Are you Above Average or Below Average?

07 Nov

Posted by Little Mummy as In the News

Raising kids website has reported on a BBC survey that has released some interesting data on average families in Britain. Here are some of the stats;

Average Family Size = 2 Adults and 1.8 Children

I don’t really understand how they arrived at 2 adults, we’re always being told about the rise in one parent families, so unless there are thousands of three adult/parent families then those averages don’t add up.

Anyway we fall below this average as we have ‘only’ one child

Average Income Â£32,799

Once again, we fall below this average

Average Weekly Spend Â£601.20 (includes mortgage)

Utilising my newly acquired maths skills, I conclude that average savings are therefore Â£1536.60 per year, or Â£29.55 per week. I’m not sure if this includes retirement funds etc… even if it doesn’t that’s quite a low percentage - approx 4.7% of the annual wage is saved.

Our weekly spend is about half of this figure!

The most popular family car is the Ford Focus

Our car is both smaller and cheaper than the Focus.

To summarize, we earn less, we spend less, we have less children, and we have a smaller car. If only there were a metric for happiness, I think we might be above average for once.

8 Responses

Anji Capes

November 7th, 2007 at 10:32 am
1

My family has one parent (me) and one child (my son).

Our income is about a quarter of the average.

Our weekly spend is about a third of the average.

We don’t own a car and never have.

So we’re below average too. We’re happy though. :o)
Helen

November 7th, 2007 at 11:29 am
2

Reckon the happiness metric is the only one that counts. So if you’re above average there, you’re in clover.

Did you read that book Affluenza? It says that the more some people have, the more the want. They might be incredibly wealthy, but their success is meaningless because they’re always pushing onto the next goal, leaving them empty, even if they have huge house, etc and all the trappings.

It’s all down to enjoying what you’ve got, I reckon. I liked your posting when you said the most important thing we can give our kids is time. It’s simple things like that make most of us happy. If only I could remember that more often!
Little Mummy

November 7th, 2007 at 11:51 am
3

Not read it, but I’ve heard of the principle. The sugar rush becomes harder to find, a bit like drugs - takes more and more to get the high (so I’ve heard!!).

I’m pretty happy with my lot
Emma

November 7th, 2007 at 12:07 pm
4

Well that funny! Well a bit of it, MY car is ford focus but thats not our family car.

We come above most and below on the fact we have one child, its strange tho because we actually waited until we were in a finacial position that we could continue with our life style and have child. We seem quite old’ish for parents, i am 30yrs and my dh is 34yrs. Wounder what average age of first time parents is?!
IngeniousRose

November 8th, 2007 at 3:37 am
5

Littlemummy, we too are below average on everything but definately more happy than most I’m sure, and that’s what matters I agree.
Barefoot Paula

November 8th, 2007 at 1:15 pm
6

so with you on that one! Somehow surviving on way-less-than-the-average-income but somehow really happy! All power to us! Pxx
Barefoot Paula

November 8th, 2007 at 1:18 pm
7

30 is not old for 1st time parents nowadays by the way, average has gone up loads as e.g. middle classes are waiting nearly a decade longer than they did not much more than a decade ago.

Read ‘Happiness’ - good book on exploring the happiness metric and also ‘Stopping: how to keep stop when you have to keep going’ - both good for exploring quality lifestyles balanced with money etc!
Linda

November 10th, 2007 at 5:12 pm
8

hehe - well my partner has a Focus. I’m quite pleased to be pretty average - above average in some cases - what with having two kids (wouldn’t like to lose the .2!)