So.....On this really nice Friday afternoon, I was sitting with an old colleague and sipping (OK, downing!) my drink, when the conversation turned to..... UK cost/quality of living.So here's the question for you guys and gals. A mid management role, say, £100k, we ignore bonus/OTE/options/etc. That is about.... £6k a month, after PAYE and NI. We assume a family of 4, two school-age children. Seriously! How can the family survive on that? House prices are mental, so, the repayments are high. £2k or even £3k monthly repayments are normal. Then, I just include schooling. That can come up to £20k a year each!So..... how can people survive?

I know, it's a joke. This is what years of commie thinking, Labour governments and incompetent Tories does to us.I think most people just live in a shoe box and send their kids to a state school until their granny or parents croak it, then they buy the large house. If parents or granny blows the family silver on cruises, then the kids eventually move further up north and cash in the equity they have built up in their crummy london shoebox to make enough of a downpayment on a 1400 sq ft 3 bed taylor wimpey style house that they can then afford to make repayments on the remaining 150K of mortgage left on their shiney new family home, and by living up north their kids also get a non-private education at a school where the kids at least mostly speak english (or a variant thereof).With £6,000 season tickets quickly becoming the norm, I'm surprised anyone except the most fantastically wealthy oligarchs even work in london any more. Most of it outside the square mile is a dump these days anyway. Again, we can thank the lefties for that.

Perhaps your husband should get a job too?

BEP et al,I was a bit surprised when I read this. Are you seriously asking "how do people survive on £6k a month post tax" when the average UK salary is circa £24k pre tax a year!?! Seriously!?!Give yourselves a few slaps, drink some coffee and wake up people.I spent a number of years earning under £100k (as did all of you here, I bet most of you still do) and lived a happy fulfilling life then, able to go on big holidays a number of times a year plus buying a decent sized flat and vehicles on the way. Ok so I won&apos;t lie, that was more when the salary tipped towards £60k+ but you&apos;re in la la land if you think £100k is not enough!The secret? There is none, we simply all live to our means and spend smart.You buy a nice place in London not the first time round, you buy smart when you&apos;re younger in an "up and coming area" and then sell up, use the equity to then help you with the next place nearer where you want to be. Nothing happens overnight, hard work towards your long term goalsYou do other things on the side when you&apos;re younger, whether that be some shares or anything else. This then means that by the time you do get to £100k / kids / big house you are obviously not just dependent on that £100k. But even if you are, the £6k is probably; ~£2k to a mortgage, anymore then you should be looking at a smaller place or bought some places beforehand to help with equity~£1k to general expenses for the house, going out, etc. Day to day stuff~£1.5k private education if you choose it (or you bought the house smart near an Outstanding performing govt school), assume no borders and 2 kids~£1.5k holidays, travel expenses, car costs, adhoc stuff. Use some of this amount to go into the others if need bePlenty to live on. Anyone who manages to get to £100k should have hopefully managed some successful ventures on the side to help them with a house etc. No reason why £100k is not enoughI&apos;m stepping down from my soap box now and trying to remember what it was like before contracting and <£100k money. Coolio may be able to help but I think he is more trying to remember what it was like below <£200k;p

I think the issue is this:We&apos;re supposed to be "high flyers" here. Highly educated hard workers who one would expect to be earning quite a bit more than our peers.So why is it that so many of the "high flyers" who work for large glamorous city firms as prestigious MCs can just about afford to pay the mortgage on a crummy 2 or 3 bed house in London, of the type that 40 years ago a teacher would easily have been able to afford on a single income?Did you really sweat your bo11ox off during that MBA and take on all that student debt just to barely afford an interest-only mortgage on a crummy 3 bed house in the outskirts of London?Pfft, with the extremely long hours you lot work and the fact that you&apos;re in the top 0.05% of the population in terms of education and qualifications, shouldn&apos;t you be living in large, sprawling country homes? Where&apos;s the "reward" for all this hard work you put in? You&apos;re clever and you work hard... and all you get is - just about - a cr@ppy worn out 1930&apos;s terrace in zone 3 with a life-long mortgage, situated next to a dual carriageway and where the nearest school consists of people of whom 75% don&apos;t speak english properly or are just here to bum off the benefits system?I can understand why the young generation feels cheated. A 40K salary and faced with having to spend £300K to get even the most rudimentary home in London. Pah, 7.5 multiple! Even if you earn £100K that&apos;s a 3x multiple. No wonder they are bitter about it when they see the old granny next door who bought the same house 50 years ago for a 1x multiple of her part-time social worker salary. I&apos;d be properly p1ssed off too if I were them. "Oooh but it was hard in our day too" you&apos;ll hear the old granny proclaim. Like boll0x it was, they had the life of riley and they know it even thought they won&apos;t admit it."oh but you have prospects", some might say. "Just wait until you make Partner, then you&apos;ll not be worrying about money". All I say to that is - whatever. Most people don&apos;t get to that stage. Yes they might end up plateauing on a good healthy salary - even a whopping great £150K a year. Which after tax gets you £7.5K a month. Not bad, not bad at all. But hardly megabucks in this day and age. Send two kids to a decent school and the school fees probably take a third of that alone. And for what sacrifice and hours to get that income? I bet the old granny next door didn&apos;t have to work so hard, even though she&apos;ll scream blue murder that she did. And then, the cherry on the cake is knowing that "Cara Delevigne", "Pete Doherty" and "White Dee from Big Brother" have much, much bigger incomes than you. Talk about a way to make someone feel like a right proper loser.

