenly handed in notice, went from just being able to afford a mortgage on a small, 2 bed flat, 2 small cars (as we both worked opposite sides of the Island and needed to pick up and drop off kids), doing a weekly shop at the market for the cheapest fresh food with cupboard staples bought from the co-op. We didn't have holidays, but tried to visit my parents every 18 months or so in order to fill a car with clothes from supermarkets and charity shops in the UK because the prices in Jersey were taking the proverbial and the kids grow so fast (that said, we have since had a third child and she is wearing these as hand-me-downs and passing them on to her younger cousin as we do not attempt to buy 'labels' for our children or ourselves).
Unlike a lot of our friends, we saw that trying to continue as we were would eat up what savings we had in no time, so we sold up and moved to the UK: some friends didn't see it coming and lost houses and had to declare 'en disastre' (Channel Islands equivalent of bankruptcy). We were able to live off our savings for 6 months until dh found a job in Telford. Here, we could afford to buy a small, 3 bed house with a garden for less each month than a quarter of our Jersey mortgage and dh earns just on the national average and I can be a stay at home mum.
We still do not have holidays, but who needs to when there is so much good stuff nearby and the kids have an imagination? My parents live in Warrington and before I moved to Jersey that would have been a really cheap place to move but it is now, more than ever, commuter belt for Manchester and Liverpool and completely beyond our affordability (mind you, you could earn a fortune as a burglar as most of the 'middle class' estates are empty for 12 hours a day - very pretty ghost towns )
I'd agree that a lump sum to set up a lower cost lifestyle would have been ever so helpful.
Sarah

[Susie]

I think it depends on how much your housing costs are. It's difficult to get a house here in the centre for under £1000 (and we actually pay less on our mortgage than we did when we were renting privately). I'm sure housing costs are much worse in other places as well, but it takes up quite a bit of our income.

[Shirleymouse]

It definitely depends on where you live. We could afford a much larger house if we moved further out of Birmingham but we are close to our jobs and families and this suits us for now. I don't spend a lot on clothes, gadgets etc but I like to know I've got a bit for an emergency e.g. last year when the boiler had to be replaced. No kids yet but if we do have them, I'd want to cut down my work hours which would also mean taking a pay cut so I suppose we'd have to cut out some of our treats. I've always found it strange though that people have kids then go to work and pay a fortune for child care. I can't believe this is more economical than staying at home with the kids unless you have a massive salary.
It also depends on what sort of hobbies, holidays etc you enjoy e.g. a week skiing would cost more than a seaside holiday. We both have season tickets at the football which seems expensive but still far cheaper overall than if I was shopping in town every Saturday afternoon instead of freezing to death watching my team!

[becks77]

Umm, a decent salary depends on many things, I had thought around 30-40K as that is what we earned previously and we are a family of 5 with a dog and a horse too. However our circumstances have changed and we now look at around 20-30K and seem to have some left over whereas before we were always scraping around at the end of the month, so tricky to say really.

[TheGoodEarth]

It seems that there are just too many variables depending on where you live, rent or buy, kids or not, car or not, holidays or not and what your priorities are in life.

The other theme seems to be that you spend what you earn and I completely concur with that. Having over the last 25 years been earning peanuts and working two jobs at times, to earning very good money at other times I can't say I have been more or less happy in either situation.

With hardly any money you feel that life would be so much better with money, then when you earn decent money and don't want for much you think there must be more to life than money!

So in response to my OP I would say that a decent annual salary is what brings you a reasonable degree of happiness and contentment. And depending on where you live in the UK that may be £20k pa or £60k pa where you are still struggling due to high costs of living - it's all relative.

IMHO if I didn't have any mortgage or rent payments and had a super insulated house with a renewable energy supply - so minimum bills - I would be very happy with £12,000 pa (£1,000 pm)

[boboff]

£150k, that would be enough.

[okra]

As many has said, its all relative to lifestyle choices but our income, through choice, has reduced by 75% and we truly have not changed the way we live.