what is a good wage to live in UK?

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Programmer-Severe@reddit

Dangerous topic to discuss. It's all relative. Many people earning over £100k don't feel at all wealthy, while many earning half that say they have a good lifestyle. It's all relative, dependent on family wealth, and of course, your expectations of what a 'good' lifestyle is

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Revolutionary_West56@reddit

I think those earning over 100k and don’t feel wealthy are outside of the conversation of real life

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Desperate-Drawer-572@reddit (OP)

why??

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Cakeo@reddit

Because 100k is a good chunk of money. That's nearly triple the wage for a large portion of the country.

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Programmer-Severe@reddit

Not after tax

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WanderingAlbertRoss@reddit

If the above poster's calculations are correct, the £100k wage earner takes home £65k

A huge number of people are on around £25k and they take home £21.5k...

Which is almost exactly a third of the £100k person.

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Programmer-Severe@reddit

Well yeah, if you pick almost the smallest full time salary possible rather than any kind of average. Of course someone on £100k is going to be better off than someone on minimum wage. It doesn't make them rich.

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New_Progress_4851@reddit

Also the 100k person will have stress, probably work after hours catching up etc. Someone on 21k is sat behind a till

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WanderingAlbertRoss@reddit

Forget average. The majority of people round here will be on that sort of wage if they work a normal full time job.

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Suspicious_Juice9511@reddit

100k is way over average.

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Programmer-Severe@reddit

I didn't suggest otherwise. The median salary for my age is £51k.

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Suspicious_Juice9511@reddit

Source? A quick google suggests at peak (40-49) it is 33k-45k in uk.

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Programmer-Severe@reddit

It's £51k for 40-49. Source - the ASHE by the ONS. It's 2024 data so it will be higher now.

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Programmer-Severe@reddit

It's £51k for 40-49. Source - the ASHE by the ONS. It's 2024 data so it will be higher now.

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Both_King3970@reddit

People massively underestimate how different £100k vs £40k actually feels in the UK once you factor in everything, not just headline salary.

On paper: - £40k → ~£32k take-home - £100k → ~£65k take-home

So yeah, you’re earning £60k more but only taking home ~£33k extra. Already losing ~45% of that increase to tax.

But the real kicker is what you lose as you go up:

Child Benefit Gone completely by £60k. That’s ~£1.3k/year for one kid, ~£2.2k for two.
Free childcare (this is the big one) If either parent earns £100k+, you lose the 30 free hours + support. That can easily be worth £5k–£10k+ per year per child depending on where you live.
Tax-Free Childcare Up to £2k/year per child — also gone at £100k.
The 60% tax trap Between £100k–£125k you lose your personal allowance, so the effective tax rate is ~60%. You keep ~40p of every extra £1 in that range.
Basically no support at all At £40k you might still qualify for bits of support depending on circumstances. At £100k, it’s all gone.

So if you’ve got kids, the “real” comparison looks more like:

£40k → ~£32k take-home + £8k–£12k in benefits/support
£100k → ~£65k take-home and nothing else

That shrinks the felt gap a lot. You’re still better off at £100k obviously, but it doesn’t feel like “£60k richer” — more like £20k–£30k depending on childcare costs.

TL;DR: Higher earners don’t just pay more tax — they also lose a ton of support. The jump from £40k to £100k is nowhere near as life-changing as the raw numbers suggest, especially with kids.

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qash001@reddit

It's still more than double the take home pay of someone on 40k. They can live quite comfortably on that unless they try to live like a king. Heard someone on the radio i can only draw up to being a troll, called in complaining that as someone on 150k he feels poor. The prick followed by saying going to Waitrose and buying a meal for him and wife costs 50 quid a pop. Who the hell does that and then complains they feel poor!

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Upbeat-Storage9349@reddit

Look people don't like to hear it but even the moderately wealthy are struggling, I come from a fairly run of the mill family with a small amount of land, the cost of running a shoot and even keeping our vehicles fuels barely gives us expenses for our onsite help.

