High earners - how do you spend your salary?

London is a different world; particularly in magic and silver circle firms. The op is entirely plausible. DS 27 has chums on similar.

At your stage in life we prioritised paying off the mortgage as quickly as possible and my pension. DH was self employed then so focused on other investments. His earnings swiftly caught up with mine and then overtook them.

Prepare for the googly op. DS1 had chronic asthma and ENT issues as a baby. Back then mat leave was 6 months . I went back when he was 4 months albeit pt but he was ill so often I stopped working when he was 14 months. We had a couple of tight years until DH'S earnings accelerated having bought a forever family house before ds1 was born. Which you could do in the early 90s.

Ours goes on mortgage and childcare; we earn similarly to you. We don’t have much left after mortgage and childcare; with what’s left we pay all other bills/food. I put a lot pre tax in to my pension, but I don’t think of that as my money as it’s pre tax. DH still needs to sort his out 🙄 I also stick £75 a month in to another old pension of mine; we put about £100 in to DS’ savings account, and give about £60 a month to various charities and our church.

Whatever’s left allows us odd treats and outings, but we don’t have a lot left; for example we’re not going on holiday this year (either abroad or in the U.K.).

The objections in this thread are not about suppressing the right to talk about salaries, or making the subject taboo. The OP isn't about salaries. It's about someone saying they have more money than they know what to do with, and asking people how they should spend it. Very different.

Take away once a week local market for the rest of the food always free range quality meats. The rest is maximising salary sacrifice to get child benefit and reduce tax. Max the pension 40k a year plus 3k cycle to work. Company car salary sacrifice for my ev. Tax free childcare salary sacrifice, salary sacrifice gym membership and then some personal professional development learning. Means I can get my over 100k salary down to less than 50k. So I get full child benefit. After this I save into my Lisa and ISA to the max. I intend to leave full time work at 45 and altogether at 55, my hobby of gardening isn't expensive and neither is the model making I do.

It's all relative obviously - Jeff Bezos obviously wouldn't get out of bed for 140k - but in real life (as opposed to MN) someone earning 140k (or 90k) would be in the top 10% earners, and in a lot of people's opinion, a high earner.
What expenses you need to pay out of that is a different matter. If you earned, for example 500k, but had a mortgage of 3 million and 6 children at private school, you couldnt pretend that its not a high salary!

Our household income has recently risen to in excess of £300K. It’s an absolute fortune and we are fortunate but neither of us are motivated by money, rather doing well in our careers. We don’t come from money, quite the reverse. Neither of us feel rich because that’s our mindset. I do most of my shopping at Aldi and Home and Bargains. My new summer clothes wardrobe consists of a few new tops from Next. We have nice things but they are always given as special presents at birthdays and Christmas. We live in a house which is fairly average from the outside but visitors do always comment on how nice it is. Our car is fairly new but nothing special. We support our teenager (school and university) and contribute a substantial about to charity. I think most of our friends and family knew how much our income is they would be very surprised. I would hope that anyone who knows our story wouldn’t begrudge us. We have had very difficult years and turned to work as a way of coping with the challenges and it’s now paying dividends.

Accountant/Management consultant at Big 4? City trader? Hedge fund manager? Not so unusual, they could have graduated at 21 so have 7 years' experience.

We both put lots into our pensions to avoid paying higher rate tax. We also save about 1/3 of our take home pay, split between S&S ISAs for long term savings and cash savings allocated for holidays and house stuff. About half our take home pay is spent on bills, food (including veg box and milkman) and children's activities (we have 3DC, one at primary, two at secondary so spend a small fortune on sport and music lessons). Then we each have 'spending money', which is spent on fripperies like going out, books and clothes.

Making it taboo to talk about earning well is not helpful. I earn ok and tend to think I should be grateful (and I am) and be satisfied with that - something a lot of posters on here would no doubt agree with. Well, I read a salaries thread on here recently and it gave me the confidence to ask for the pay rise that I’ve suspected I was due for a while. Not because the posters on there were in my situation, but because I saw that there are a lot of women out there on very good salaries. You don’t have to settle for ‘good enough’ because it’s greedy to have more.

I got it too.

At your age, if you’re taking care of mortgage and pension and being sensible in that respect, I’d be having as much fun as possible!

I’m mid forties, mortgage nearly paid off, kids in their teens, pension will be OK if not conducive to luxury living.

I piss a lot of money away on fun. Clothes, outings, holidays. I’m suddenly really aware of how short life is and I’ll be damned if I’m going to be eating baked beans and scrimping in my last ‘young’ years.

Saved a lot when we were younger, but now we have "enough" and life's for living, it mostly goes on sporting activities and social life.

Ha ha, you're funny

Best thing we did is sweep remaining disposable income into the mortgage, then upsized and did the same again.

We don't have great pensions, but we do have a large mortgage free house to downsize from, and live off the equity.

We like our food and wine and holidays, but other than that live pretty simply.

Kids went to state schools.

DH is now retired at 59. I love my job and will carry on till 60. I earn enough to support us both.

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Let's rephrase the OP.
"DH and I are in the top 2% of income in the country. We have a lot of disposable income left each month. So much so we don't know what to spend it on. Any ideas?"

Depends on your definition of high earner. Several of my friends are 7 figure incomes. I'm nowhere near that and don't class myself as a high earner but I probably have more disposable income than many people.

@lancsgirl85 childcare kills me. It's just so bloody much. DP is from the north and I'm so bored of hearing "if we lived in Yorkshire we could afford xyz... if we lived up north childcare would be xyz". I don't care, my life is here!

I am not a high earner, precisely the opposite, although I do have capital. I post on mumsnet about money because I don’t know anyone IRL who has finances remotely like me, and I’d like advice and support from people with experience.

I don’t want to post to tone deaf things, but I also want to connect with people with similar experiences. I’m widowed and I don’t go on all the husband-venting threads and say ‘be grateful yours is still alive, even if he picks his nose’. I accept that even if it highlights my lack, it’s ok to vent and valid to want support. Somewhere, there is one poor person who is worse off than everyone else, and they aren’t the only person allowed to complain.

We’re all different, we all have problems, we all want support and connection and that looks different for each of us. It’s not possible to dump outwards on a public forum. You can’t control who reads. Unless you’re advocating for communism, there’s always going to be a range of incomes in any ‘room’. I’m pretty careful about discussing my comparative wealth IRL, even though few would swap with me, I still need to talk to someone about it. I dunno where else I could go.

The socialist in me can't help but think if you've got so much money you don't know how to spend it, you've probably got too much.

Still, it's nice to swap tales of trinkets isn't it?