Show me the money!

[andrewducker]

Note - the figures in question 3 are _gross_ income, before tax.
Also - if you earn more than £49k then tick the £49k box.
[Poll #1429637]

Those figures are the income percentiles for the fully employed UK workers, which you can get from here. If you're in the second group (£312 a week) then at least 10% of the population earn less than you, if you're in the third group then at least 20% of the population earns less than you. If you're in the first group then your life sucks.
Thanks to red_phil for the link.

Comments

[accordingly.livejournal.com]

My life doesn't suck, I'm just a student!

[miss-s-b.livejournal.com]

My life doesn't suck either. I'm a barmaid.

[randomchris.livejournal.com]

I work part-time; if I moved to full-time, my income would be £22k at the moment (although with the job I'm moving to on Wednesday, it would only be £19k). However, for the next three weeks I'm working full-time, which should hopefully net me about £400/wk.

[randomchris.livejournal.com]

(full-time is caused by the end of one job overlapping with the start of the next, in this case).

[despotliz.livejournal.com]

I am assuming those are net pay, so I made a reasonable stab at what mine would be if I paid tax etc. I'd be doing well financially if I weren't about to commence the nebulous period where I am still a student but not getting paid, which will probably eat up all my safety net of savings.

[andrewducker]

The figures are gross, not net.

secret option c

[cdave]

Not comfortable with sharing my salary with All, but I'd have done it if only you could see detailed results.

[stevegreen.livejournal.com]

I'm not even sure I'd be happy with the latter option, but I certainly have no desire to make a public announcement about it.

[hfnuala.livejournal.com]

I may have mentioned this is previous salary discussion, but I tend to forget how relatively well I'm doing because since I've moved to Edinburgh I've always earned less than I was before I left London.

Also, I'm going to be made redundant at the end of the year and haven't a clue if I'll manage to make current salary levels at a new job.

[hfnuala.livejournal.com]

Oh, and I'd probably upgrade to doing well if I didn't have childcare costs.

[wildeabandon.livejournal.com]

You're missing the top decile.

[wildeabandon.livejournal.com]

Actually strike that, you do appear to have ten deciles, but I'm a little confused, since the top one seems to be £38k - £49k. Where are the people who earn more than that?

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

I'm still dithering between "doing OK" and "doing well". In that I don't have much disposable income at the moment -- which limits various social activities and is why, for instance, I wasn't at Eastercon this year -- I'm "doing OK". In that the reason I don't have much disposable income is because my salary is providing for two people to live in a nice flat in a nice part of Oxford and eat pretty well, I am definitely "doing well".

[stevegreen.livejournal.com]

A lot of fandom has to count as a bit of a luxury.

[despotliz.livejournal.com]

This also depends on your definition of ok, well, and just about coping. I was thinking that just about coping = have enough money to cover bills and food but none left over. OK = have enough that I don't worry about an unexpected bill, can afford to buy takeout/go to the cinema/night out in the pub, have small amount of savings. Well = have enough money for holidays and technology and regular meals out without having to think about the budget all the time, have a reasonable chunk of savings. Very well is somewhere nebulous above that which I haven't quite worked out. I'm not sure where I fit house-ownership into this whole thing - I tend to think of it as something which bumps you up the scale even if it gives you less disposable income, but that might be a way of thinking which only makes sense when house prices are continuing to rise.

[andrewducker]

The point of using wooly names like "coping", "ok", etc. was to compare how people felt about their financial situation with how they were stacked up in the deciles.

When I first bought a flat (9 years ago) it was actually slightly cheaper to buy than to rent. Buying being massively more expensive is an odd, new, thing to me.

[poisonduk.livejournal.com]

Your option should have been more than not less than. I'd have felt happier taking the i' m higher than this option. Then you could have included a zero to 13k option to pick up students and part time jobs.

[andrewducker]

Why would more than make a difference? In either case you'd be saying which box you fitted into. As it is the first box includes students/part time jobs.

[andrewhickey.livejournal.com]

I earn almost exactly the median income. My wife earns just over half that, but I've not counted that in my answer.
RIGHT NOW, I'm doing *relatively* badly financially, as I've had several thousand pounds in unusual one-off expenses over the last few months, but I'm still doing better than at any point before September last year (before that my highest wage ever was £6 per hour) and normally think of myself as 'rich' (in that I can buy literally anything I want without worrying - my needs are modest).
(For those who've never moved between those percentiles, I can tell you that jumping from the bottom one to the fifth is possibly the single biggest possible change you could make in life...)

[andrewducker]

Absolutely.

I wish I'd added in another question.
"I wish I had more:"
o Time
o Money

Because that changeover is one of the biggest ones that can happen.

