Latest news with #SaltusWealthIndex
Telegraph
21-04-2025
- Business
- Telegraph
Wealthy but don't feel it? You may have money dysmorphia
Keeping up with the Joneses looks a little different nowadays. With the constant stream of lavish lifestyles on display and an increasing cost of living, it's easier than ever to feel that you're struggling financially – even when your bank balance says differently. And there's a name for that: money dysmorphia. The term, while not a proper medical diagnosis, has been circulating as a way to describe people's often-complicated relationship with money. At its core, it describes a disconnect between someone's financial reality and their perception of their wealth and finances – they are rich but they don't feel it. This can cause excessive panic around finances, triggering anxiety and distress when it comes to spending which could contribute towards irrational financial behaviours and actions. Some may dismiss money dysmorphia as pseudoscience, but the term has struck a chord. We all know someone who fixates on money despite having more than enough, or maybe that someone is you. Paul Dutton, a 63-year-old retired management consultant, has always been financially responsible. 'We've always been, not frugal, exactly, but we've never run up credit card debt or needed to borrow large sums,' he says. Dutton lives in Chester with his wife, two dogs, and has two adult children who are financially independent. He owns a second home in Greece and has a fixed annual income of £70,000 drawn from his pension and interest and dividends from investments. Yet, despite his financial security, his recent retirement brought an unexpected challenge: money dysmorphia. 'It feels strange to be on a fixed income and to realise I won't see a salary increase in the next few years,' he says. Before retiring, Dutton withdrew £100,000 annually from his consultancy business. 'I tend to think I'm worse off now, but in reality, I'm not. I'm saving less, but that's fine – I have enough savings,' he says. 'Recently, in a conversation, someone used the phrase 'asset rich, cash poor,' and I sometimes wonder whether I'm that. But then I sat down and thought that's absolute rubbish. I am asset rich, but I'm not particularly cash poor either.' Dutton attributes his money dysmorphia to the psychological shift from working to retirement. 'I do feel I'm at a funny transitional point in life, and I'm exhibiting behaviours that I probably didn't exhibit before around finances, around spending.' People's emotions and feelings heavily influence their financial decisions, explains Alex Pugh, a chartered financial planner at Saltus. 'From that perspective, money dysmorphia is absolutely real.' The Saltus Wealth Index, a survey of 2,000 individuals with at least £250,000 in investable assets, found that 35pc of men and 40pc of women feel anxious about their finances. Searches for 'money dysmorphia' have also climbed 136pc in the past year. Those who accumulate wealth after growing up without it are particularly vulnerable to this scarcity mindset. A 2022 study by polling firm Redfield & Wilton Strategies found that nearly a quarter of Britons earning over £100,000 per year still identified as 'working class'. Growing up in a low-income household in Durham, Beth Fuller, 28, was the first generation in her family to attend university. She graduated during the pandemic and landed a part-time role in advertising, earning £16,000. As she climbed the career ladder and changed industry, her salary increased to £40,000, then £50,000 – all while balancing new motherhood. Fuller is self-employed and now works in social media, and pays herself £55,000 after tax. 'I haven't done it long enough to see a full year-over-year picture,' she says. 'So I'm being very cautious with how much I take out.' For many, legitimate financial concerns, like the rising costs of housing and childcare, make it harder to reach the money milestones of previous generations and feel the same level of comfort. Fuller has been chasing that feeling of stability. 'It was simple things: a home in an area with good schools, enough space for two kids to have their own rooms, an annual holiday, and a comfortably furnished home,' she says. 'But when you break it down, achieving even these basics requires a significant income.' Financial anxiety often isn't about the actual amount in the bank, it's about the feelings of uncertainty that surrounds it. Despite earning more than ever before, Fuller admits, 'It becomes hard to think of my income with a sense of stability around it.' She adds: 'I wonder if I'm ever going to feel it because I think it's actually more about my perception.' In February, her business brought in over five figures in one month. 'Three or four years ago, I made £16,000 in a year,' she says Still, Fuller worries that this is all temporary – that the bubble could pop at any moment. She tends to prefer paying for things monthly, even with interest, rather than buying them outright, despite having the money to do so. The one area where she doesn't hesitate to spend is on her daughter. 'I'd give her the world,' she says. 'So I actually have to reel in my spending there.' While for some, an inability to spend money might seem like a good problem to have, there comes a point where action is needed. 'Sometimes people don't spend just because they choose not to,' says Pugh. However, if you are constantly worrying about your bank balance even though you've never missed a rent payment, or are breaking out in a cold sweat after treating yourself to a nice meal, despite having plenty of savings, that could be money dysmorphia. Those experiencing money dysmorphia might struggle to allow themselves to indulge in life's simple pleasures. 'It might hold someone back from getting a return on life,' says Pugh. That could be booking that holiday you've always wanted to go on or treating yourself to the expensive biscuits while doing the food shop. It also goes deeper, explains Pugh. 'It might hold someone back from making decisions and being proactive. They might sit on decisions for too long.' 'I'm quite happy to spend money on others, but I'm still umming and ahhing about mine,' he says. Last year, he told his wife he would make a decision on the purchase by the end of the year. He has a funny feeling the same conversation will be taking place again this year.