BEP / CamsterSurviving is easy.You&apos;ve all got it wrong. Go contracting and dump London - i mean, I can&apos;t understand why you&apos;d live in a 3 bed semi on busy street in London.Move to the country (200k-400k gets detached country cottage in the North, Wales and Scotland) or get an Island pad (100k Scottish Islands) or at those prices have both and still have money to spare. I&apos;m guessing most Londoners equity in their current homes will mean a small or no mortgageJettison the wife and kids - short term pain in divorce costs and remove the education bit too.Then you can spend your hard earned cash on wine, women and whisky.DC

@ Detoilet - lol!Well I see both sides of the coin; saving money for a deposit is a challenge but most tend to work hard and play hard so spend a fair amount on socialising.I&apos;m 30 now and on roughly a £60k package with one child. I&apos;ve just bought my first flat in Hertfordshire and whilst it&apos;s nice the area is certainly not fashionable but will go up in value because it&apos;s inside the m25. Smart choices and all that ... possibly. As a note a lot is about optimising cost these days - I don&apos;t holiday every year, mostly have weekends away or socialise locally. Private school is not a necessity there are plenty of good state schools, and I&apos;m regularly reviewing bills to we get the the best deals. Through doing this with me and the mrs salary I&apos;m able to look after my parents too who don&apos;t have a great deal left over for what is supposed to be their retirement!Overall I for one am still considering leaving London and the UK for a few years especially before a second child, having spent time in south east Asia when growing up I know there is a better quality of life out there. A lot of my network has gone out to the middle east and a fair proportion to Asia. Whilst life maybe more complicated and perhaps difficult we do have a global outlook these days which we can capitalise on.

[quote]BEP / CamsterSurviving is easy.You&apos;ve all got it wrong. Go contracting and dump London - i mean, I can&apos;t understand why you&apos;d live in a 3 bed semi on busy street in London.Move to the country (200k-400k gets detached country cottage in the North, Wales and Scotland) or get an Island pad (100k Scottish Islands) or at those prices have both and still have money to spare. I&apos;m guessing most Londoners equity in their current homes will mean a small or no mortgageJettison the wife and kids - short term pain in divorce costs and remove the education bit too.Then you can spend your hard earned cash on wine, women and whisky.DC[/quote]Or find a consultancy that lets you be based outside of London and picks up the travel tab regardless...

+1. I&apos;m working in "Big 4" consultancy but based regionally. It means I earn less than my London colleagues but at least I can affor my mortgage. And my projects are usually London based anyway so I spend all my time in the city.

[quote]+1. I&apos;m working in "Big 4" consultancy but based regionally. It means I earn less than my London colleagues but at least I can affor my mortgage. And my projects are usually London based anyway so I spend all my time in the city. [/quote]I earn the same as my London based colleagues but still seem to be skint living in the regions - no idea how they survive!

[quote]I think the issue is this: ...[/quote]Very much spot on...