That doesn't leave much in the way for luxuries, it's tiring to hear the media try to divide the middle classes by claiming different groups have it better, ultimately everyone is suffering. You only have to look at most of the major index funds to know that.

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Both_King3970@reddit

If you want a decent wine with it that’s another £30

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qash001@reddit

Luxuries. Suck it up, most can't even afford decent meals to begin with, can't even fathom buying anything from Waitrose!

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OverCategory6046@reddit

Comfortable isn't wealthy. I'm on above that, I'm living comfortably but am nowhere near wealthy.

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qash001@reddit

Most people would be happy to just be comfortable. Being able to weather through shitstorms like we are currently having is a luxury that most don't have. If you're on a relatively high income and 'comfortable', count yourself lucky.

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chairs-dimension@reddit

As someone who has done the £40-100k journey over the past 5 years this really doesn’t speak to me at all. Saying that someone is ‘only’ taking home £33k extra feels really out of touch with the reality. Yes there is a higher rate of tax and loss of benefits but the total take home is still very high. It buys you so many options and peace of mind that people on lower incomes just don’t have access to.

I know that I’m privileged to now be earning more than many double income households by myself, but I don’t have a partner meaning that I’m the only one responsible for my well being. I’ve made clear decisions about lifestyle creep. Many people I know who earn similarly to me bought a new car, took expensive holidays, etc. when they got those raises, bonuses, etc. They also complain about being ‘broke’ because they feel like their money ‘should’ go further. With couples, that syndrome is even worse.

My non-negotiable expenses (housing, food, commuting, etc.) have gone up by approx £1000 / month while my salary has gone up by £3400 a month during the same period. I don’t have to worry about inflation, buying groceries, days out, holidays, etc. Now, my biggest luxuries are housing and savings - when I was on £40k I was scraping by (London), now I can choose to save or to spend, and often both.

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rawcane@reddit

Absolutely this. And regardless of what you are earning now one's previous experience makes a massive difference. You could be earning 120k but have been absolutely fucked over by your ex and still have to pay 1k+ in child benefit for example.

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BongoHunter@reddit

It's around 5% of the workforce currently earning over 100K.

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Programmer-Severe@reddit

The PAYE workforce. It's much higher than that in reality

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BongoHunter@reddit

Yeah good point, the amount of self employed people and those taking dividends must be huge and they wouldn't be included in the above percentage

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scaratzu@reddit

There isn't really one. Whatever you earn, you will be lacking for basics like dental, healthcare, childcare, public transport, and adequate housing. A £100k to £200k salary will let you work around a lot (e.g. by just blasting the heating into space during the mild winters, or owning a car and using it for even the most trivial of tasks, getting things delivered). But even with private healthcare, you're still probably going to be in the position of just hoping ailments go away on their own (again, maybe you can work around it by living in a HCOL area near good private medical stuff that's within your network).

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alexanderwilliams467@reddit

Or you can use the free healthcare provided to all Brits?

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MidasToad@reddit

I highly doubt you are a 'Brit' : the one thing we in the UK don't worry about in terms of money is healthcare.

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AccidentalBastard@reddit

Anything less than eleventy bazillion pounds a week and you may as well be on the dole

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alexanderwilliams467@reddit

Actually eleventy bazillion isn't as much as it used to be. I wouldn't get out of bed for less than twelve.

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SpectreSingh89@reddit

For minimum if both partners are working.

For no partner / one stay at home I'd say atleast 32 grand a year (pre tax). So about £2200 a month straight in your account. For manufacturing you need to work with the right people. I will indulge but reddit is known for PC so... Can't speak the truth.

ANYWAY, for factory or warehouse nightshift pays those sorta wages. 4 days on 4 days off 4 NIGHTS on then 4 off. Continental shift and then Panama shift pattern. Again, don't expect decent wages from certain groups.

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shypeteite@reddit

Rent + 3k net per month ?

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identified_weakness1@reddit

What is a good restaurant to eat in… depends where you are and what you fancy.

£40,000 in Sunderland is more than £60,000 in London. If you earn enough to save 15% of your pay each time you’re on a good wage.

