It’s no surprise to me that a new study suggests that many so-called middle earners are finding it difficult to survive on an income of £60,000 a year. As the author of “Caught in the middle” reports, 20 per cent of those in the middle fifth of income distribution — those with a household income of between £30,000 and £60,000 — now struggle to pay for food or other essentials.
Once my husband and I were those people. Thanks to a hobbling career change, we were what you might call “middle-class broke”. We had a moderate mortgage on a plain little house — so were much better off than many — but we limped from month to month, and I bought food on credit.
When our sons’ state school had a fair, I scraped around and paid the £3 entrance fee in pennies. The parent on the door was exasperated, but I was immune to small humiliations. Both freelance, we were probably earning, in fits and starts, about £50,000 between us. Oh boohoo, sounds like a fortune! What can I tell you? That time was a continuous silent scream of stress and fear, and even though it was 15 years ago, just thinking about it gives me a sick, heavy feeling in my gut.
Sigh.
She’s 50% out in her estimation of the value of her own income.
No wonder times were tight.
15 years ago I’d just broken through £10k and thought I was rolling in clover. All non-mortgage debts paid off, about £10k of savings built up, pub meals every couple of weeks, travelling to visit friends.
“How can you afford to send a child to a private school?” I was asked.
“Because we live frugally, including years of using the state primary school round the corner.”
“But won’t you be ruined by all the add-ons for uniforms, and trips, and clubs, and so on?”
“No.”
“How do you know?”
“I’ve done the sums.”
Annual income £80,000, annual expenditure £75,000, result happiness.
Then came the “hobbling career change”.
Annual income £60,000, annual expenditure £65,000, result misery.
A lot of costs will be fixed (mortgage) or rising (council tax, utility bills). If your income falls while your costs rise, you will indeed feel squeezed. Without seeing a full breakdown of their bills it’s hard to judge. Poorer people would have skipped the school fete entirely, to save £3.
This article is very much the decline of earnings for writers but they either aren’t getting out of London, or getting out of journalism, or accepting it. £100K combined income in London, especially with 3 kids, is not great money. It’s not Ocado and £300/month car loans, let alone thinking that you should be adding a skiing trip.
“But I *HAVE* to live in London, because that’s where the whole universe is!!!! And I *HAVE* to be a writer because that’s my vocation, passion, calling!” (hobby, no other skills….)
OT but maybe a straw in the wind?
The Times: “Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh considers charging for some treatments after Audit Scotland’s ‘staggeringly bleak’ assessment”. That is, they are advocating considering charging for some NHS treatments.
When we lived there Scotland was, in many ways, better run than England. Devolution reversed that. Could it reverse again? (Probably not but you never know.)
Dearieme – I know we’re all shocked – shocked – at the routine, staggering incompetence of government officials.
But it took heroic efforts of fecklessness to bankrupt a layer of government that receives a guaranteed block grant of over £40Bn a year. And they, in turn, have bankrupted all the local authorities sitting beneath them. And the British government is bankrupting itself to spend tens of billions attracting and retaining economically inactive new arrivals who contribute nothing while soaking up public spending. (Perhaps MP’s see themselves in the dinghymen?)
I don’t think the pols are going to learn anything, so at what point do the funny wooden stages get built?
£50K a year and she thinks she’s hard up?
I checked the sympathy meter – it’s reading zero.
I would wager that taxes are the largest expense on that budget. I would also wager that she isn’t calling for reduced government to lower that expense.
80 grand this year would result in 20k tax and 5k national insurance, maybe a few grand or so council tax in central London in the sort of house these people like to live in, so 50k take-home. 50 grand 15 years ago would have been about 38k take-home, when median household income was around 20k.
She’s probably looking at her post-tax payslip and thinking that’s what her income is. If so, 50-grand take-home 15 years ago will have been around 85-90 grand.
I think you have this wrong, Timmy.
The “We’re highly educated, very middle-class, intellectual types and we’re barely slogging by. Aren’t we noble?” piece is the staple of the free-lancer. It’s the sort of thing you write when you can’t come up with anything else. I see these sorts of articles every couple of months.
And understand, when these articles are written, they are not intended to be discussions of money management. They are intended to establish the writer’s essential nobility, despite existing as a member of the petite bourgeois… which the writer finds horrifying, though that remains unstated.
This woman and her husband are part of the “genteel poor”. Not really poor, but convinced that their earning power and standard of living are beneath what they deserve. After all, they’re highly educated and consider themselves intellectuals. They feel entitled to more than what they have; therefore, they are poor.
The article is written for those who are exactly where they are in life. To make them feel good about themselves. And nothing more.
And understand, stuff like the paying of fees in pennies is pure bullshit. It never happened. And her target audience, at some level, knows that. But they luxuriate in it nonetheless. Because they are the noble poor.
There’s a helpful hint here for our conversation elsewhere as to how to tell if a person is female. In this case if it writes a whining self-pitying screed in the Guardian while faiing to take responsibility for its actions, it’s not a bloke.
I see these sorts of articles every couple of months.
You’re obviously not widely read, Dennis. But better you guard your sanity.
@ rhoda klapp
“if it writes a whining self-pitying screed in the Guardian while fai(l)ing to take responsibility for its actions, it’s not a bloke.”
