50000STG in the UK?

[Trag]

Hi all
I'm new to this forum and was wondering if anyone there who is well informed could post a reply or two on the following proposition...

How well does one survive in the south of England on a wage of 50000 Sterling Gross and about another 5000 in allowances over the course of a year?
I see the first 30K is taxed at about 22% which equates to approx 23800 remaining; and the next 25K is taxed at about 40%; equating to approx 15k remaining, giving a net income of approx: 39000STG. (Correct me if I'm wrong- ie are allowances taxed etc?)

This is approx 3250STG/month ie, 800 or so per week in the pocket.

Having not lived in the UK before and being quite new to the concept of pounds it can be hard to put the numbers in context as to what this is actually worth.

With no children and a partner that would gross another 1500 - 2000STG per month, what type of lifestyle could we expect based on all your UK knowledge?

Will be greatly interested in all your input...

Thanks a million and safe flying to all

[Boss Raptor]

Good lifestyle - even if you choose to take on a £1000 a month place to live in London you'll have plenty of spare cash it appears

[ETOPS]

Trag

Average earnings in the UK are just over 20,000STG (or £'s as we like to say) so with your lack of miniature Trag's and a partners income you should have no money worries. As Boss Raptor says you can rent decent property for £1000/month.

[Unwell_Raptor]

The average salary in the South of England is about £23,000, so you will be well ahead of the game.

[scroggs]

Depends where you're used to. If you're from the US, unless you're from NYC or LA, you'll find the cost of living a bit higher in UK. If you're from almost anywhere else in the world, you'll find it a lot higher! £50k (about $87k US) is a good wage here, but don't expect to be running three new cars, living in a 5-bed, 3-bath exec house and eating in fancy restaurants every night - unless the wife can pull in the same.

When you calculate your deductions, you also have to allow for National Insurance (basically, a health tax) at another 11% for the first £30k and 1% thereafter. Tax on your house will be around £1500 a year (not deducted from pay), and there is a sales tax (VAT) of 17.5% on almost everything you buy. Fuel tax means a gallon of gas costs about $8 US.

[Old King Coal]

If living / working in the UK you can use the following tool to calculate take home ( Nett ) pay: Salary Calculator

Nb. It uses a standard model for tax wherein it does not take into account local taxation agreements w.r.t. flight-pay, etc.

[747FOCAL]

With how expensive it is over there I don't know how anybody makes it on what Brits get paid. 8 bucks a gallon for gas??? Shoot, there would be a lynching of the USA President over that.

[RatherBeSailing]

747FOCAL

You think thats bad? Try Sweden! Of my total wages of roughly US$100,000, after deducting all taxes, including property and value added tax which is 25% on everything I buy, even food(!), I have 25,000 left that hasn't gone into prime minister Persson's pocket. Thats right, 75% gone in tax!

Ofcourse, I don't have to pay for medical expenses but rather can stand in year long queues with the masses for a simple x-ray (Therefor I've had to get private medical insurance- Pay twice for medical, yipee!) and the State will give me a generous pension of roughly 10% of my final wage, just enough to buy monthly doses of prune juice and hemorroid gel (so called "Pilots Punch"), so I guess I'm getting alot for my tax dollars (Kronor) I'll still be in massive debt at age 70 and complain of the fact that my career tax dollars could have paid off my house 15 times in cash!

The most unsettling thing about this is that it's just the way the Swedes want it! In the past 70 years the socialist tax evangelists have been in power in all but 6 of them.

Where's that well paying offshore job? Gotta get outta here!

[scroggs]

747FOCAL, we 'make it' over here because we don't each expect to consume anywhere near as much of the world's resources as the average US citizen (though we're perhaps not that far behind you). We also, for better or worse, spend a great deal more money looking after the needy in our society.

And, naturally, like most western democracies, we waste a huge chunk of the taxes we give the government to spend!

Putting gas up to $8 would result in the lynching of your president? Now there's an idea.........

[747FOCAL]

Maybe some consumers over here over consume, but certainly not me. I have 3 kids and the old lady at home. We may live in a larger home than most Europeans and drive our own cars vs taking the bus or train, but that is about it.

I tell you what, my salary is right around what your getting, but if my taxes were 75% I would drown in 2 months. Nobody here could afford anything accept the extremely wealthy. Even making just over 100k, there is little left to save. With college coming and 4 years costing you around 70,000, ugghhh.

The reason we spend less on the needy is that Americans can tend to be extremely lazy and if you made it that easy to get by for free you would see millions more on the dole.

scroggs,

I don't like him either, but raising gas to 8 dollars would be ahuge mistake as everything and I mean everything would come to a screaching halt. If the USA stops consuming the 96% of the world output like we do, we won't be the only ones broke and looking for blood. Example: Your a cocaine dealer and you have 600 million dollars in cocaine in your garage, but you have nobody to sell it to what are you? A broke dick drug dealer that drives a pinto and can't afford to eat.

[Agaricus bisporus]

Hey fella, I think the figure of eight bucks a gallon is way way out of line. Some folks love to put UK down, and sadly some of them are those that were brought up there, which is rather sad, to put it mildly. We don't need 'em!

Our gas at £.75 per litre is about £3.30 per UK gallon, or £2.65 per USG (you see some of the UK knockers don't even know how big a USG is...) and without latest exchange rate to hand - I assume 1.6; equals around $4.20 which is a far cry fron the ludicrous 8 bucks that some numptie suggested above.

At £55,000 per annum you will be over double the national average wage, and so will be comfortably off with modest expenditure, but certainly not in the 3 car 5 bedroom villa class. With a partner adding another £2,000 and no kids I'd say you'd certainly be in the 2 new cars 4 bed villa endless holidays abroad eat out when you like class.