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fixitmonkey@reddit

Anything that gives you +10% more than your outgoings.

I'd like to put that at a higher percentage but id be happy with 10% extra right now.

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JealousStuff4405@reddit

This. I take home about 1950 a month for 3 days work. My wife a tiny bit more (for one more day.) little Bit of child benefit.

Mortgage 320. Car 360. Can basically do what we want. 4 foreign holidays plus a few city breaks and festivals away this year. Savings account insterest basically pays for one of them

Full time people at work are higher rate tax payers but have four figure mortgage payments and two cars and get one holiday a year tops and dont seem able to save.

Its all about housing costs not wage

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ReflexArch@reddit

Define outgoings?

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fixitmonkey@reddit

Everything you spend in a month, so you always have +10% left over at the end. Could be 30k or 300k but the question is so wooly its the only answer.

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ReflexArch@reddit

Fair enough. Agree so many variables to OP's question.

My savings go out as direct debits every month shortly after pay day. I treat them as outgoings. I have little pots for different needs (holiday fund, token amount into kids ISAs etc).

I treat my savings as an outgoing in my head. Just made me think about your 10% comment. At the end of the month my current account is circa in line with where it started but not really a true reflection.

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JohnCasey3306@reddit

The inherent flaw in that calculation being that it's quite common for people to live to their means ... If you have a great increase in income, I guarantee within a year you'll have a commensurate increase in your outgoings to match it.

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Historical_Project86@reddit

Yeah but you kind of know how much easy money you could come up with in a month. In my case £X00 goes into an "Amazon" account to pay for random shite throughout the month. It's not difficult to realise that I could probably save 10% of my take-home pay without too much hassle.

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fixitmonkey@reddit

Completely agree, but the original question was rubbish so it was either the above or £100k a week.

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LeanPawRickJ@reddit

Here’s a good link to relative satisfaction.

Wage alone is a poor metric, as it fails to take into account work/life balance, non-salaried duties & other time sinks, familial help/responsibilities etc..

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fabulousteaparty@reddit

I'd say, for a couple on a low- rate mortgagte/small house in the north we'd be much more comfortable on £35k-£40k each (currently not far off but I don't know where all our money goes). Meaning if it was one person, minimum £80k to live semi-comfortably.

Min. £50k as a couple /£100k as a single person to live a basic life raising a child or two, or childless with higher rent/mortgage prices and regular trips abroad.

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chappersyo@reddit

I live comfortably in a 2/3 bed house on 40k as a single person.

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fabulousteaparty@reddit

It's so individual and all depends on outgoings though.

If me and my other half rented instead of paying a cheap mortgage (locked in before Liz Truss messed everything up) I think we'd struggle on what we're on now.

Like most of the population, we're trying to pay off debts (credit cards and a home improvement loan), wanting to go on holiday but it's just not possible - so last year we saved up a bit to buy ourselves a tent, and borrowed/inherited camping equipment from my parents. Yes, we paid £350 for a tent, but it will last us years and we shouldn't have to pay any more than £200 a week to go somewhere in the UK.

I'd quite like to get a new car soon-ish, I've had mine for nearly 9 years, and ideally would like something slightly bigger. But it's just not realistic with our outgoings, making ends meet, trying to save anything.

I think I'd say we're comfortable when we have no debts (except mortgage), can afford to go on holiday abroad (£80 to pay off my passport is just not reasonable at the moment) and can save up to pay for large purchases in a couple of months/afford to pay for a basic car loan in a couple years. - like it's not wild, crazy stuff, just things I saw my parents doing growing up, and I'd quite like the same for myself.

Or even just getting to the end of the month and buying what we like from the supermarket instead of going "loaf of bread, cheese, beans and tinned soup will have to do for the next 3 days"

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Most-Dig-6459@reddit

Do note that the couple earning £50k each takes home an extra £10k per year in total compared to the one earner making £100k due to income tax thresholds.

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fabulousteaparty@reddit

Yes, but as a single person you'd also have less extra outgoings (food, phones, clothes etc.)

