What Makes You Comfortable?

According to a survey just conducted in England by one of the world's Big Banks, the salary you need to be 'comfortable' is staggering.

£213,000.

That's almost double what the lower threshold of the country's Top One Percent earn (at 1.775x £120k).

And, depending on what you take the current average as, huge seven-fold leap from the typical thirty-grand annual wage.

Apparently, the 'tell' for whether someone is wealthy, is that when lifestyle costing crops up in conversation, they say merely that they're "comfortable".

I realise the standard price of a pint (if you're lucky) is a fiver nowadays, there's a severe shortage of new dwellings being built so rents/mortgages are sky high, and travel is silly money like through having to pay train drivers over £70k for crazily few hours on trains that don't actually run.

When starting out as cubrep, it was instilled upon me that a number was simply reduced to the maths construct of one significant figure. A single digit followed by whatever amount of zeros. It didn't matter what it was. The point being you match the payback to the outlay.

I've always liked that framing.

Then when leasing finance become a big thing in tech purchases, followed soon after with pay-per-month plans that became the SaaS then app staple, there was another steer.

Buyers would at the very least subconsciously compare our monthly quote to what they must set aside to keep a roof over their head each month.

If our phrasing was above their own amortisation, we'd perhaps be in trouble. Although this did depend on our atomisation.

But there is a interesting price-point link between breaching a Karman Line-style barrier of the comfortable and the rental.

There's likely to be a level around these at which a buyer thinks a price is reasonable.

Wherever it lurks, there'll be a comparison with one of these from their life outside work.

There's also an old expression;

take the ice out of price.

Knowing you land within the limits of their personal monthly spend or not out the reach of their own income, can be one way to ensure smoothing the path to their signature.