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

BillJones

GeneHunt wrote: »

Money saving expert he is not :rotfl:

53 with a £350,000 mortgage :eek:

What a joker.

I agree with the general point that he seems to be a bit wasteful, but mortgaging up to buy a more expensive house than you could otherwise afford has actually been a brilliant strategy in recent years.

PasturesNew

£45k/year, just on school fees is the average full-time salary, before tax, of two people .... so he's made the choice not only to educate privately, but to do it expensively.

£45k/year isn't a sacrifice any parent could make ..... it's still in the "luxury" bracket.

N1AK

mystic_trev wrote: »

The benefit of earning £120k means he can afford to send his kids to a Private school, something an average earner could never imagine, so it's a lifestyle choice. Advertising the fact he's a complete plonker, show's just how far from reality this bloke thinking is.

I don't think anyone is suggesting that £120k doesn't have benefits. What's being highlighted is that earning something like 4x the average full time wage doesn't mean having the lifestyle that most people earning a lot less would expect.

I know people who went to public schools who are now in their 30s and 40s and their parents weren't earning nearly as much compared to the population on average.

BillJones

mystic_trev wrote: »

The benefit of earning £120k means he can afford to send his kids to a Private school, something an average earner could never imagine, so it's a lifestyle choice. Advertising the fact he's a complete plonker, show's just how far from reality this bloke thinking is.

It's a choice that I don't understand. How unintelligent are his children that he can't send them to the local comp, topped up with some help from him at home?

Carl31

Personally, I think education is down to parental guidance anyway

Paying £45k a year has no guarantee that it will provide them with the best start, just as going to a normal school doesn't mean you will never go anywhere, parental encouragement and guidance is what makes children succeed IMO...you can take a horse to water etc...

BillJones

N1AK wrote: »

I don't think anyone is suggesting that £120k doesn't have benefits. What's being highlighted is that earning something like 4x the average full time wage doesn't mean having the lifestyle that most people earning a lot less would expect.

People seem to imagine that a high six-figure income means personal jets, Ferraris, and holidaying on Necker. It really doesn't. Most people on high earnings understand the need to save very hard for retirement.

lostinrates

PasturesNew wrote: »

£45k/year, just on school fees is the average full-time salary, before tax, of two people .... so he's made the choice not only to educate privately, but to do it expensively.

£45k/year isn't a sacrifice any parent could make ..... it's still in the "luxury" bracket.

I don't think any one is disputing its not a basic necessity. . My point is it would seem if this salary is staggering in its scale then sending two kids to school with out too much compromise should be possible. That it requires compromise as It seems pretty much everyone in the thread is in accord with, whatever their other opinions about the piece, person or his choices and views, suggests its not that staggering in scale as some would argue. That's all!

N1AK

BillJones wrote: »

People seem to imagine that a high six-figure income means personal jets, Ferraris, and holidaying on Necker. It really doesn't. Most people on high earnings understand the need to save very hard for retirement.

Absolutely. In fact, that's exactly my point. People earning something like the average wage commonly see slightly more than that as the point where pay is excessive and unearned. By the time they get to even low six figures they envisage a lifestyle that would probably cost a few hundred thousand pounds a year more.

lostinrates

BillJones wrote: »

It's a choice that I don't understand. How unintelligent are his children that he can't send them to the local comp, topped up with some help from him at home?

Is the school selective?

sulphate

lostinrates wrote: »

The 'never' is clearly not so. Bugslet explained her father's sacrifices. There were children at my school whose parents were teachers, not city workers. I cannot remember everyone's parents jobs, but there were very middle ones. At the time my parents income was very middling, though that's not a fair comparison . In other families I know relatives ( aunts, grandparents or whatever) contribute a sum or total of fees.

Some parents make incredible sacrifices for their children's education to be private.

I am a child from one set of such parents. When I was growing up my dad didn't work and my mum worked long hours doing self employed physiotherapy - she would not be defined as a high earner but managed to afford to send me to private school (only child). Some of my friends at school had parents who were very high earners - others weren't, but they'd obviously prioritised school fees because they felt a private education was important.

Now, I think the cost of private education has increased to the extent that it is only available to children of very high earners.

Why doesn't this guy downsize? Snob value, I imagine.