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MidasToad@reddit

I would say 6 figures (£100,000+) is an excellent wage; £50,000 is a good wage, more than enough to live well on, as an individual (perhaps not enough to comfortably support a family).

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No-Championship9542@reddit

150k a year probably if PAYE

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LaraH39@reddit

Depends on were you live and how you live.

My husband and I and our three cats live in combined wages of about £45k

He earns £35k I'm on pip for long term disability and my part time WFH job brings in about £7-10k a year depending on my illness.

We live in Northern Ireland, have a mortgage. Hobbies, eat well and go "out out" every couple of months.

We do have a credit card debit of about £8k created because I'm not able to work all the time and we use it to cover essentials / emergencies... But we're not under any real money pressures.

I'm not sure you could survive on £35k in Manchester you definitely couldn't in London but it would be fairly adequate in parts of Wales and maybe just a little short in most of Scotland. £40k would be more comfortable there.

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Wholesome_crab@reddit

Do you know about stepchange? Given your circumstances/income they might be able to help you manage your credit card debt.

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LaraH39@reddit

I have not heard of that I will check it out! Thank you x

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Eggtastico@reddit

PIP on the mainland means you can go to a lower band council tax. Not sure if you have something equivalent available in NI

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LaraH39@reddit

Thanks for that! We don't have council tax. We have rates but I'll look into it and see if there's an equivalent. I did give my husband as much of my tax free allowance as I could!

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No_Actuary9100@reddit

For a typical family of say 4

… £1200 per month rent/mortgage … £800 groceries … £500 motoring … £500 utilities … £500 leisure / going out / holidays

= £3500pm (£42000pa). Plus income tax … probably £55000 per year household income just for a basic but comfortable existence ?

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Jo-Wolfe@reddit

I've always earned below the 'average wage'.

I did a lot of shagging, partying, and travel in the 80s and 90s, bought my second house at 13% which made me tighten by girdle a bit but always put money aside.

I drove £500-£900 cars, never smoked and still had a social life, two divorces, no children - never wanted them.

I retired 3 years ago. I don't have a mortgage. I've a 7 year old EV, a 91 2.8D Toyota Hiace campervan, and a Triumph Trident motorbike. I also ride, Dressage, and I have a social life and two cats who cost a fortune.

I don't have any savings.. two divorces, a motorbike and a campervan does that but you can't take it with you.

My net income from State, Civil Service and tiny army pensions is about £19,000, pretty much my net income from working.

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Wholesome_crab@reddit

Love it!

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Then-Fortune-3122@reddit

Depends on your expenses, dependents, and where you live. A good salary i’d say is £60k+ but by no means is it comfort

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Magic_mousie@reddit

Where I am that would be very good, but in London would be insufficient. It really is too broad of a question.

£40k was the number that popped into my head for a good wage. Not great, but comfortable.

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Then-Fortune-3122@reddit

That sounds like an oxymoron to me. “Not great, but comfortable”

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First-Lengthiness-16@reddit

You don’t understand the difference between comfortable and great?

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Then-Fortune-3122@reddit

“Not great” can’t be comfort. For me anyways.

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chappersyo@reddit

Not great can mean bad colloquially, but literally it just means it isn’t great. Really good isn’t great but it’s closer than bad is.

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Ok-Distribution326@reddit

Meh, I’ve always seen “comfortable” in this context as earning enough that you never need to stress month to month about money, but not being able to afford the latest and greatest of everything. I guess it’s meant less in the sense of living in great comfort, but rather that you earn enough to not have to experience financial discomfort.

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Then-Fortune-3122@reddit

Yeah, suppose its needs another word there to properly understand it. Comfortable enough is what’s being described above.

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Magic_mousie@reddit

I mean not fantastic. So I'm not going on two holidays a year and eating out every week and having the latest tech etc. To me that would be great. So £40k is not great.

But to be comfortable you need a roof over your head, food on the table, and some spare change in case shit hits the fan, which £40k would give you, outside of London.

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Then-Fortune-3122@reddit

Fair enough! My bar for comfort includes holidays, and being able to splash on the latest tech as well.