Ok, so I take BEPs point, things are expensive in London and the young guys on £30k will have issues considering London costs. There are no flats for sale at £100k.HOWEVER, there is off course 2 sides to a coin. The awfully high increase in London house prices makes it difficult for the younger guys to buy and I do genuinely feel bad for them, but it does mean there are those of us in this forum who have benefitted hugely from it by taking property buying risks when we were younger. It has given us choices in life that we may not have otherwise had.I also think people may be wanting to buy in their favourite area straight away (eg Clapham) when lets face it, most of us had to buy somewhere else before slowly but surely moving towards the places we wanted.As to celebrities and what they earn etc, I don&apos;t give a sh!t as I rarely watch TV apart from what I have series link recorded. Detoilet&apos;s idea sounded good, but only if you don&apos;t love your wife and unfortunately I do very much love mine or else his idea would have been great! Drink wise, I am more of a wine than whiskey fan Detoilet...

[quote]~£2k to a mortgage, anymore then you should be looking at a smaller place or bought some places beforehand to help with equity~£1k to general expenses for the house, going out, etc. Day to day stuff~£1.5k private education if you choose it (or you bought the house smart near an Outstanding performing govt school), assume no borders and 2 kids~£1.5k holidays, travel expenses, car costs, adhoc stuff. Use some of this amount to go into the others if need bePlenty to live on. Anyone who manages to get to £100k should have hopefully managed some successful ventures on the side to help them with a house etc. No reason why £100k is not enough[/quote]Some people.... they just spout nonsense..... without bothering to read and understand the original post.But even in their very own response, they illustrate their utter stupidity.Let&apos;s see. 4 points above, total of £6k. This is deemed "plenty to live on". LOL! What&apos;s the balance?LOL! Go and give yourself a few slaps and all that.....

[quote]BEP / CamsterSurviving is easy.You&apos;ve all got it wrong. Go contracting and dump London - i mean, I can&apos;t understand why you&apos;d live in a 3 bed semi on busy street in London.Move to the country (200k-400k gets detached country cottage in the North, Wales and Scotland) or get an Island pad (100k Scottish Islands) or at those prices have both and still have money to spare. I&apos;m guessing most Londoners equity in their current homes will mean a small or no mortgageJettison the wife and kids - short term pain in divorce costs and remove the education bit too.Then you can spend your hard earned cash on wine, women and whisky.DC[/quote]Mate, I already do. LOL! You should see how I live in Sao Paulo and Mexico City. Met up with some old friends the other day. All professionals like us. All in the group married (except me). As per the first post, they gave sample calculations. I was seriously shocked at the costs involved. No kids, so I never had to worry about children stuff, but private education is expensive. After all, I am sure every parent will want the best for their children.Anyway, pay me a visit in Sp - muahahahahaha!!!!!

This is why ppl want private education.http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-28953881

That looks like left-wing bias to me. It is possible that the reason that top jobs (Judges and so on) are occupied mostly by people who went to Oxbridge is that these are intellectually demanding jobs and the Oxbridge people are in general better qualified to do them?

OK, I just read on and noticed that it also looks at the proportion of those people that went to fee-paying schools. Now that I agree would indicate elitism. I&apos;m sure they&apos;re better educated folk, but only because they went to a fee paying school.

BEP, CamAre you guys high?I spend a few hours a month on Martin&apos;s Money Saving Expert forum and you will get cussed out, crucified and run out of town if you came on to lament the woes of living on 6k a month.When - as someone rightly pointed out - the average UK salary is 25kWhatever income anyone has - the ONLY magic bullet is living according to your cloth. Simple.

A lot of the people on the MSE boards are lefties... Have you noticed that forums such as the motoring one are virtually dead these days and the other boards seem to be increasingly full of benefits stuff... How to get your full entitlement, how to get various grants and so on?The truth is, in a city where a very modest home costs £350k, an annual income of £25k is not enough for anything other than scraping by in the short term. Something has to give. We can&apos;t increase the land supply and the left seems hell-bent on stuffing the country with foreigners. So what gives? A lot of young people are living way beyond their means on debt and are secretly hopin the a windfall inheritance will clear it off in due course. As for the others - well eventually life just gets harder and harder and their standard of living goes down and down. Anybody qualified enough to get a job in MC shouldn&apos;t be willing to tolerate this sort of mediocrity. We should all have 5 bed houses with 3 acre gardens and drive around in 4x4s. We&apos;re all clever and we work extremely hard so I don&apos;t think we should have to live like bums.

