For those on 6 (or almost 6 ) figure salaries - how old are you, what do you do, and how did you get into it?

[savebuckbeak]

Just the above. Curiosity is all!

I’m just shy of 100k (high 90s) but work 4 days a week in the North. Mid-40s. Law at a RG uni then straight into the Big 4. Career has taken a back seat since having kids in my 30s and am just coasting now. Still quite long hours and high stress though. Next promotion not worth the hours and sacrifices as it would take me into the 60% marginal tax rate band and I’d never get a proper holiday, have to effectively be available every evening etc. Now thinking of taking a pay cut to go in house and get some life back. If I stay put then plan is to pay off the mortgage and take a demotion to go into an easier role part time until retirement.

OP: “For those on 6 (or almost 6 ) figure salaries - how old are you, what do you do, and how did you get into it?”

Mumsnet responses: “DH earns…”

Come on, this is embarrassing.

Yes IMO it’s possible, but I’d look at smaller city firms where they have people at the top who like hard workers and not so impressed by fancy educations (I’m generalising a bit, but traditional firms like the big accountancy firms have quite a hard stop on education and experience levels whereas high growth places with 50 employees which have been start ups are more likely to take a punt on the person rather than the education)

Id personally steer clear of the civil service if you’re after a decent salary! Tech - yes, especially fintech and those companies targeting fashionable areas such as sustainability (ie a pensions app launching where you could target sustainable investments). Also medicine / tech I think would be good, post-covid I reckon there will be a lot of investment there as healthcare companies try and capitalise on NHS limitations. Also energy too - disrupters of the market like octopus who also have the energy business but also a VC side.

That would be my take - aim for industries on the up, disrupters and companies which are moving in to opportunities available as a result of current and likely future issues

I thought the point of the question was: what do people who earn six figures actually do and how did they do it?

What difference does it make if your answer is based on your own experience or someone you know well? The usefulness of the information is the same.

I 100% agree with this. Not much use in saying what someone you know earns as the likely follow up question will be “ok, how can I do that”.

i also think it’s far more aspirational to have other women showing what’s possible than riding on the coattails of their successful husbands. Until we get accused of lying, that is ;)

No it’s not. A women earning 6 figures will have had a vastly different experience to a man earning six figures, particularly if it’s a working mother vs a man with a stay at home wife.

30, qualified as a maths teacher following a law degree, worked way up at Assistant Head by 27 on circa £60k (inner London), left last year to do a mixture of educational consultancy and contracted Ofsted inspector - total expected earnings will be around £120k p.a but obviously the consultancy stuff can be unpredictable, I have a couple of stable and reliable clients though.

I'm 50 and all my income (six figures) is from letting property.

49, senior role in strategy in financial services. Got to 6 figures at 38.

Started in a bank on a graduate scheme and kept putting my hand up for more responsibility which led to bigger roles. One DC and I took 6 months maternity leave.

Another solicitor, I’ve been on 6 figures since my late 20s. These days NQs start on 6 figures in a lot of places!

It really isn’t up for you to decide what the rest of us are interested in reading. Cyber is hot. I am interested. You don’t own the internet.

Does anyone on six figures work in the creative industries?

Seems like all the money is in STEM type careers. Which is unfortunate if, like me, you work in the arts.

It’s also not solely women on MN.

Technology has opened up brilliant opportunities for me and I've been very lucky.

Having thought I was headed for a law degree and a brilliant career as a barrister, I crashed and burned at A-levels. A brilliant teacher suggested Economics with a CV modern European language, really great suggestion, worth the fees for that alone. I don't know what I would have done without that suggestion.

I had a brilliant year abroad with the language but arrived back with little in the way of a dissertation. A new mainframe computer had been installed, with the summer allowed for final user testing. They didn't have many takers to use this new facility so my project became very data heavy and almost wrote itself. Nowadays, people are much more savvy about how much effort it takes for a computer to produce lots and lots of output from a few data series. Even one year later, the assessors would have been much less impressed but it worked for me that year.

I stayed in touch with the computer people and in a year when many many better students were struggling to get a first job, I was offered a role as pt lecturer with an emphasis on encouraging take up of the computer.

It was expected that I register for a further degree. I was rescued from more economics by the arrival of a new conversion course MSc Information Technology along with a full grant, early '80s sigh

Had the pick of jobs ever since, sponsored on an MBA, Big 4 experience, international travel. I've been based much nearer home for the last twenty years, still very aware of how lucky I was to find a role in Technology.

Now, I would encourage anyone in higher education to pick a subject in a less popular area, so that you have much less competition for the plum roles. Day to day, it's much more important for me to have good people with whom to work than a particularly glamorous role on a glamorous sector, where you have to fight to progress. Much better to work for an organisation very keen to recruit.

How did you begin? Is it as much work as it seems?

I look forward to the influx of SAHDs telling us how wonderful and successful their wives are then 😉

Oh fuck off. Her post was interesting. Who cares if it's her or her husband!

Nowhere has she boasted.

And nor do you. I’m clearly not a lone voice in my view.

A women earning 6 figures will have had a vastly different experience to a man earning six figures, particularly if it’s a working mother vs a man with a stay at home wife.

Couldn't disagree with this more than I already do. Not having children has given me a very different experience to that of any mother.

I wish it were different to any parent, but here we are.

Wow. Academics on 6 figures are a rare breed. I'm impressed,

There I’ll always be women who come on to these posts about earnings and careers and describe their husbands achievements as if they are their own.

we haven’t quite moved beyond that unfortunately. I live in hope that one day a man will come on to boast about his wife’s achievements!

Neighbor’s wife bills $600/hour. Attorney in US - mostly medical clients. She left a government job and went to the dark side. She’s visibly miserable but he handles all the shuffling around of children, household duties, etc. He’s a retired career military officer and just happy to have a quiet life and wear normal clothes.

I have writer friends who earn that much. One is a TV drama writer. the other is a bestselling novelist. To put them into perspective, the average annual income for a writer has dropped to single figures!

Right, but I didn’t tell anyone not post.

Hi, similar path to me. Can I ask what you do now? Thanks