Why are those on £100k salaries struggling financially?

Individuals like Kouyoumjian may think they’re being frugal by fishing through the Tesco yellow labels, but that money is going somewhere – whether it’s rent, suits, or travel.

It’s the same story in the US, where the New York Times reports typical middle-class families are struggling, despite being far richer than those of the 1960s.

Those interviewed said they felt that ‘the basics of middle-class life – owning a home, providing for the children, dining out occasionally – seemed unattainable or required unpalatable trade-offs’ like a holiday or property down payment.

This is where the Henry phenomenon becomes less about violin-playing millionaires and more about economic design. The issue is not that £100,000 is suddenly ‘poverty money’, but that the social meaning of wealth has shifted faster than wages have kept up.

The most obvious culprit is tax. In the UK, those earning between £100,000 and £125,140 fall into a notorious marginal tax trap, losing their personal allowance at a rate that pushes their effective tax rate above 60%. Add frozen thresholds, student loan repayments, national insurance, and pension contributions, and take-home pay shrinks rapidly.

Then there’s housing. Rent in London has risen at its fastest rate in decades, while deposits for even modest homes remain eye-watering. Many Henrys are paying more than half their income on rent alone, not as a lifestyle choice, but because proximity to work and industry networks is often non-negotiable.

And yet, there is something undeniably jarring about a £100,000-earner lamenting their grocery bill. Many Henrys are comparing themselves not to the national average, but to the ultra-wealthy minority that dominates their social and digital worlds. Social media has only intensified this distortion. Platforms collapse the distance between the merely affluent and the fantastically rich, presenting billionaire lifestyles as attainable.

In that sense, Henrys are both out of touch and entirely of their time. They are not wrong to feel anxious, precarious, or resentful. The economy is brutal, the safety nets are fraying, and the promise of upward mobility has been replaced with a constant threat of downward slip. But their struggle exists on a different plane to those earning £25,000, £30,000, or less.

Over the past decade, wealth has pooled aggressively at the very top, while public services have hollowed out and wages stagnated. A right-leaning economic consensus has protected capital over labour, rewarded asset ownership over work, and allowed billionaires to amass extraordinary influence. In that landscape, even high earners are left scrambling for scraps of security.

If a six-figure salary is framed as failure, it risks obscuring the far harsher truths faced by millions on far less. The challenge, then, is to recognise Henry anxiety for what it is: not evidence that £100,000 is too little, but proof that the economic system is asking too much of everyone who isn’t already untouchably rich.

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