I know telling male from female is frought with danger these days, but there is the boy Jones who writes whining self-pitying screed in the Graudian.
I know telling male from female is frought with danger these days, but there is the boy Jones who writes whining self-pitying screed in the Graudian.
We’ve heard that Owen is male, but has anyone actually verified this?
And if you have, I really don’t want to know the details.
And the taxes are significantly higher now than back then.
At least they can fall back on writing about the menopause.
“ He seemed to think if I couldn’t do my job properly, I deserved to lose it.’”
“ a conference with eight senior colleagues when menopausal ‘brain fog’ set in. She was meant to be introducing everybody. ‘I got to one man I worked with every day and couldn’t remember his name. Then I forgot the names of two others.’
Add to this her sudden misplacing of passwords and clumsiness. ‘People kept asking if I was drunk,’ she adds. But when she tried to explain it all to her line manager, he looked at her as if she was ‘an alien’.”
Thank the Lord she wasn’t an airline pilot, surgeon, or in some other critical position. Maybe she should change careers. Something like Member of Parliament or the President of the USA could be suitable?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-13113469/Bullied-hot-flushes-wearing-trousers-called-sweaty-face-forced-jobs-menopausal-women-taken-stand-bosses-warned-make-allowances.html
And the screeching harridans wonder why there is a gender pay gap. I’ve had brain fog, hot flushes and the rest after a night of heavy drinking. Do I demand special allowances? No I don’t – I crack on until I can throw up in the gents.
Joe Smith,
I fondly remember, getting on for twenty years ago now(!), going out to HMS Kent in the Arabian Gulf as a civilian analyst/sea rider for some trials work.
And getting invited to the Senior Rates and Petty Officers’ Mess for “a drink or two”.
Which ended up with – apparently, more effort than expected to “break the civvie” by swapping nearly-empty beverages for full ones and other deceits – me being carried back semi-comatose to my improvised bunk in the sonobuoy store, only dropped once or twice, parked in the recovery position until morning, and enjoying a hangover of truly Biblical proportions by the time “Call the Hands” was being piped.
I missed breakfast but did make CO’s Prayers (nothing religious, the morning brief for the command team and other relevant individuals) and managed to get a decent day’s work in despite headache, nausea, and general misery. Which did my standing with the SNCOs, and thusly the rest of the ship, no harm at all.
The PO(EW) ringleader went on to make a well-deserved rank of warrant officer (top of the tree for NCOs) and the Chief who was meant to be looking after me, but actually led me into the bearpit, made warrant, then commissioned, and is now my Ops Officer in the RNR.
On the one hand, “shouldn’t have joined if you can’t take a joke”. On the other hand, turn up and do your bloody job; I’d have had some excuse for failure if I’d not managed to fight through the aftermath, since I was being set up, but it was still on me to cope with the aftermath and avoid being useless.
More generally, I do try to be fair-minded, but I’m old enough to remember how a few decades ago it was loudly claimed that “it’s a patriarchal myth that women are rendered helpless by menstruation and then ‘the change’, and would need cosseting and comforting through those events, you’re a sexist pig for even suggesting women would demand ‘period leave’ or would claim that menopause issues detract from their performance!”.
.. and now, it’s become “women have special needs because of periods and menopause, and you’re a sexist pig for failing to gladly and willingly accommodate their special needs at your expense!”
Dennis,
“This woman and her husband are part of the “genteel poor”. Not really poor, but convinced that their earning power and standard of living are beneath what they deserve. After all, they’re highly educated and consider themselves intellectuals. They feel entitled to more than what they have; therefore, they are poor.”
I think this puts it better than my comment. There’s a lot of expectations in there about what is normal, what they should be getting. Like, buying free range meat, having second holidays, regularly going out for dinner. The thing about not skiing for 25 years.
Lots of people don’t do that. We stopped going out to dinner except for days out and birthdays because it’s a stupid waste of money when you’re a family. Comparing Sunday lunch at home or out, most women earn more per hour if they cook Sunday lunch than their jobs. It’s at least £100 more, for a few hours work.
I stopped reading when I saw husband and wife have different surnames.
She also is begging to have her little smirk slapped off her face.
Why didn’t she go to the bank to get the pennies changed out?
Or even to a local store to see if they wanted some small change?
>Andrew M
February 22, 2024 at 11:00 am
Annual income £80,000, annual expenditure £75,000, result happiness.
Then came the “hobbling career change”.
Annual income £60,000, annual expenditure £65,000, result misery.
A lot of costs will be fixed (mortgage) or rising (council tax, utility bills). If your income falls while your costs rise, you will indeed feel squeezed. Without seeing a full breakdown of their bills it’s hard to judge. Poorer people would have skipped the school fete entirely, to save £3
—–
This is certainly true but the unifying theme of all these examples of ‘poor, poor, me’ that the media pulls up always, when looked at closely, are people who are spending a significant portion of their income on bullshit and won’t cut out the bullshit when they’re not making as much.
Life is great when you’re making 80k and spending 75. Life is also pretty good when you’re making 60k and spending 55k – because you cut back on the 20k of expensive luxuries you were indulging in.