The Myth of the £60K Safety Net
A mate of mine in London just got offered sixty grand a year. Fifteen years ago, you’d be buying a round for the whole pub on that money. You’d think you’d made it, or at least climbed out of the dirt. Now? I sat down and did the maths for him on the back of an envelope. By the time the taxman takes his cut, and then the landlord takes his massive wedge, there’s bloody nothing left. Rent on a basic flat, bills, a motor, just buying regular food at the supermarket—it vanishes.
Sixty grand used to mean comfort. It used to mean you were middle class. Today, it feels like a working-class wage just to stand still. That’s the new reality. It’s a proper trap unless you find a way to opt out completely.
I keep thinking about how the numbers don't add up anymore. I suspect they changed the rules of the game without telling us. You work hard, you get what sounds like a massive salary, and you still end up skint at the end of the month. I sometimes think it’s designed to keep every bastard on a treadmill, just running fast enough so they don’t have time to stop and look around. I wonder if anyone else sees how rotten its become. It occurred to me that the old path is totally fucked. Flushed away. People are stressed out of their fucking minds, working fifty hours a week for figures that look good on paper but buy you nothing in the real world. I can’t shake the feeling that we’ve all been sold a massive lie about what success looks like now. It seems to me you’ve got to build your own exit. ASAP.