5 ms·

But surely if you live across the street from Hyde park, go on 2-3 big splashy vacations per year and travel to Europe for getaways every couple weeks, you must

But surely if you live across the street from Hyde park, go on 2-3 big splashy vacations per year and travel to Europe for getaways every couple weeks, you must be in top 1% of earners. And all your friends are likely rich too. So drawing conclusions from that is meaningless as vast majority of millennials are financially struggling to even think about that.

dogma1138 9y ago
Rich is relative salaried “rich” and wealthy are different things today. Rent is high but not much higher than SF about £3000 a month total cost for a 2 bed apartment. This is doable for many professional couples with a decent job in London say £65000 which is £3800 a month after tax (couple combined pre-tax salary of say £130-150,000 or higher, so combined monthly of 7000-8000 or more post tax). Myself, my partner and our friends fall into this category as we earn high 5 figures to low 6 figure salaries and we aren’t wealthy despite of having a pretty good lifestyle. Compared to some guy in middle of nowhereshire that makes £22000 a year if they are lucky we might be considered rich but compared to real money we aren’t any different than the help.
- richardknop 9y ago
  Hmm. What is the percentage of your net income you pay for rent? I'm asking because across the street from Hyde Park must be an expensive area and I agree that 65k salary in London is nothing to write home about. It's decent but doesn't make you rich. How many bedrooms are you renting? I assume that if you wanted to start a family you would need to move to a cheaper location and adjust your lifestyle?
  - dogma1138 9y ago
    Central london isn’t as expensive as some of the suburbs, £2500-3000 is a pretty nominal rent for the area for a decent sized 2 bed 65-70 sq/m (check the rent for Lancaster Gate which is where I live for example https://www.foxtons.co.uk/living-in/lancaster-gate/ https://www.foxtons.co.uk/living-in/lancaster-gate/) Food and rent and utilities sum to about a 1/3rd of the combined total salary, a big vacation is 1-2 months rent weekend trips in Europe can easily be done on less than £500 heck even under £250 for a city tour flights can be found for <£100 for 2 via low-cost deals of the week, 1-2 nights in a hotel isn’t expensive either so just food since most stuff you visit like museums etc tend to be free or very cheap in Europe.
    - bostik 9y ago
      It also helps, significantly, that you can arrange your holidays outside of the school breaks. That's a luxury on its right, not available to anyone with a family. The price gouging - excuse me, "dynamic pricing" - the travel industry savages families with amounts to nothing less than a punitive tax on having children.
      - toast0 9y ago
        Dynamic pricing is usually meaning showing different prices for the same itinerary (including dates) to different people or to the same person at different times. Travel being more expensive during peak times doesn't need much dynamism; orlando hotels are going to be full in summer, every year forever, with you get to pay full price; if you go the 2nd week of January, it's probably pretty empty so you get a big discount.
        lotsofpulp 9y ago
        I thought dynamic pricing could also include when the price changes as the supply changes, so you see a flight or hotel room night for x price, and then two days later they're now y price because some of them sold.
        toast0 9y ago
        Sometimes yes, but the sumner/vacation time blocks start out highly priced, because the demand is known to be high (since it's been high for at least decades)
      - dogma1138 9y ago
        Well some of it yes, much of it is supply and demand, but even that isn't really the case take for example Japan I got tickets for one of the peak seasons which is the end of march to the mid of april for about 1000 GBP with SAS for 2 people, hotels were about 2000 GBP more but we picked pretty decent ones and add to that about 500 GBP for the monthly rail pass and you can have 2 people spending 2-2.5 weeks in Japan for under 5000 GBP (we end up spending more but that was because of restaurants and shopping, Naniwa whetstones are expensive even in Japan :(). While that is expensive the truth is that on a young professional salary today a couple can afford that and many of use chose to