On your figures that is a net income of 39 +24 =£63K pa. = HUGE salary! I'd have thought few BA Capts on high seniority earn that much net...?

You'll be fine!

[scroggs]

Agaricus thank you for your generous description of me as a 'numptie'. I shall remember that.......

I admit I didn't take account of the difference in size between the US and UK gallons, and my $8 estimate was off the top of my head without detailed calculation, so let's refine it, shall we?

In my local garage this morning, regular unleaded was £0.82.9 per litre. The exchange rate today is quoted at $1.8331 to the pound. At 4.55 litres to a gallon, that's $6.9144 for a UK gallon of petrol. I'm sure 747FOCAL can convert to the US gallon for himself, though he and Trag will no doubt have noted that petrol is not sold in US gallons here in UK. I'm also sure that he did not misunderstand my original point, which was that it is bloody expensive. But, hey, let's split some hairs - that's far more helpful

As for the net income, the thrust of my post was to point out that the UK government deductions from income doesn't stop at income tax, and that £39k is not a realistic assessment of the net cash in hand from a wage of £55K - believe me, I know! Certainly, if our friend's wife could bring in £2K net a month (for which she'll need to earn around £40k gross), they would be able to live a very comfortable life - even in the south of England. But, if you re-read Trag's post, you'll see he suggests that his wife may bring in around £1500 - £2000 gross, which is quite a different matter.They won't be poor, but the cost of living in the south of England is among the highest in the world. Why lead him to believe otherwise?

FOCAL I'm sure that if you guys want to get rid of Bush, you'll find a way in November. I doubt he'll make it easy by raising gas taxes to our levels!

[Bealzebub]

Trag,

Here are some numbers for you based on the latest 2004/5 tax tables:-


Gross income £50,000 PA £4,166.67 PM
Tax Free All £ 4,745 PA £ 395.42 PM
Taxable Inc £45,255 PA £ 3,771.25 PM
Tax to pay £ 12,208 PA £ 1,017.30 PM
Nat' Insure £ 3,151 PA £ 262.62 PM
--------------------------------------------------------------
Net Income £34,641 PA £ 2,886.74 PM
--------------------------------------------------------------


For an additional sum of £5000 in allowances, basically deduct tax at 40% of this sum. Many companies have arrangements with the revenue whereby only a portion of this sum is taxed.
so expect a net figure of £250 per month or better.

for your partner you give a salary range but assuming a mid point of £1750 per month the figures are as follows for 2004/5 :

Gross income £21,000 PA £ 1,750 PM
Tax ree All £ 4,745 PA £ 395.42 PM
Taxable Inc £16,255 PA £ 1,354.58 PM
Tax to pay £ 3,334 PA £ 279.81 PM
Nat'Insure £ 1,789 PA £ 149.12 PM
-----------------------------------------------------------
Net Income £ 15,877 PA £ 1,323.07 PM
-----------------------------------------------------------

You can reasonably expect a net family income of around £4,460 per month or better.

Cost of living is of course highly subjective. Points to bear in mind though :

Pension/retirement fund.
This is often a contributory scheme. some are based on years of service and a percentage of final salary. These schemes are being phased out by many employers (as too costly). Where they do exist contributions have risen in recent years and expect to contribute around 10% of basic salary. Other schemes are employee risk based schemes normally linked on stock market performance and are funded by the employer and the employee. Again very variable but expect a contribution of between 5 & 10 %.

Health insurance.
The state health service although "free" is notoriously oversubscribed and slow. delays for anything other than emergency treatment are often lengthy. Private health insurance results in fast treatment in comfortable surroundings. Many schemes are available and premiums are naturally age/health and cover dependant but budget around £400 per annum for cover.

Housing.
this varies throughout the UK but based on the Southern UK outside of London expect to pay for a newbuild house around £200,000 for a 2 bed rising by around £60,000 for each additional bedroom. Mortgage rates in th Uk are varied and plentiful. Rates are often discounted for new business. Expect to pay around 4.75% - 5.25% currently. long term fixed rates are not common in the UK. Most fixes are for 2,3 or 5 years. Rental properties are widely available. Property taxes ( council tax) varies from region to region and is based within a banding structure on the value of the property. It tends to cheaper than in the US. Expect to pay £1500 - £2300 per annum for properties in the south of the UK.

Utilities.
It might come as a surprise but these tend to be cheaper than in the US and notably so.

Motoring.
An average car (Ford mondeo) is around £14,000 new. A smaller economy car (Ford fiesta) around £9,500. Road tax ( licence fee) is around £160 per annum ( may be cheaper for low emisson vehicles with small engines). Insurance on a comprehensive cover basis (all risks) varies depending on the vehicle and driver/s but averages around £400 per annum. Petrol (Gas) is highly taxed. Prices have a regional variation but average £0.79 per litre. ( around $5.70 per us gal).

Food.
Some of it is dearer some is cheaper than the US. The end bill will be very subjective but probably wont come as a great shock compared to the US.

Local taxes.
Sales tax in the UK is called Value added tax. For most things it is levied at 17.5%. some things are exempt such as food ( not in restaurants ) and childrens clothes, as well as books and newspapers etc . Unlike the US, this tax is included in the displayed price for nearly all goods purchased. Services such as plumbing repairs or car servicing etc.will normally add the VAT on to the price quoted. So even though prices displayed will often be higher than the US there is no additional 8-11% to add on at the checkout.

Hope the above is some help. I used to work for the UK Inland revenue (IRS) and have owned property in both the USA as well as the UK.

[thegypsy]

Agaricus Numptie indeed. I like that description. What does it mean as I could not find it in the Oxford Dictionary??