Not surprisingly, I agree with Bravehearted. London has always been uber expensive, yes house prices are silly at the moment but everyone seems to have short term memory:Ironically, this weekend my dad was recollecting how "I bought a place in London for £6k and one year later was offered £16k and turned it down! I got £17k in the end!!! The housing market was going crazy"... Yes that was many many moons ago, but he said that rises were huge compared to salaries, young people then had the exact same issue and were forced to buy further out.During 2008-2009 I literally begged a friend of mine to buy a great little house near where I had bought (he was desperate for his own place), telling him it was down to £245k when previously it had been £300k+ but he was hesitant. Sure enough, its now over £500k... You have to take risks BEP and for those on £25k, they will need to buy outside where they want and then "move in closer into London" over time. They may need to buy outside UK if they can and then come back in once their place has gone up.Another thing while I&apos;m here, BEP please stop your whining about "lefties" and foreigners. My work involves working with a lot of these "foreigners" who have a far higher work rate and hunger than many of the young I am seeing coming out here. People aren&apos;t employing them out of pity, they are employing them because of their work ethic and work rate.

[quote]Another thing while I&apos;m here, BEP please stop your whining about "lefties" and foreigners. My work involves working with a lot of these "foreigners" who have a far higher work rate and hunger than many of the young I am seeing coming out here. People aren&apos;t employing them out of pity, they are employing them because of their work ethic and work rate.[/quote]Leaving the foreigner bit aside (in case it starts to get a bit too UKIP/EDL on here) don&apos;t you find lefties annoying? Sitting in their cushy local authority job making cups of tea and getting paid to spend half the day as a union rep? Then moaning that us "rich people" aren&apos;t paying enough taxes which given how many hours we work/travel for our pay doesn&apos;t seem very fair.Whereas by the time they&apos;re onto their first cup of coffee I&apos;ve already hauled my ass halfway across the county, written a proposal deck on the train and am in my hire car already nearly at a client site...

[quote]OK, I just read on and noticed that it also looks at the proportion of those people that went to fee-paying schools. Now that I agree would indicate elitism. I&apos;m sure they&apos;re better educated folk, but only because they went to a fee paying school.[/quote]BEP,That is the point my ex-colleagues were making. Which is..... fee-paying school --> OxBridge --> top jobs.Not to say that you can&apos;t get into OxBridge if you don&apos;t go to a public school, but going to one puts you at an advantage.

[quote]BEP, CamAre you guys high?I spend a few hours a month on Martin&apos;s Money Saving Expert forum and you will get cussed out, crucified and run out of town if you came on to lament the woes of living on 6k a month.When - as someone rightly pointed out - the average UK salary is 25kWhatever income anyone has - the ONLY magic bullet is living according to your cloth. Simple.[/quote]Braveheart!I missed you! You gonna vote com Sept. 18? :p How&apos;s the love life? I am still around this week. If you are free, let&apos;s meet up! Should be able to get some female friends to tag along clubbing :) We&apos;re in our prime :DAnyway..... I think you need to put things into context. Indeed, the UK average is 25k. Saying that, is this something you or any of us in this forum here would be happy with? Putting things into context, for us, it makes sense to look at a £100k salary. Nice and simple figure to work with. We also take the "model family" of Dad, Mum, 2 children.What is this thread about? Or meant to be about? It&apos;s about...... how difficult it can be even with the above-mentioned salary. Especially if you want the best for your children.

[quote][quote]Another thing while I&apos;m here, BEP please stop your whining about "lefties" and foreigners. My work involves working with a lot of these "foreigners" who have a far higher work rate and hunger than many of the young I am seeing coming out here. People aren&apos;t employing them out of pity, they are employing them because of their work ethic and work rate.[/quote]Leaving the foreigner bit aside (in case it starts to get a bit too UKIP/EDL on here) don&apos;t you find lefties annoying? Sitting in their cushy local authority job making cups of tea and getting paid to spend half the day as a union rep? Then moaning that us "rich people" aren&apos;t paying enough taxes which given how many hours we work/travel for our pay doesn&apos;t seem very fair.Whereas by the time they&apos;re onto their first cup of coffee I&apos;ve already hauled my ass halfway across the county, written a proposal deck on the train and am in my hire car already nearly at a client site...[/quote]When you remove the impossibles, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.I am a "foreigner" myself. Am not offended. Why? Am pretty sure that BEP is referring to those who abuse the system. Sigh! :-( If only people were more chilled out and easy-going like me..... they&apos;ll be able to pull more often.... and thus be happy! :D