have fun rather than have kids. On an anecdotal note I always thought that the way children are raised could change, and maybe should change to incorporate both young parents and earlier retirement and that is to effectively have the child care taken care off by the grandparents, basically having kids as early as possible (18-24) and then have the grandparents act as the primary caregiver during the first 10-13 years as that that point they would be around 40 and effectively by the time the kids grow up and have kids of their own you have now established yourself in a position to be a primary caregiver for what is now your own grandchildren. This might sound dystopian but I'm not entirely sure how we'll cope with not needing to do manual labor (even at home, so no need for little helpers), women seeking career (nothing wrong with that, but man can't get pregnant) and the fact that despite living longer than ever our optimal reproductive age remains more or less the same.
- NLips 9y ago
  A 'high 5 figures' of £80,000 puts you at the 96% mark according to https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/percentile-points-from-1-to-99-for-total-income-before-and-after-tax https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/percentile-points-f.... The only argument you have for not being 'wealthy' is that you're spending all your dosh! There's nothing wrong with that, but I'm just trying to show you aren't anywhere near the median or mode.
  - dogma1138 9y ago
    Income != wealth, there are about 800,000 millionaires in the UK which means that to be in the 1% (well 1.5ish since the UK has 65M and change population) you need at least 1 million GBP even if you save everything you can with a 80,000K salary you won't get into the 1% in your lifetime. Being on a good salary means that you can keep a decent lifestyle, however the moment you are off it it's over you have some savings but they won't last you for long, wealth is essentially the independent means to secure financial independence to you and likely your children. And I never said that I'm near the median, but 65-80K isn't that much for London even for late 20's early 30's that's pretty much a run of the mill salary for most general IT roles with some decent experience (5-10 years), and finance and plenty of other sectors would also get you there. It's not particularly hard to get into the top 3-1% of income in the UK especially for what I would say the average demographics of HN, however getting to the 3-1% of wealth in the UK is a whole other story. EDIT: The UK likes statistics so... It looks like the total household wealth needed to be in the 1% in the UK is 2,872,575 GBP to be in the top 10% it's 1,048,537 GBP, so please tell me how some one who's making even 100,000 a year pre tax is considered a single digit percenter? https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/personalandhouseholdfinances/incomeandwealth/adhocs/007203distributionoftotalhouseholdwealthbypercentilepointstotalfinancialwealthnettotalpropertywealthnettotalphysicalwealthandtotalprivatepensionwealthgreatbritainjuly2012tojune2014 https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/personal...
    - NLips 9y ago
      I think you might be replying to someone else - I didn't suggest you were in the top 1% wealth-wise; just had the potential to be 'wealthy'? Responding to a few individual points: Take the 100k amount -> after tax income is ~65k Double that for a couple ("household wealth") = 130k housing = 36k (3k a month) living costs = 30k (based on the fact plenty of people with much lower salaries live in London) savings = 64k It'd take a little under 11 years for 64k of savings per annum to hit 1M, using long-term index returns, and less than 16 years with no compounding. If you have a mortgage, two thirds of your housing costs would also be going to 'savings' i.e. increasing your wealth - that's another 24k a year, which would also compound pretty rapidly. So you could be increasing your household net worth by around 90k per year, which would rapidly put you near the top of the wealth distribution. Regardless, none of this talk about your high income and low-or-not wealth refutes the fact that you are far from the median or mode, which is the entire point of the comment you were responding to... "drawing conclusions from that is meaningless as vast majority of millennials are financially struggling to even think about that."