Yahoo
20-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
‘My own country can't serve my child': The families fleeing Labour's school tax raid
Jemima's promotion came at what she thought was a fortuitous time. After half a decade of living in Hong Kong, she was ready to bring her four-year-old twins back to London and take on a new, bigger role at her consultancy firm. But after crunching the numbers and contacting schools in Britain, she realised that what she had assumed was a crystal-clear plan to come home was now impossible. Jemima's daughter has a genetic disorder that causes muscle weakness. As a result, she physically needs more care than the average child, including help climbing the stairs and going to the bathroom. In Hong Kong, she attends a mainstream private school with a high teacher-to-child ratio, but the recent imposition of VAT on private schools means Jemima can no longer afford fees in the UK. 'I'm a single mother and the 20 per cent increase took the fees from being a very large expense to unaffordable,' she says. 'I have twins, so I'd either have to separate them and give the healthier child fewer opportunities, as with the hike I cannot afford to pay for two, or send them both to state school.' To explore the second option, Jemima – who owns a flat in London – contacted Tower Hamlets council to see if the local comprehensive could accommodate her daughter, but was blocked at every turn. 'Because she's not in a wheelchair and so couldn't tick that particular box, they more or less said no to everything. It felt like they were trying to get rid of me.' In the end, Jemima turned down the promotion. 'It's maddening that I can't go home,' she says. 'The whole dialogue has made me angry. They make me sound like some kind of elitist person, but I went to a state school myself and I'd be delighted to send the twins to one if it was any good. But when my own country can't serve my child and yet also taxes me so much that I can't afford to serve her myself, then I have no choice but to stay abroad.' For an increasingly large cohort, Labour's VAT charge on private schools has made Britain as a place to live and work a far less attractive prospect. More than a quarter of wealthy parents - those with investible assets of more than £250,000 - are now considering moving abroad within the next 12 months in order to keep their children in private education, a new survey has found. Among the respondents who had children already in private education, 42 per cent said they would face disruption as a direct result of the VAT increase, the bi-annual Saltus Wealth Index revealed. One in nine of those surveyed said they were planning to move their children into the state sector as a result of the policy, while seven per cent said they would keep them in private education, but required financial support from family or friends to cover the additional costs. Labour, which introduced the VAT hike in January, claim the policy will raise £1.8 billion a year by 2029-30 and help fund 6,500 more state school teachers. Critics argue it will prove disastrous, leading to the closure of well-established schools and heaping pressure on an already stretched state sector. For some, moving abroad to find cheaper schooling alternatives has been the impetus to start a new life, for others, it is the reason to delay coming back. But whatever their circumstances, many would argue they are the exact demographic Britain needs to hold onto: high earners who prop up the economy and contribute far more than they take out. 'VAT is absolutely on people's radar,' agrees Ed Richardson, the managing director of Keystone Tutors – a company that works with parents both abroad and in the UK. 'I didn't expect this but I'm seeing it in conversations with families in Asia and the Middle East. Suddenly, they're asking whether the value judgement for going to the UK is worth it. It's not as if school fees haven't been increasing for years – but because this is such a high rise, it's having a real impact.' Amelia and Francis are one such example. They have been living in Singapore for over a decade and had always planned to bring their daughters, currently nine and seven, back to Britain for senior school. Now, they have changed their minds. 'The tax on fees has redirected many people's lives,' says Amelia. 'We are 100 per cent staying here for this reason – two years ago we could just have scraped the money together but now there's not a hope in hell we could afford to privately educate the girls at home.' As the financial director of a successful company, Francis has a very good salary but worked out that in order to send just one daughter to Sherborne Girls as a day boarder – the Dorset school near where they'd planned to live in the UK – he'd need to earn an extra £74,000 a year pre-tax; for the Tanglin Trust School school in Singapore, he needs to make less than half that. 