[interactiveleaf.livejournal.com]

Details: I'm an American, and I don't work, but I checked off for my husband's wages. And I just flippin' cannot *believe* that I am the only person who thinks that they're doing "Very Well."

[andrewducker]

That was pretty much my point. See the earlier post about how people view their position in society.

And I'm doing pretty well, except that I have a small flat in a not terribly nice part of Edinburgh, which needs to have the bathroom majorly sorted out, and preferably have the kitchen gutted too.

Very well would require at least one car, a house and the occasional holiday somewhere nice.

[channelpenguin.livejournal.com]

It's not clear whether your pay scale is net or gross. It doesn't go high enough in either case.

[andrewducker]

Now go read the two notes right at the top of the post...

[ashfae.livejournal.com]

My income is actually quite a bit less than your lowest answer, but I work part-time and am a student-part-time.

[recycled-sales.livejournal.com]

If you're in the first group then your life sucks.

I dunno, it's just not as filled with shiny toys as I'd like.

[daisyflip.livejournal.com]

OY! My life doesn't suck. Cheek. I am merely a starving artist with no i-pod or pony.

[ias.livejournal.com]

I feel we're doing well (although I answered on my income not joint with Nick's) because it has been a long time since we've had month left over at the end of the money. We've got a house, a car and can cover the childcare costs. As I'm from a Scots family and he's the son of a bank manager, we're quite prudent with money: foreign holidays would be nice but I'd rather overpay the mortgage and have time away in the UK. When the garklet is a bit older I want to make sure we get over to Europe at least every couple of years so he gets used to different cultures.

That said, most of our friends are doing rather better but then they got on the property ladder the better part of a decade before us.

[hawkida.livejournal.com]

I'm not doing well because first they tax me and THEN a huge amount goes on train fares. To alleviate this I'm moving to a house where a huge chunk will go on the mortgage instead. True, I will have an expensive house at the end, but that doesn't help with income/outgoings issues. Also, I've been living alone recently and having nobody sharing the cost of bills really adds to the cost of living - you still heat the house to the same level, and use as many lights, tvs etc even if some things like the number of computers in use might vary.

[hawkida.livejournal.com]

Oh, and also, nobody I am related to has much money. I never get contributions to living costs, random gifts, (or indeed, birthday gifts or similar of any noticable monetry value) or invitations for holidays or similar, while I am aware of a lot of people around me being treated to such things occasionally by parents or partners' parents.

[0olong.livejournal.com]

I'm trying to figure out if I've ever made it out of the lowest decile, with respect to current figures. Maybe when I was working full-time in London...

[0olong.livejournal.com]

(and not counting freelance employment for less than two weeks at a time)

[anton-p-nym.livejournal.com]

I answered "doing ok" as I am; alas, my recent raise and my scrimping to save for the retirement fund only balanced out the tanking of said fund, but there's hope for what happens with that top-up when the rebound finally hits.

I also answered "about the same" as an average; my friends used to be doing better than myself, but they were drawing down salaries/wages from the auto industry in various forms as opposed to my service industry pay... but now I'm doing better than some given the layoffs, disruptions, and various losses of bonuses.

-- Steve's just happy he's finally getting past the "treading water" stage.

[slammerkinbabe.livejournal.com]

I don't have an income in that sense because our income is in US dollars and I couldn't be bothered to look up the conversion rate and do the math.

[andrewducker]

There's a reason that each amount is in £/week, £/year and $/year...

[cangetmad.livejournal.com]

I'd be pretty poor with only my work income, but with N's pension and not that many outgoings, we're financially pretty safe, and that's way more that most people I hang out/ work with.

[babydyke-82.livejournal.com]

this feels rather vulgar...

[andrewducker]

Money shouldn't be vulgar.

In my experience the reason for people considering it bad to talk about money is their concern that people will find out how big the differences in income are.

I'm generally in favour of transparency in these things :->

[andabusers.livejournal.com]

I've never earned more than ~250/wk and at the time didn't feel too badly off - still paying my rent etc. and managing to save a little. I can't imagine what I'd do with 400/wk let alone 900+/wk.

[andrewducker]

In my case, more tech, more books, more trips to see family, and more trips to Ikea.

Oh, and replacing a bathroom/kitchen is expensive.

[rahaeli.livejournal.com]

Answered for the household, not just for me.

(If you're going by just my income, it's a much different story. And my "gross income" is highly misleading there -- the IRS thinks I'm making a lot more than I'm actually realizing, because of Dreamwidth and the way the company is structured. Rather than paying tax as a corporation, we chose the pass-through taxation method of an LLC.)

[zz]

I get to move up a "band" in a few weeks. That feels like progress now, despite being completely arbitrary. :>