Camster,I&apos;m pretty sure the only thing that you "pull" every night is your own wiener while on the internet at some Premier Inn on the outskirts of Hull.But jokes aside I have read it all again and agree - BEP is not a Farage in disguise, he has provided some good guidance here to a number of people at various times and did not mean it as a generalist brush to all.Its been fun and I know what he is trying to say, £100k after tax does not give you the kind of money that makes you feel well off (after you take out mortgage, expenses, school fees etc), which it should do considering how hard and long it takes to get to it.Have a good day all. Enjoy the internet later tonight Camster

[i][b]When you remove all impossibles, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.[/b][/i]I pity you. I really do. Gotta say though..... what an amazing 360 u-turn! ROFL!Anyway, now that I&apos;ve picked myself up off the floor after that good laugh..... what&apos;s good on Wednesday night? Which London club would you guys and gals recommend? Last week, wanna make sure I really enjoy before..... getting back to the grind.

I saw an interesting article the other day about how much the various characters from Pride & Prejudice would need to be earning to have the same lifestyle today as they did back then. I can&apos;t remember the exact results but Mr Darcy would have had to have been something like Richard Branson style rich... It was his interesting to see how times have changed.When I think of a "millionaire" I think of somebody with a private jet, yachts in Monaco, mansions in L.A. But now a "millionaire" is probably somebody who has cleared the mortgage on their 3 be leasehold flat in Docklands. We live on a small island and land is a finite resource. Many people have no hope these days of ever owning a home with a reasonable garden. Property developers are stacking properties high, cramming them in like shoeboxes on every scrap of land they can find. Old Johnny who bought his home 40 years ago is suddenly finding that the his overgrown back yard is now prime real estate an he can become a millionaire by sticking 20 houses in what used to be his vegetable patch.The real problem is that this country is overcrowded. I don&apos;t know what the solution is. It seems tragic to think that the most likely option is to just concrete over our glorious British countryside. For the whole country to become one depressing huge suburb would just be rotten. If only we could find a workable solution to the overcrowding problem...

Saving grace is that the overcrowding is particularly rife in London in the main. People commuting in from Stevenage or Milton Keynes are unlikely to see the greenbelts diminish in the near future I would have thought. Scant consolation and all! Overall I can see a lot of first generation Asians and Eastern Europeans return home as the quality of life in their home country improves, however can&apos;t see how immigration in this country will ever balance against those leaving. Not a complaint just an observation .... On another note scary to think that by the time my daughter is 18 my flat in Hertfordshire could be worth £500k. Have to agree on the millionaire bit ...... these days it&apos;s multi-millionaires that have the jet set lifestyle. Still could be worse count ourselves lucky we are chatting about first world problems!

Very interesting thread. A couple of points:£100K is "only" about £5.5K after tax per month, not £6KIf you pay 2K mortgage and 1.5K school fees, then is the 2K that is left over enough for clothes, food, bills, holidays, savings etc etc?If you earn 25K a year (national average), then with Child Tax Credit and Child Benefit for 2 kids (neither of which you get at £100K) then take home is approx £1950 per monthAssume, a shared ownership/rent/regional house at say £600pm(?) and no school fees, then about £1350pm left for everything else instead of 2K.So you may earn 4 times more than national average, but end up with £650per month more than a family on 25K. Food for thought...

Very good point. Plus, I bet the person on £25K doesn&apos;t have sleepless nights because of appraisals they have the following day. Or constant pain in their chest because of the pressure from clients and colleagues. Or the worry that their gold-digger partner will unleash hell on them if they can&apos;t upgrade the Merc this year. Or the agony of knowing they&apos;ve just gone through another summer in an air-conditioned office while all their friends (if they have any left) were would having family BBQs in the evenings.

[quote]Very interesting thread............ [/quote]Of course it&apos;s an interesting thread. Check out who the OP is :DThe fact that this thread attracts "all sorts of people" further illustrates the "magnetic pulling power" of the OP - LOL! :DIf you sort the threads on the left by number of replies (#), you will find the best thread ever at the top. Again, by yours truly.

Great - feeling pretty deflated after FeelingFine&apos;s comments. So I earn around £70K (which I think is considered a good salary). This means income after deductions of about £3750 per month. We live outside London and mortgage on a relatively normal 3 bed home is just short of £1K, also need a car (£300pm) but don&apos;t pay school fees - but am saving £250pm for kids uni eventually. So have about £2200pm to spend on bills, food, clothes, holidays, days out, swimming lessons (for kids) etc etc etc. This never seems to be enough.The 2 working parents (with free garndparent childcare) both on about £20-25K per month must be loaded compared to us.