What you described sounds “not great” as the option of extras isn’t there.

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Hot-Box1054@reddit

If you’re single, planning on living independently without roommates and in an affordable area then anything over £30k will be good.

If you want the 5 bedroom house, five children, 2 cars and a stay at home wife and want to live in London then as you can imagine you’re going to need to be making as close to 100k as possible or at least have family money.

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louilondon@reddit

You’d need a little more then £100k for all that in London that 5bed house is over a million

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Otherwise_Craft9003@reddit

A London weighted wage while living in south West or north is good

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Bubbly_Gap6636@reddit

The average wage is 37k but depends where you live etc...

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Logical_Bake_3108@reddit

I didn't think I grew up that poor until I read threads like this. People throwing round 100k like they're barely getting by.

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Any-Republic-4269@reddit

One million dollars

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ilikedixiechicken@reddit

I’m a train driver on £50k. According to the media that’s exceptionally high.

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Scary_Application_70@reddit

Our rent alone is £1500 a month. That's without council tax, utilities etc. so probably £100k + to be comfortable. We're giving up the house and moving into a campervan. We just can't afford it anymore.

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Nielips@reddit

Depends how much tax they are dodgding/evading. There are a hell of a lot of people that seem to have very good quality of life earning 12.5k, but if you ask some on 32k they may well have a worse quality of life.

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BandCOatcake@reddit

I (34M) bring home around £2,800 4 weekly (take home). My wife (31F) doesn’t work. Between us we have 3 children, my eldest from previous, and our two young children together. We have 1 mortgage together, 2 x cars (not financed, A-B jobs) and I couldn’t say that we could be any happier.

My wife looks after the children around school/nursery and I appreciate what she does whilst I’m at work.

We don’t live a lavish lifestyle and we enjoy each others company, which makes us ‘rich’.

People choose to live beyond their means to impress a society that forgets about them as they drive away in their financed Mercedes. Just enjoy the fruits of life and don’t be so narrow visioned about what is and isn’t a ‘good wage’. If it gets you by, you have food in your belly, a place to wash and a roof at night you’re doing just fine.

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Puzzled-Job9556@reddit

Really depends where you are and what your family situation is. 150k between 2 parents and 2 children in London is very different to 50k as a single person in the north.

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RiverTadpolez@reddit

I reckon for a couple a combined income of around £70k is enough for anything you could conceivably want or need to live in comfort and relative luxury, so anything above that is a good wage.

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HamsterTowel@reddit

Depends where you live, whether you are married or live with a partner, whether you have children, what type of property you want to live in, whether you work from home or live near to or far from your place of work, whether you need to have a car.... so many different things.

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BongoHunter@reddit

If I had no kids and lived somewhere cheap in East Midlands I could be more than comfortable on 50K

In London you'd be wanting much nearer 100K

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mralistair@reddit

depends where in the UK.. Wigan would be very different form Westminster.

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UnspeakableBadger@reddit

Wigan certainly is very different from almost anywhere 😂

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UnspeakableBadger@reddit

It depends where you live, whether you’re supporting a family or not, and what your aspirations are.

In London, you probably need at least £40k just to survive in the city. For cities in the north, less is required. The average full-time salary is about £30k - to get into the top 10% of earners you’ll need about £70k, anything with 6 figures or more puts you in the top 1-2% (the severity of the curve of income distribution is pretty steep: about 80% of the people in this country are on less than £50k per year)

For example, I live in the north west, M 42, on another salary in the £65k range, my wife is on about £35k, no children (two dogs instead!) and we live pretty comfortably - owned our own home since we were in our mid twenties, we’re saving every month, never worried about money. I work remotely, some of my colleagues down in London on similar salaries are unable to afford to buy a house. The difference between the two regions is huge.

So, to answer your question, if you want a statistically good wage, anything over £40k is significantly over the median, anything more than £80k means you’re doing very well, over £100k and you’re in the highest wage brackets. For a living wage though, you probably need to add £20k to those numbers for London, and probably £10k per dependent perhaps.