'The reason many of us were here in the first place was for the low tax salaries, so we could save to move home and send kids to good schools,' says Amelia. 'But now the goalposts have moved, it's out of reach. It's great for us because it means our friends won't disperse like they otherwise would have done. But it's a huge disappointment for all the grandparents at home, who ultimately miss out on having the depth of relationship with their grandchildren.' Europe, too, is seeing an influx of Britons. 'Our clients used to come mostly from the US and Israel but we have seen a very noticeable rise in British families enquiring about schools over the past year,' says Naomi Crompton, who runs Alesco – an education consultancy in Portugal. 'The international schools here provide a high-quality education at what is now a significantly lower cost than the UK.' Even the family members of former prime ministers are feeling the pull. For Max Johnson – brother of Boris – whose three-year-old daughter has a place at both a private school in west London, which costs around £30,000 a year, and at St Julian's in Cascais near Lisbon, which is closer to £12,000, it's an easy choice. 'I went on a tour of St Julians and I thought it was brilliant,' he says. 'It reminded me of a school I went to called The Dragon [in Oxford] – it has a lot of history and tradition and even follows a British curriculum.' Johnson repeats a sentiment that every parent I interview for this piece echoes – despite being among some of the most privileged people in the country. 'Life in Britain just feels too hard when you're drowning in tax and getting very little back,' he says. For Kate and Alex Kindersley, who were living in the Cotswolds with their four children just over a year ago, everything felt like a struggle after their mortgage quadrupled overnight. Once they realised that school fees were also likely to skyrocket when Keir Starmer became Prime Minister, they decided to move their family to Cape Town – a city they had both lived in during their 20s. Alex runs a handful of companies in east Africa and Kate owns popular interiors brand Hadeda. Their three sons currently attend a school in Constantia which costs around £8,000 a year-per-child. 'I love it,' says Kate. 'The head teacher knows everyone's name, they run around in bare feet and do so much sport and seem so happy and healthy. And we've worked out that educating them all here will cost about a quarter of what it will in Britain.' 'Seeing the children really flourishing, I just can't imagine going back and taking them away from what they now have,' she adds. Sophie Gamborg, who works in property and now also lives in Cape Town, is in a similar situation. She and her husband Tom, who runs drinks brand Van Hunks, left London for what was initially supposed to be a few months during her second maternity leave two years ago. They extended their stay a few times until they realised that the VAT increase meant that they could never afford the life they wanted in Britain. 'We suddenly thought – there are such amazing schools here, why leave?' she says. 'Our son is in a small class and is taught to have excellent manners and gets so much attention from teachers – every day he plays golf or rugby, cricket or goes swimming.' Unsurprisingly, private schools in Cape Town are now oversubscribed and are having to tell parents to sign their children up at birth. 'We are seeing a lot of South Africans coming back from the UK,' says an admissions officer from one prestigious institution. The parents – she explains – tend to be leaving jobs in London where, despite earning high salaries in finance and consultancy and working at firms like Goldman Sachs, they find they cannot afford to give their children the education they had planned. Losing them means permanently losing people who would have ploughed money into the UK – in income tax and stamp duty, yes, but also in propping up local high streets and entertainment. Of course, the question many readers will ask is why these people don't just send their children to a comprehensive like 90 per cent of the population. But the truth is that when you are earning a six-figure salary, you tend to have more options than most – options that make Britain feel like a bad deal. 'All my children started at state school and if there had been an outstanding state locally that would have continued,' says Isabel Oakeshott, a journalist who moved her family to Dubai late last year. 'But our local primary school was in special measures and so I have had to, for many years now, pay well over £100,000 a year in school fees out of highly-taxed income – something that has almost broken me financially. Since the VAT rise, it has become completely unsustainable. Private education is a wonderful thing but everything has a ceiling.' Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Telegraph
