'I make £120,000 but I can’t recall the last time we went out for dinner’

Principia_2

ringo_24601 wrote: »

Conrad - it's called 'selection bias' - you are seeing a far higher proportion of people with money than other people do

Added to which - do you really think the type of people who go to a broker (insurance or mortgage) for advice are a genuine random selection of society? Poorer people don't buy houses, they rent and they don't have too much to insure either.


Everyone except the world's richest man has someone who he can look at and think that's life not fair because that guy has more money than I have and he can spend what he wants. And even the richest man is probably not going to be the richest man in the world next year.


Some people are just lucky - they have inheritances or they buy at the right time etc. Some people are lucky because they have more academic intelligence than someone else so they get to be a broker rather than a brickie with the resultant wage packet.


Some people are lucky because they just don't care about accumulating and comparing themselves with everyone else - if they have enough then they are happy. I'd rather be on £20k a year and feel it's enough than £120K a year and feel that I'm hard done by because I can't spend even more money than I earn.


In fact, going back to the original article, for someone on £120k a year and at a time in their life where they have a reasonable home with lots of equity yet still unhappy, I would wonder if any amount of money would be enough for them for very long.

bugslet

ringo_24601 wrote: »

Conrad - it's called 'selection bias' - you are seeing a far higher proportion of people with money than other people do

You see, I mix with the wrong sort of people:p, they are mostly not too well off and even those that are better off are in the 60k pa bracket and then I live in a poor town, hence I feel wealthy, Sorted.:D

Principia_2

bugslet wrote: »

You see, I mix with the wrong sort of people:p, they are mostly not too well off and even those that are better off are in the 60k pa bracket and then I live in a poor town, hence I feel wealthy, Sorted.:D

I used to have a best friend who grew up on a council estate, her parents were not particularly well off but probably better than average - she said she was the one who had the new bike and the new clothes on the street and was thought of as a bit posh.


She married a man who was brought up by wealthier parents but who felt that they were middle class and so overstretched on their mortgage and couldn't afford the nice things everyone around them seemed to be buying.


The husband had a job paying £100k a year plus and she felt lucky, he felt it was never enough. She wanted to save for the future but he needed to buy the newest car or go on the nicest holiday to show everyone he was wealthy.


It was all a bit sad really. However, apparently humans have an instinct to compare themselves to others, to try and figure out where they are in the pecking order. So better to be the richest in a poor community rather than the poorest in a rich community - even though the latter might be much wealthier than the former.

shortchanged_2

Conrad wrote: »

I feel I'm caught in a race and I don't feel great about it as it seems shallow.


For example you find out your good friend with what you thought was a modest job is on £160k pa and his wife on £30k, that he has share option in his employer worth upwards of £500k, no mortgage and both his and her parents are very wealthy so the inheritance will be huge.


Now the press would have you believe this is exceptional but it absolutely is not. This would be a fairly typical scenario in my reasonably well off area.


Then I'll meet the client who you thought was a humble kebab shop owner only to discover he owns the street worth many millions.


Next I'll get a client who you thought was humble barber to find out he got planning permission to build out the back of his shop 15 flats, all let out.


Then I'll go to a seminar where there happens to be a contingent of folk from somewhere you thought was a middling sort of area such as Stanmore and learn they each own a main resi worth £2m not to mention their other property.


Then you go to a party and meet a couple where she is an eye surgeon and he civil engineer and you figure out they must be pulling in £400k minimum.




Next your looking at a potential property investment and find out the seller owns 300 London properties despite only arriving in Britain 25 years ago.


Then a fireman comes into my office wanting mortgage info. Turns out his salary is just an add-on to his significant self employed income. Again just an ordinary guy and his wife makes £60k working in the NHS, so thier true income based on what they take home (not what the tax man calculates) grosses up to £150k.




As I say I'm average at best. Poor ole me, silly sod.

Conrad this is not the norm, as someone else stated it is selection bias.

Very few people earn the sort of wages you are describing. You seem to make out as if the majority of the population in the South East and London are earning in excess of £150k a year. Even in the affluent South East that simply isn't true.

