What do you consider a 'decent' salary (non-London)

loopylou121

How do people live on a £100 a month for food. I shop at Tesco weekly, make a list of planned meals and spend often £100 a week - there are 3 of us though.

Chinkle

OP you lead a VERY nice life which matches your VERY nice salary. If your (very ambitious) aim is to retire at 40 that means living like a monk for the next ten years, move back home, have no holidays, sell your car, don't go out clubbing in London etc etc. But really is that what you want???? At 40 you are still going to be young and active and if £50K annual income doesn't sustain the life you want now, how will you manage to live for another 40 or so years after you retire.

I think you are being unrealistic, by all means review your situation if you want to be saving more for an "earlier" retirement, as there are cuts you can make. But you won't get much sympathy on here with your "woe is me" attitude - you have options in your life thanks to your income - many people here don't.

CPJames19

Person_one wrote: »

Be honest, did you come on here to gloat? You know full well 50K is an excellent salary, especially outside of London. I've just accepted a job for less than 12K so if you want to swap salaries for a bit to see how the other half live, or to practice budgeting, let me know.

Here here!

jojo90_2

I'm the first one to admit I'm completely useless when it comes to money or understanding the value. Maybe I'm just unhappy and buying things makes me happy hence the problem.

jojo90_2

CPJames19 wrote: »

Here here!

No, I came on here to get a balanced view of other peoples' perceptions and I'm genuinely interested to hear from others in the same situation to figure out if it's just me that feels jaded. I've found the discussion so far to be incredibly useful and I'm going to implement some of the suggestions. Living off job seekers allowance - £30 a week - will probably help me learn the value of money again.

GEEGEE8

jojo90 wrote: »

I'm the first one to admit I'm completely useless when it comes to money or understanding the value. Maybe I'm just unhappy and buying things makes me happy hence the problem.

That's the most sensible thing you have said so far.

I think you do need help to budget.

Whilst I don't agree with your spending, you need to wake up and realise that if you change a few things you could be quite well off

GEEGEE8

Whilst I agree with the Jobseekers budget, I also think you need to be realistic. If you are going to jack it in within a week because it's too restrictive then set it a bit higher. But whatever you set it to try to stick to it.

Having the actual cash will help you see the value of the money, without just putting it on a card.

[Deleted User]

Is buying stuff making you happy? BTW, even within London, I'd still consider 50k decent for a single person.

Knock back on the amount you spend on hols and clothes and you'll easily be able to save something at the end of the month. Go look in the wardrobe and see how many of those clothes you actually wear..

Puddings

I'm in shock! I'm 29 and earn just less than half what you do OP and I thought I had a decent salary and was quite lucky!

I also save 250-500 per month and get my holiday to Thailand every year for absolute maximum £1k all in.

Just budget a little and you'll be not sure about retiring at 40 but I'd give it a bl00dy good go if I were you!

withabix

GEEGEE8 wrote: »

At 50k, do you get taxed 40% ? which would mean the OP is more likely on about 30k take home pay.. ?

£50k would give you £36k take-home (less pension contributions, share schemes etc)

so probably £2500 per month after pension and share scheme, let alone the other £400 the lodger pays.

A pretty extravagant monthly spend would be:

£1000 mortgage
£200 bills (E, G, W, BT, Sky, internet)
£125 council tax
£200 food
£100 entertainment
£100 clothes
£50 mobile
£500 car (I'm thinking paying for and running)

So you should easily be putting away over £600 per month

I have a similar income, pay out 15% CSA from that, contribute to a company share scheme and still manage to save £500/month.