20-02-2025
- Business
- Telegraph
‘My own country can't serve my child': The families fleeing Labour's school tax raid
Jemima's promotion came at what she thought was a fortuitous time. After half a decade of living in Hong Kong, she was ready to bring her four-year-old twins back to London and take on a new, bigger role at her consultancy firm. But after crunching the numbers and contacting schools in Britain, she realised that what she had assumed was a crystal-clear plan to come home was now impossible. Jemima's daughter has a genetic disorder that causes muscle weakness. As a result, she physically needs more care than the average child, including help climbing the stairs and going to the bathroom. In Hong Kong, she attends a mainstream private school with a high teacher-to-child ratio, but the recent imposition of VAT on private schools means Jemima can no longer afford fees in the UK. 'I'm a single mother and the 20 per cent increase took the fees from being a very large expense to unaffordable,' she says. 'I have twins, so I'd either have to separate them and give the healthier child fewer opportunities, as with the hike I cannot afford to pay for two, or send them both to state school.' To explore the second option, Jemima – who owns a flat in London – contacted Tower Hamlets council to see if the local comprehensive could accommodate her daughter, but was blocked at every turn. 'Because she's not in a wheelchair and so couldn't tick that particular box, they more or less said no to everything. It felt like they were trying to get rid of me.' In the end, Jemima turned down the promotion. 'It's maddening that I can't go home,' she says. 'The whole dialogue has made me angry. They make me sound like some kind of elitist person, but I went to a state school myself and I'd be delighted to send the twins to one if it was any good. But when my own country can't serve my child and yet also taxes me so much that I can't afford to serve her myself, then I have no choice but to stay abroad.' For an increasingly large cohort, Labour's VAT charge on private schools has made Britain as a place to live and work a far less attractive prospect. More than a quarter of wealthy parents - those with investible assets of more than £250,000 - are now considering moving abroad within the next 12 months in order to keep their children in private education, a new survey has found. Among the respondents who had children already in private education, 42 per cent said they would face disruption as a direct result of the VAT increase, the bi-annual Saltus Wealth Index revealed. One in nine of those surveyed said they were planning to move their children into the state sector as a result of the policy, while seven per cent said they would keep them in private education, but required financial support from family or friends to cover the additional costs. Labour, which introduced the VAT hike in January, claim the policy will raise £1.8 billion a year by 2029-30 and help fund 6,500 more state school teachers. Critics argue it will prove disastrous, leading to the closure of well-established schools and heaping pressure on an already stretched state sector. 'Not a hope in hell of paying for private school' For some, moving abroad to find cheaper schooling alternatives has been the impetus to start a new life, for others, it is the reason to delay coming back. But whatever their circumstances, many would argue they are the exact demographic Britain needs to hold onto: high earners who prop up the economy and contribute far more than they take out. 'VAT is absolutely on people's radar,' agrees Ed Richardson, the managing director of Keystone Tutors – a company that works with parents both abroad and in the UK. 'I didn't expect this but I'm seeing it in conversations with families in Asia and the Middle East. Suddenly, they're asking whether the value judgement for going to the UK is worth it. It's not as if school fees haven't been increasing for years – but because this is such a high rise, it's having a real impact.' Amelia and Francis are one such example. They have been living in Singapore for over a decade and had always planned to bring their daughters, currently nine and seven, back to Britain for senior school. Now, they have changed their minds. 'The tax on fees has redirected many people's lives,' says Amelia. 'We are 100 per cent staying here for this reason – two years ago we could just have scraped the money together but now there's not a hope in hell we could afford to privately educate the girls at home.' As the financial director of a successful company, Francis has a very good salary but worked out that in order to send just one daughter to Sherborne Girls as a day boarder – the Dorset school near where they'd planned to live in the UK – he'd need to earn an extra £74,000 a year pre-tax; for the Tanglin Trust School school in Singapore, he needs to make less than half that. 