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How on earth can someone earn 50K and 'struggle to buy anything'?
I know quite a few people living in London that don't earn anywhere near that amount and still have a decent standard of living.
It obviously depends on your priorities, if your idea of a decent life is dinner out three times a week and taxis everywhere you probably would need to earn loads.
Since when does a decent standard of living equate to owning a property?
You can have a decent standard of living without owning property, I'm well aware of that. But owning property brings a level of stability that renting doesn't have.
doh yeah just realised that.
Well yeah I'd like to buy a place but don't really want to be tied down, renting also offers some freedom.
For London, I don't think its overstepping the mark too much to say that you do need to be earning at least £40,000-£50,000 to be able to afford to live comfortably, but the world doesn't stop at the M25 and that simply isn't the case in most other cities. The amount we paid for our house wouldn't buy a shoebox in London. London is a special case and London wages and prices are not indicative of everywhere else- as proven by my civil service mate who always spends her time exclaiming how everything is so cheap when she comes to visit.
I have been thinking about this lots and i totally agree with your figures but only for London and the South East me thinks - however it also depends your personal circumstances if your a single person living buy yourself or a childless couple then £50k is perfectly comfortable to live on but if your family with 2 children trying to live on that in London - your will be scraping it to be able to afford a 2 bedroomed flat in many parts of London let alone a house with a garden.
However it also depends what people consider to be a decent standard of living - if you think that involves owning your own house, being able to afford to go on a couple holidays a year (maybe one long one and a long weekend), to shop in sainsburys, buy some clothes from OK shops - but not going shopping every week, to eat out once a week and to go out on the weekends
Alternatively you could think that a decent standard of living is to have somewhere to live but you don't care weather you own it, to be able to feed yourself, buy the essential clothes you need each year and get the odd take away.
ETA - OMG I actually agree with Kermit about something - how exciting.
:yes:
Sorry Kermit, I don't understand... What's that got to do with my salary?
Depends on the contract.
I have a house here until I die. That's pretty stable.
There is a fixation in this country with owning your property that doesn't exist in many other countries in the world.
I took my first job because i needed a job and because it sounded enjoyable, certainly not for the money as I earnt NZ$24,000 (about £8,000). I was 22.
When I came to the UK 3.5years ago, I was 25 and i started my first job here on £12,500 approx. I have worked really hard, built up my experience and got great references and swapped jobs 4 times since then, aiming for more experience and more money each time (I read somewhere that when people change jobs they get on average 10% more than the previous job). I'm now 28 and I earn £28,500 which I am happy with and very proud of how far I have come in a short time.
Of course I would like to earn more, who wouldnt? (especially living in London), but i am realistic and I know this is around the limit I will earn in my role (I am a Family Support Worker) and money is not the most important thing, it goes hand in hand with enjoying my job.
So, now I'm studying to get the skills to move up a rung of the ladder to supervisor. The course costs around £1000 but it might just (i hope) get my foot in the door, and supervisor jobs are around £33,000, depending on how many people you supervise.
my advice to people is not to have too high expectations when you leave uni, as you might really be . and work hard, take any training or extra experience you can get, and always keep your eyes open for new opportunities, even while you are still settled in your current job, you never now what might come up.
However, if I get any one of the accountancy jobs I've applied for, around £22k will be my starting salary going up by about £3-5k a year for 3 years then hopefully up to £40-50k when I qualify in 2010.
Fingers crossed for my final interview with PwC which should pay the best out of all of them.
I used to work for them, and they pay more.
Not being at all optimistic then?!
Hoping I get a job with them, my starting wage will be around 24k plus resettlement costs- flights, a place to stay while I find a house, car hire and stuff.
As for where it'll get to, it depends on the state of the minerals industry. Its boom/bust but hopefully should stay boom for a while. I have no idea! I know that house prices in Oz have gone crazy, they were talking about "whole life mortgages" with terms of >50 years while I was over there. Crazy! I'd quite like to afford my own house pretty soon after getting a job. FIngers crossed!
Well those are the correct figures. Whether I actually get the job or not is of course not certain yet. Will keep you posted :thumb:
Good luck!
My brother's girlfriend started with PWC a couple of months back... All the 2 and 3 year positions were taken, and so she has to squeeze the whole studying/training thing into a single year. It's tough work but it's going well so far and I hope things work out great!
Her money started on £25.5k, but I don't know the progression involved, with regards to the remuneration package.
G.
I have mates who scrounge almost as much as I earn off the dole in housing benifits and JSA, the difference between my wages and their dole is negligible when you account for my extra expenses in the form of travel costs to get to and from work.
Maybe I should get on the dole too.
Nicely done!
I should look into something like that as I was in talks with Charles Stanley stock brokers to get on board as a 'trainee' a couple of years back. I know Jeremy Batstone who is one of the directors. Actually not caught up with him since he got engaged (and now married) to one of my friends.
Turned out the timing was terrible - they were just starting a major re-structuring program (which is how I was going to get on board) but it didn't work out quite as J anticipated.
Life takes some funny turns, as you say!
Yeah, I think it's time I started making use of some of the contacts I have...
Currently I'm earning pennies in a shitty part-time job. But I've been going to uni and now I'm changing again.
Strike that... Just got a pay rise to £17,557, backdated to Jan 1st, guaranteed to rise to just over £18k in July 07 - well chuffed
The job I want should hopefully start at 21k rising a couple of thousand each year.
Plus about 12 weeks holiday a year