Don&apos;t forget, Potatohead, that at £70K you lose ALL of your child benefit too. Again, we can thank the lefties for that one (they think that people like you don&apos;t "deserve" the benefits that they do).

Why are you paying £300pm on a car by the way? £300 should do it.OK, I joke, £300 probably isn&apos;t enough. Call it £700 and get yourself a good one, maybe a P reg diesel Mondeo in tidy condition.

[quote]Don&apos;t forget, Potatohead, that at £70K you lose ALL of your child benefit too. Again, we can thank the lefties for that one (they think that people like you don&apos;t "deserve" the benefits that they do).[/quote]If you want to have children, you bloody well make sure you can afford it. Sod child benefit and tax credits and all that. It should be abolished. I will never understand this benefits culture. Then again, I am a proper Conservative.

I hope you all don&apos;t miss me too much when I&apos;m gone next week. I&apos;ll try to pop in every now and then :)

Yes, I agree that it should be abolished. But for EVERYONE, not just certain people.Then again, I think pretty much all taxation and benefits should be abolished. People should pay for their own kids, I agree. And old grannies should pay for their own operations. And people with burning houses should pay for their own fire trucks. And victims of crime should pay for their own hired help. And so on.Yes, that&apos;s right - if it were left to me, I&apos;d pretty much eliminate ALL taxation and benefits. Hear the lefties roar!! Who would pay for the NHS, the "fantastic" BBC, the police, fire, defence, roads, sanitation, etc etc etc. My answer to that? Not I. But you CAN&apos;T do that, they proclaim!! You just CAN&apos;T!!!!! Well, if I had the chance, I would. I&apos;ll pay for my own operations, I&apos;ll subscribe to Sky, I&apos;ll sort my own defences out, I&apos;ll put my own fires out, I&apos;ll drive a 4x4 or use toll roads, and so on. And I&apos;d save a fortune in the process. But that&apos;s ridiculous, even if you could have your own personal security for example, how on earth would you pay for aircraft carriers and the army to protect yourself from invasion or nuclear war! My answer to that is easy: I wouldn&apos;t; I don&apos;t feel the need to pay for that. BUT BUT BUT BUT BUT....!!!!!! scream the lefties. What they forget is that, looking after myself and my loved ones would be MY problem, not theirs. If they want all those things - fine, let them pay for it. But I&apos;d rather keep the cash and spend it on other things, like a second home in the bahamas that I could emigrate to if things got too dodgy in this country. And if people want to pay huge sums of money to the glorious EU, then they could still do that if they wanted to. Just count me out, thanks.I can hear the lefties fainting already.

BEP,Your mickey mouse plan has more holes than the swiss cheese I nearly bought yesterday.But its Friday and it made me laugh, so happy to go along with it

lol u lefty ;)

Ha!I think to finish it off we just need Camster to tell us about his trips to "Sao Paulo" (in real life = Stoke on Trent) and various places in Mexico (in real life = Hull and surrounding area)See you later guys, got meetings for rest of afternoon

lol i&apos;ve never been to stoke on trent so just did a google street view and my goodness it looks grim up there! hehe

[quote]Ha!I think to finish it off we just need Camster to tell us about his trips to "Sao Paulo" (in real life = Stoke on Trent) and various places in Mexico (in real life = Hull and surrounding area)See you later guys, got meetings for rest of afternoon[/quote]I don&apos;t make trips to SP. I live there. Have stated this a number times. It&apos;s amazing that you still can&apos;t get this. You know..... listening is a basic skill that consultants need :)Is that where you are from? Hull? Or Stoke? I thought you were of South-Asian descent? Indian, to be precise. I find Indians really interesting.Oh..... almost forgot. Seriously..... I pity you.