dogma1138 9y ago

Rich is relative salaried “rich” and wealthy are different things today. Rent is high but not much higher than SF about £3000 a month total cost for a 2 bed apartment. This is doable for many professional couples with a decent job in London say £65000 which is £3800 a month after tax (couple combined pre-tax salary of say £130-150,000 or higher, so combined monthly of 7000-8000 or more post tax). Myself, my partner and our friends fall into this category as we earn high 5 figures to low 6 figure salaries and we aren’t wealthy despite of having a pretty good lifestyle. Compared to some guy in middle of nowhereshire that makes £22000 a year if they are lucky we might be considered rich but compared to real money we aren’t any different than the help.

richardknop 9y ago
Hmm. What is the percentage of your net income you pay for rent? I'm asking because across the street from Hyde Park must be an expensive area and I agree that 65k salary in London is nothing to write home about. It's decent but doesn't make you rich. How many bedrooms are you renting? I assume that if you wanted to start a family you would need to move to a cheaper location and adjust your lifestyle?
- dogma1138 9y ago
  Central london isn’t as expensive as some of the suburbs, £2500-3000 is a pretty nominal rent for the area for a decent sized 2 bed 65-70 sq/m (check the rent for Lancaster Gate which is where I live for example https://www.foxtons.co.uk/living-in/lancaster-gate/ https://www.foxtons.co.uk/living-in/lancaster-gate/) Food and rent and utilities sum to about a 1/3rd of the combined total salary, a big vacation is 1-2 months rent weekend trips in Europe can easily be done on less than £500 heck even under £250 for a city tour flights can be found for <£100 for 2 via low-cost deals of the week, 1-2 nights in a hotel isn’t expensive either so just food since most stuff you visit like museums etc tend to be free or very cheap in Europe.
  - bostik 9y ago
    It also helps, significantly, that you can arrange your holidays outside of the school breaks. That's a luxury on its right, not available to anyone with a family. The price gouging - excuse me, "dynamic pricing" - the travel industry savages families with amounts to nothing less than a punitive tax on having children.
    - toast0 9y ago
      Dynamic pricing is usually meaning showing different prices for the same itinerary (including dates) to different people or to the same person at different times. Travel being more expensive during peak times doesn't need much dynamism; orlando hotels are going to be full in summer, every year forever, with you get to pay full price; if you go the 2nd week of January, it's probably pretty empty so you get a big discount.
      - lotsofpulp 9y ago
        I thought dynamic pricing could also include when the price changes as the supply changes, so you see a flight or hotel room night for x price, and then two days later they're now y price because some of them sold.
        toast0 9y ago
        Sometimes yes, but the sumner/vacation time blocks start out highly priced, because the demand is known to be high (since it's been high for at least decades)
    - dogma1138 9y ago
      Well some of it yes, much of it is supply and demand, but even that isn't really the case take for example Japan I got tickets for one of the peak seasons which is the end of march to the mid of april for about 1000 GBP with SAS for 2 people, hotels were about 2000 GBP more but we picked pretty decent ones and add to that about 500 GBP for the monthly rail pass and you can have 2 people spending 2-2.5 weeks in Japan for under 5000 GBP (we end up spending more but that was because of restaurants and shopping, Naniwa whetstones are expensive even in Japan :(). While that is expensive the truth is that on a young professional salary today a couple can afford that and many of use chose to have fun rather than have kids. On an anecdotal note I always thought that the way children are raised could change, and maybe should change to incorporate both young parents and earlier retirement and that is to effectively have the child care taken care off by the grandparents, basically having kids as early as possible (18-24) and then have the grandparents act as the primary caregiver during the first 10-13 years as that that point they would be around 40 and effectively by the time the kids grow up and have kids of their own you have now established yourself in a position to be a primary caregiver for what is now your own grandchildren. This might sound dystopian but I'm not entirely sure how we'll cope with not needing to do manual labor (even at home, so no need for little helpers), women seeking career (nothing wrong with that, but man can't get pregnant) and the fact that despite living longer than ever our optimal reproductive age remains more or less the same.
NLips 9y ago
A 'high 5 figures' of £80,000 puts you at the 96% mark according to https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/percentile-points-from-1-to-99-for-total-income-before-and-after-tax https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/percentile-points-f.... The only argument you have for not being 'wealthy' is that you're spending all your dosh! There's nothing wrong with that, but I'm just trying to show you aren't anywhere near the median or mode.
- dogma1138 9y ago
  Income != wealth, there are about 800,000 millionaires in the UK which means that to be in the 1% (well 1.5ish since the UK has 65M and change population) you need at least 1 million GBP even if you save everything you can with a 80,000K salary you won't get into the 1% in your lifetime. Being on a good salary means that you can keep a decent lifestyle, however the moment you are off it it's over you have some savings but they won't last you for long, wealth is essentially the independent means to secure financial independence to you and likely your children. And I never said that I'm near the median, but 65-80K isn't that much for London even for late 20's early 30's that's pretty much a run of the mill salary for most general IT roles with some decent experience (5-10 years), and finance and plenty of other sectors would also get you there. It's not particularly hard to get into the top 3-1% of income in the UK especially for what I would say the average demographics of HN, however getting to the 3-1% of wealth in the UK is a whole other story. EDIT: The UK likes statistics so... It looks like the total household wealth needed to be in the 1% in the UK is 2,872,575 GBP to be in the top 10% it's 1,048,537 GBP, so please tell me how some one who's making even 100,000 a year pre tax is considered a single digit percenter? https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/personalandhouseholdfinances/incomeandwealth/adhocs/007203distributionoftotalhouseholdwealthbypercentilepointstotalfinancialwealthnettotalpropertywealthnettotalphysicalwealthandtotalprivatepensionwealthgreatbritainjuly2012tojune2014 https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/personal...
  - NLips 9y ago
    I think you might be replying to someone else - I didn't suggest you were in the top 1% wealth-wise; just had the potential to be 'wealthy'? Responding to a few individual points: Take the 100k amount -> after tax income is ~65k Double that for a couple ("household wealth") = 130k housing = 36k (3k a month) living costs = 30k (based on the fact plenty of people with much lower salaries live in London) savings = 64k It'd take a little under 11 years for 64k of savings per annum to hit 1M, using long-term index returns, and less than 16 years with no compounding. If you have a mortgage, two thirds of your housing costs would also be going to 'savings' i.e. increasing your wealth - that's another 24k a year, which would also compound pretty rapidly. So you could be increasing your household net worth by around 90k per year, which would rapidly put you near the top of the wealth distribution. Regardless, none of this talk about your high income and low-or-not wealth refutes the fact that you are far from the median or mode, which is the entire point of the comment you were responding to... "drawing conclusions from that is meaningless as vast majority of millennials are financially struggling to even think about that."