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PoetOk1520@reddit

Median salary for full time workers is 40k. Average (ie mean) is even higher. Not sure where you got the 30k from

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UnspeakableBadger@reddit

From Google: Median annual salary for 2026 is £31,032 Google UK average salary

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PoetOk1520@reddit

Lol no it’s not. I just checked again, it was 39k last year. And has been going up by about 4% each year so it should be over 40k now

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UnspeakableBadger@reddit

Which source are you using then? I’ve just done a quick Google search and posted the link, where’s your source/link? Just saying “lol nah that’s wrong” and quoting another number doesn’t make a coherent argument.

I mean if I’m wrong and my 10 second Google search has somehow thrown up some nonsense figure then by all means please show me the correct data, but I can’t just take your word for it.

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Calm_Set_9433@reddit

The way things are, £100k is just about ok ish. I'm well below that btw. It used to be that we could do fine on a reasonable wage, (say 25k a few years back) but now you need a lot more to cut even and manage, due to higher cost of living, higher energy prices etc.

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Snowy_Sasquatch@reddit

The UK is such a vast area with such difference in housing costs and other general day to day expenses (eg its currently 20p per litre difference for petrol between a colleague who works in the north of England and my local garage).

Too many things can also impact the amount of disposable income someone has to be able to live off of (eg children and if so, how many etc). Also whether you have a couple living together so have a shared income, because two people on £40k will probably feel they have a better standard of living than one person on £80k (higher tax, no child benefit etc).

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PoetOk1520@reddit

Not true. Apart from housing nearly everything else (and all the essentials) is basically the same. Only thing considerably cheaper outside the south is maybe private schools.

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Snowy_Sasquatch@reddit

Something we will have to disagree on.

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St3lla_0nR3dd1t@reddit

Hey you are in the UK. Any wage is a good wage!

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WitchyWoo9@reddit

We have a combined income of £80k, live in a nice 4 bed house in a northern town and have two kids. We're very comfortable on this income, no money worries and manage either one big long haul holiday or two European ones every year. We drive old cars and are quite frugal but don't need to scrimp. We were broke for years and learned to budget hard, we continue to do this now we have almost doubled our income

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Dry-Grocery9311@reddit

For a single income household, you need about £70k pa salary to comfortably live an average lifestyle.

Many households have two earners to achieve this. As a single income, it's considered better than average.

That works out, after tax, about double the minimum wage.

Whether or not that's considered a "good" wage depends on the level of lifestyle you are aspiring to.

If you are professionally qualified, a good salary tends to be well over £100k.

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Magic_mousie@reddit

Single income household here, I could live an average lifestyle on £30k take home (£40-45k gross?). My rock bottom basic bills are about £2k a month if I only eat supernoodles and rarely leave the house.

Thankfully I can live a little better than that, but I could live very well on £70k pa. Maybe that is an average lifestyle. It's hard to know these days, when average has been sliding downhill.

I'm South but not London, for context.

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RiceeeChrispies@reddit

It just shows how much of a difference housing/location has on everything. My mortgage and bills come to £700pm but I live in a small city.

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Dry-Grocery9311@reddit

That sounds great. Where in the country are you?

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RiceeeChrispies@reddit

Lincoln, Lincolnshire.

Fuck all round here, mind. Lived here all my life so guess I don’t know any different.

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Dry-Grocery9311@reddit

Looks like a nice place.

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Magic_mousie@reddit

£1200 mortgage 😭, which was a shock since I'd been told for years that mortgage would be cheaper than rent. On a like for like maybe but I did upgrade from a flat.

I take small comfort in inflation eating away at the real world cost of it vs rent, and that I locked in my 5 year rate at Christmas.

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Dry-Grocery9311@reddit

You'll win on the inflation over time.

Mortgage rates go up and down. Rents only go up.

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Dry-Grocery9311@reddit

That's about £20 per day to fund everything beyond paying basic bills and living off super noodles.

The rough cost of raising a child is about £200 per week.

The OP asked what a "good" wage was. You obviously can live on £2,500 per month net, as an individual, but it wouldn't look extravagant to most.

A couple earning that each would be comfortable.