I am sure you know this, but FYI. Some technical details.The T-C.com admins can somewhat &apos;locate&apos; you. When you make a post on here, the guys at Top-Consultant.com will know where you are posting from (by means of your IP address). Yes, technical people can muck around with this, but given that I am techie myself, I know what I am talking about. As such, the T-C.com admin can easily tell you that the majority of my posts will &apos;show&apos; Wiltshire, with the ISP being SKY. Yup, my huge country pad :) What can I say? There are some benefits in coming from a filthy rich and influential family. Saying that, I am only rich..... in personality :) My threads here have been said to be "very interesting". My "magnetic pulling personality" pulls in all sorts of people. Even you! :) Some people have signed up to this forum simply because of my threads! :) What can I say?You see..... I try to be careful. When replying to e-mails re. potential Continent or SEA roles, or simply wanting to watch SkyGo, I VPN into my very own home network. Hmmm..... there are a few logins from Sao Paulo (Campinas), when I simply wanted to browse, lazy so didn&apos;t bother, maintained BR office connectivity. None from HQ :)

It&apos;s not that, BEP. It&apos;s simply..... people have to take responsibility, take ownership of their own bloody lives. Some basic state help, fine. But if you don&apos;t work (or don&apos;t want to work rather), you die. Simple as that. The UK is a joke. There are so many issues, but UK people are so easily swayed by distractions such as immigration and whatnot. The gist is..... people are selfish and do things that are in their own interest. For instance, I think that it&apos;s interesting that NI will possibly be renamed to "Earnings Tax". So, there&apos;s Income Tax and Earnings Tax. I can easily see the link with national insurance being broken and who knows, the NHS might be privatised.The other thing is capital gains. CGT is a joke. There is no CGT in Mexico. Not even for options! I think there are plans to introduce a nominal rate or smtg. There&apos;s no CGT in Singapore. None in Malaysia. Income tax in Singapore is 15%, if I recall right.This is why people leave the UK. A lot of top talent have left the UK and I&apos;m afraid..... only the mediocre ones remain. Any sane person would! You slog to obtain a top degree, then slog to come up in life, only to have ppl insult you and the gov tax you to kingdom come. Any sane person would.OK, if you get great service, fine. But this is not the case in the UK. When I lived in DE, LOL, I stupidly put down Catholic in the "religion" box of the tax card. So, had to pay church tax, in addition to normal tax. But I enjoyed my life in DE. Great quality of life. Oh, and guess what? They also get immigration.

Hi Cams,Don&apos;t worry about the location thing, it was end of week and we were messing around. None of us are particularly bothered whether its Timbuktu or London.Lets face it, as Programme / Project Managers or Management Consultants, we will be working in a mix of places throughout our careers. Some choose UK wide and Europe, others are more adventurous (ie you) and manage to do it worldwide.One thing to note though from what you said - you only pay Capital Gains Tax in the UK for your second property. Hence if you just own one juicy London property then all the increases are tax free when you come to sell it. On my property there will be no tax to pay if I sold it tomorrow which is not normal in a lot of countries... not bad

Yeah, it&apos;s a funny old system that. I guess they figure that if you sell your first house, you&apos;re going to buy another one and hence they get to sting you on the stamp duty. Or possibly inheritance tax!This thing about "primary" residence is interesting though. Can you just flip them like the MPs do on their expenses to avoid the CGT?

Also, if you REALLY want to hear about someone who is working from a glamorous location this week, then consider this: This week I am mostly working on Borough High Street. Yeah, Borough High Street. Beat that for glamour.

Hi BEP,That is correct, the UK system assumes that as you sell your main property, you will be then buying a new main property hence paying stamp duty each time. They see a 2nd property (or more) as a holiday home / money maker / whatever and hence up for grabs in relation to Capital Gains TaxCamster is right when buying 2nd homes, but if you have only one home, CGT is never a problem. I have a couple of locations that I work from when it comes to my current client, alas stating them would give away which Financial Services firm it isEnjoy your current location, sounds lovely

This thread is getting better. Now we are complaining about tax on our second homes!!

Wait wait, to be fair to Cams I think he meant tax in general. He might have got it wrong on CGT (we don&apos;t pay it in the UK for our main residence) but the rest is how he feels and probably still stands.I know where you are coming from SuperS, the thread is getting very rahrah with complaints about private school fees and £100k salaries!

For most people it&apos;s not so much the 100K salary that&apos;s the problem, it&apos;s the amount that&apos;s left after the taxman has taken his share.