GeorgeHowell

Conrad wrote: »

Resi mortgage costs £850 pm.
I wish I did have an indulgence - I'd love to add to my aging electronic recording 'studio'.


Possibly we spend more than average on the summer holiday, but certainly no more than most we know.
About £6k all in, but a lot less this year as driving to the Alps but even then the property is £950 pwk and you can spend vastly more than this.


We always save into ISA's and are slowly building a B2L portfolio. I guess if we spent the rent we'd feel better off.


I know plenty of people like me that feel they just about make ends meet but I realise this could sound crass.




We even got a wood burner as our oil heating bills were high.




Lots of very wealthy people we know have basic cars, yet the wannabees one of who is a middle aged guy in rented property have flash cars.




We spend about £650 per month at the supermarket. Expensive items include a nice joint of beef on sunday, and lots of fresh fruit. We do not eat battery eggs etc, animal welfare is more important than our guts and wallets.

You need someone like Martin Lewis to come in and go through your income and expenditure soup to nuts and tell you where you're going wrong.

Big_Tree

purch wrote: »

Do the Math :eek:

It's MATHS, not math........I understand that we are the US's client state, but we still have our language, please respect it.

GeorgeHowell

BillJones wrote: »

Oh dear, where to start?..

No, I was making the point that I don't discriminate in favour of private school pupils, not that I discriminate against them. I also, rationally, understand that their grades at school should be discounted a little relative to pupils from a state comp, as the same ability child will tend to score a little higher with the very best education.

As to "jealousy", I gained a physics degree and a masters from Oxford, and then a doctorate in High Energy Physics from CERN, and now run a trading desk in an investment bank, so don't quite understand what it is that you think that I should be jealous of.

I've heard of the stereotype of te pompous ex private school pupil, by the way, but this is the first time I've ever come across one actually willing to state that they are upset at a state school pupil having a decent opinion of themselves. I suppose you'd prefer that I doff my cap to you, and am sorry that you are upset that I don't know my place.

After all, your parents paid all that money, it must be terrible that it didn't buy you the superiority that they obviously craved.

It's a generalisation, but the private schools seem to instil a level of self-confidence above that which is justified in many cases, and the state comprehensives seem to do the opposite. Because we are such a superficial and shallow society that 'halo effect' no doubt often carries far more weight than it should. But that should not mean that anybody should be biased against private school people, any more than the opposite should apply.

One would hope that the 'old boy network' which used to be a feature of private school alumni is largely a thing of the past -- at least in the private sector where competition and commercial realities make it so disastrous to make serious recruitment mistakes. I suspect it may still go on in the public sector, however, where the taxpayer pays for such mistakes.

Graham_Devon

ringo_24601 wrote: »

Conrad - it's called 'selection bias' - you are seeing a far higher proportion of people with money than other people do

Strange though that they all need advice on getting a mortgage though isn't it?

chucknorris

Graham_Devon wrote: »

Strange though that they all need advice on getting a mortgage though isn't it?

I've usually sorted my own mortgages out, but I also try a mortgage broker or two before going through with it, occasionally they have found better deals than I had (even when taking their fee into account), it doesn't hurt to ask if they know of anything better.

the_flying_pig

Conrad wrote: »

...
For example you find out your good friend with what you thought was a modest job is on £160k pa and his wife on £30k, ...
Now the press would have you believe this is exceptional but it absolutely is not. This would be a fairly typical scenario in my reasonably well off area.
...

as an indisputable matter of fact these people are top one percenters. that's a fact. 99% of people in this country are less well off.

which subjective terms [like "exceptional", "typical", etc] you choose to apply is really up to you.

it's absolutely mental to believe that experience as a broker gives you a better idea of the average than official stats any more than the experience of someone working as a yacht salesman, or a cashier in Lidl's, or a pawnbroker, a foxhunt master of hounds, whatever. official stats are very good at calculating, er, averages.

don't forget that 'the top 1%' means [around] 600,000 people, i.e. really an awful lot of people.