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Amazing-Visual-2919@reddit

Depends on where you live, what you need to pay out for, what you like to do.

Far too simple a question.

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Active_Definition_57@reddit

Yes, if you are living alone in a town in, for example, northern England, you will probably be able to live very well on a wage that you can barely get by on if you live in or near London supporting a partner and young children.

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WinkyNurdo@reddit

People will have different priorities with their money, based on their age, circumstance, history, location, dependants, etc etc.

Am on about £70k pa. Live on the coast but work fully remote. It hasn’t always been this way and for thirty years I either lived wage to wage, or latterly put every extra £ into saving a deposit. I was stuck renting increasingly unaffordable, tiny flats and houseshares for 30 years.

Now I have my own flat, living on my own, with a low mortgage of £650 — far lower than any rent I had in the last 20 years. All in bills take it up to about 1k pm. I now put a lot into retirement funds; essentially I’m playing catch up and am nearly 50 with little to show for it.

So whilst 70k looks a lot — and it is! — I’m trying to put as much away as possible for a few years to compound and make the most of it. I don’t want to get to a certain age and have fuck all to live off. But equally … I’m trying to enjoy myself a bit as well.

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Latter-Interest-2856@reddit

Add up all your annual outgoings - and I mean ALL, not just obvious bills, including incidentals such as birthday & Christmas presents, dog food, cinema, light bulbs, window cleaner, sellotape, charity sponsorships, etc etc. literally EVERYTHING you can possibly think of that you spend over a year. To that total, add an extra 20% for leeway. Divide by 12 to give a minimum monthly income. That’s then the bare minimum you need to live a fairly quiet steady life. If you want to go on holiday etc then that’s extra to add on. Will you need a new car in a few years time? Add on more to save each year. True living costs are waaaay more than people ever allow for. Living in the middle of the UK in a moderate size home with a small mortgage or rent? - £80k household income I’d say is the bare minimum. £100k to have a few extras. North of England maybe less? South of England definitely a LOT more.

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Highlandertr3@reddit

80k is not required on most of the UK. London definitely that or more but you can get by comfortably on 50 or less past the home counties.

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Wasps_are_bastards@reddit

There’s me thinking I’d just hit a decent wage, then arrive on here. Now I realise I’m still poor lol.

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Orangeandjasmine777@reddit

£70,000 and up

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Eggtastico@reddit

£99,999

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Any_Preference_4147@reddit

This is completely dependent on your circumstances. I'm on £30k, in London this is a shit wage. But I'm single and child free in the Welsh Valleys so I'm basically loaded butt

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MadMuffinMan117@reddit

I live very comfortably on 33k+overtime and can afford annually an extravagant holiday and own everything i want but i also own an apartment.

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SnooDonuts6494@reddit

I'm sure everyone has a different definition of "good".

Min wage is roughly 25k per year, which isn't great.

I'd say 50k is reasonably "good".

100k is gooderer.

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Diligent_Craft_1165@reddit

A good salary is probably £120,000. I’m on just under that and I can’t afford the lifestyle my parents had. Whatever you earn above £100,000 you can salary sacrifice to pension to ensure you’ve got money for retirement.

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Apperley70@reddit

2 and 6

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Indigo-Waterfall@reddit

It depends where you live. Eg London will be a lot higher than almost anywhere outside of London. Cities vs countryside etc

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JohnCasey3306@reddit

I've come to believe ~70k is the sweet spot (for my family of 5).

In my own experience, "happiness" (but let's say a sense of financial security and freedom) increases with income only up to around that level.

The years that I've earned a deal more than that have all been the absolute lowest of my life -- due in no small part to financial stress ironically.

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philff1973@reddit

Like people are saying, it depends where you are. 250k will buy you a 4 bedroom detached house where I live but in London you would struggle to get a half decent bedsit.

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Turbofox_89@reddit

Our collective household income is around £108,000 per year, pre taxes. We have a mortgage value of £260,000, or around £1400 per month.

We’re not in London so I’d say we’re very comfortable, can save a lot and don’t really have any worries around money.

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