One of my friends left Accenture after a couple of Analyst years because "I can never earn proper money here". He&apos;s now a fund manager, or something, his last move netted him £800k or so in a signing on bonus. Morale of the story? Move to somewhere hot and beachy. Become a barman or something (unless you&apos;re earning some type of crazy salary).

wow, that is pretty impressive

Haha,When I saw the £800k comment, I straight away was already thinking of the next thread from BEP / Cams which I knew was going to be..."Oh but out of that £800k due to the lefties tax of 45% they will only see a tiny fraction of that amount!!!" or something along those lines;pBut it never arrived! BEPs comment was stating what we were all thinking - thats a lot of £££ which would allow us to pay off a fair few bills / part of the mortgageBEP, surely as a Partners this is mere peanuts to you!?!

The funny thing was that after he let this slip after a few overpriced Thursday night beers, and started talking about how expensive it is to raise a family and how that he&apos;s coming under financial pressure now his wife has stopped working. No matter how much we earn, it&apos;s never enough right? The way I try to look at this is that, I can eat out when I want, go on good holidays, travel etc etc. In summary, I like my lifestyle and can afford it. A few of my friends "back home" earning the national average, or less, have to really budget. I much prefer being where I am now, although the route to them buying a house is much easier than mine. How I love to hear "your rent is 2.5 times my mortgage (sucker)"I&apos;m sure my view will change when I have children, but then again, I won&apos;t be sending them to private school. A state school was fine for me, I&apos;m sure it will be for them.

hehe £800k is a lot to everyone, even the dragons on dragons den take ages to decide whether to part with bits of their hard-earned little pile of moneyif i was a billionaire like richard branston, larry page, oprah or alister darling i would give u all £800k

[quote]hehe £800k is a lot to everyone, even the dragons on dragons den take ages to decide whether to part with bits of their hard-earned little pile of moneyif i was a billionaire like richard branston, larry page, oprah or alister darling i would give u all £800k[/quote]You&apos;re a partner - I imagine much like the "rain maker" you&apos;re loaded and fly everywhere in a helicopter!

I prefer to think he "keeps it real" and travels in the tube like the rest of us and Roy Hodgson.

i wonder if mariah carey would use the tube if she lived here hehe

If she did I&apos;d be more likely to use it.

yeah, me too. I&apos;d like to have her in charge of running the tube, i bet it would be immaculate. That diva has [u]standards[/u]

Mariah Carey!?! Geez didn&apos;t realise realise this forum was "1990s Top Consultant"Car wise, I take it you luuuve the Sierra Cosworth BEP? Or were you more of a Jaguar XJ...?As to the guy saying he was financially distressed even with the £800k sign on - I agree with you, we all live within our means. The key thing for me has been luck in having a very reasonable mortgage and a house going up sky high in price, allowing me to be comfortable and enjoy my contracts.Again, easy developed world problems we are talking about here... Next we are going to start moaning about BMWs vs Mercedez vs Audi&apos;s!

OK, u have me sussed out pretty well. I used to own a sierra cosworth, it was one of the best cars i ever had! really comfy seats and plenty of ooomph going up hills. bit of a gas guzzler though.

leg room in the front, legover room in the back.

Haha! So we know that BEP doesn&apos;t mind a bit of "rough"...Cosworth was a funky little number I suppose, uber fast and reasonably priced

Wow!13 years of forum chat, generating nearly 300 separate threads and what is currently nestled just inside the top 20 most popular threads EVER?!?!"...how on EARTH do you get by on only 100k a year?"I&apos;ll remember this, next time someone calls me a money grabbing contractor!

You money grabbing contractor.

$hit - I&apos;m sure there was something I was meant to remember...

You&apos;re supposed to remember the time when you were on a mere "£100k" a year, how you struggled to feed yourself and live a normal London life on that tiny salary. Or tell us that even on £200k a year things are difficult...?

Fortunately I have my income from my wife&apos;s family trust fund to supplement that 200k; otherwise the gardener at my French property would be finding it hard to make ends meet.Have you ever tried to feed a family on 1000 euros a month in the Dordogne? It&apos;s a nightmare for him.

Rookie mistake Coolio, Dordogne is too far North!You want west of Toulouse, ~13hrs drive from us (Soufff of the river in London that is) or a quick flight and a cheapy hirecar when there. Voila!That way you are a couple of hours from the beach or the Pyranees (beautiful roads), with some great weather for most of the year. Houses at the moment are uber cheap compared to London although we will have to pay around 37% Capital Gains when we are ready to sell. But if you get a pool put in etc, you can claim that back before CGT so its not too bad.

Cheapy hire car? Mr Cool gets his butler to pick him up from the airport in the Bentley.