'The reason many of us were here in the first place was for the low tax salaries, so we could save to move home and send kids to good schools,' says Amelia. 'But now the goalposts have moved, it's out of reach. It's great for us because it means our friends won't disperse like they otherwise would have done. But it's a huge disappointment for all the grandparents at home, who ultimately miss out on having the depth of relationship with their grandchildren.' 'Drowning in tax' Europe, too, is seeing an influx of Britons. 'Our clients used to come mostly from the US and Israel but we have seen a very noticeable rise in British families enquiring about schools over the past year,' says Naomi Crompton, who runs Alesco – an education consultancy in Portugal. 'The international schools here provide a high-quality education at what is now a significantly lower cost than the UK.' Even the family members of former prime ministers are feeling the pull. For Max Johnson – brother of Boris – whose three-year-old daughter has a place at both a private school in west London, which costs around £30,000 a year, and at St Julian's in Cascais near Lisbon, which is closer to £12,000, it's an easy choice. 'I went on a tour of St Julians and I thought it was brilliant,' he says. 'It reminded me of a school I went to called The Dragon [in Oxford] – it has a lot of history and tradition and even follows a British curriculum.' Johnson repeats a sentiment that every parent I interview for this piece echoes – despite being among some of the most privileged people in the country. 'Life in Britain just feels too hard when you're drowning in tax and getting very little back,' he says. For Kate and Alex Kindersley, who were living in the Cotswolds with their four children just over a year ago, everything felt like a struggle after their mortgage quadrupled overnight. Once they realised that school fees were also likely to skyrocket when Keir Starmer became Prime Minister, they decided to move their family to Cape Town – a city they had both lived in during their 20s. Alex runs a handful of companies in east Africa and Kate owns popular interiors brand Hadeda. Their three sons currently attend a school in Constantia which costs around £8,000 a year-per-child. 'I love it,' says Kate. 'The head teacher knows everyone's name, they run around in bare feet and do so much sport and seem so happy and healthy. And we've worked out that educating them all here will cost about a quarter of what it will in Britain.' 'Seeing the children really flourishing, I just can't imagine going back and taking them away from what they now have,' she adds. Bad deal Britain Sophie Gamborg, who works in property and now also lives in Cape Town, is in a similar situation. She and her husband Tom, who runs drinks brand Van Hunks, left London for what was initially supposed to be a few months during her second maternity leave two years ago. They extended their stay a few times until they realised that the VAT increase meant that they could never afford the life they wanted in Britain. 'We suddenly thought – there are such amazing schools here, why leave?' she says. 'Our son is in a small class and is taught to have excellent manners and gets so much attention from teachers – every day he plays golf or rugby, cricket or goes swimming.' Unsurprisingly, private schools in Cape Town are now oversubscribed and are having to tell parents to sign their children up at birth. 'We are seeing a lot of South Africans coming back from the UK,' says an admissions officer from one prestigious institution. The parents – she explains – tend to be leaving jobs in London where, despite earning high salaries in finance and consultancy and working at firms like Goldman Sachs, they find they cannot afford to give their children the education they had planned. Losing them means permanently losing people who would have ploughed money into the UK – in income tax and stamp duty, yes, but also in propping up local high streets and entertainment. Of course, the question many readers will ask is why these people don't just send their children to a comprehensive like 90 per cent of the population. But the truth is that when you are earning a six-figure salary, you tend to have more options than most – options that make Britain feel like a bad deal. 'All my children started at state school and if there had been an outstanding state locally that would have continued,' says Isabel Oakeshott, a journalist who moved her family to Dubai late last year. 'But our local primary school was in special measures and so I have had to, for many years now, pay well over £100,000 a year in school fees out of highly-taxed income – something that has almost broken me financially. Since the VAT rise, it has become completely unsustainable. Private education is a wonderful thing but everything has a ceiling.'
