"High earners"

[JoanThursday1972]

I see this a lot on here. Exactly what makes someone a high earner? Over a specific figure? A high earner in Hartlepool will not be the same as one in the City of London. How high is high?

This is our situation. We earn about £85,000 as a household with me part time. I do not feel like a high earner by any stretch of the imagination. To me, £150,00 would probably be a high earner.

Absolutely nailed it.

So where is all you money going?

I never understand these posts. "Oh we earn 5 times what a lot of you here do, but we drive a banger and never have a holiday. We're not rich or anything!!"

....well where are you spending it then? Coke and hookers or massive savings? You have tons of money, stop pretending you're one step from a foodbank. It's obscene.

Yip- we are nurses and husband is on high tax. We really don’t have a huge take home wage.

I think people forget sometimes that the best thing high earning buys you is choices.

if you have a high mortgage, lots of expenses and the likes you can make changes. It might mean career change and drastic change, but the option is there somewhere.

if you’re on min wage, in a one bed social housing place, and already cut to the bones you have nowhere to go.

Well in Scotland, according to the SNP, it’s anyone earning over £28K. That’s the threshold at which we pay more tax than the rest of the UK, as we are “high earners”.
Humza Useless is now pushing for an effectively 68% tax rate for the top tax band. Which will drive the few remaining wealthy people out of Scotland.

I think technically it's probably anyone who is earning a substantial amount over the average. ONS says mean average in England is just shy of £40k [[https://uk.indeed.com/career-advice/pay-salary/average-uk-salary uk.indeed.com/career-advice/pay-salary/average-uk-salary so I'd say on that basis, it could be argued that anyone earning 25% higher than that is a high earner.

I tend to think of people on over £100k as high earners but then I work and live on the outskirts of London and am surrounded by lots of people in professional city jobs. I suspect the average income around here is significantly higher, which then skews what I think of as "high earner".

We live in an affluent area and whilst I don’t consider us as high earners, we are by many of these suggestions. However, we have the outgoings that mean it’s all used up.

I’d consider £250k+ a high earner.

Over 50k and the ability to asset hoard

Over 100k.
A 55k earner isn’t living lavish by any stretch of the imagination, there’s no private school in that bracket.

@TheSnowyOwl

Everyone has outgoings

Completely agree!

You can be a high earner and still not have much money. The two aren't mutually exclusive. Just like a low earner can still be wealthy - eg if they inherited a home so don't pay a mortgage or rent or have a separate income from investments/family etc.

Depends on location I think. To me it's over £100k. By which I mean one salary. A combined salary of 100k doesn't make you a high earner.

The fact that you have large outgoings doesn't make you not a high earner.

As a female high earner I would love it if there were more women posting who were able to discuss their own salaries rather than their DH/DPs salaries. But that is by the by.

the poster didn’t say she had no money and was not pretending she was skint. She simply said she lived frugally which I guess is a decision for her to make.

A lot of people might be saving money rather than spending it.

I for one am a high earner (90k) and my husband is about (150k), however you probably wouldn’t think quite that much by looking at us. We own cars that are 5 and 6 years old, not flashy. My husbands car is just a cheap skoda run about. I do have a horse but I keep her locally and do her myself so no high livery costs etc.

I for one got into huge amount of debt in my 20’s and never want to be in that place again. We both are working hard at clearing our mortgage, upping our pension pots and saving for retirement. We have a nice life and can pretty much buy most things we want but are not flashy in anyway. Purely because we don’t want to be living a frugal existence in retirement.

We have a household income of 100K, we regularly have meals out, days out, I can do the food shopping without worrying about what we are spending. We have 1 child aged 10. DS goes to a state school.
We have a smallish mortgage, have no other debt and we own our car outright. We don't have a top of the range car as we both WFH so its not needed.
Neither of us are overly concerned with labels, we do have the odd item of designer clothing (Tommy Hillfiger level of cost, not Gucci). I get my nails done now and then but I am not bothered about having it regularly.
We have a holiday abroad every year and a city break. Last year was Mexico for 2 weeks and then 4 days in Bruge.
From talking to friends who are in similar positions but have less disposable income the difference is they have the posh cars, usually on HP that they then have to pay for monthly. Some have a bigger house, we have a 4 bed detached in a lovely area, we could afford a bigger house but its just not needed.
We are not frugal but we don't like to be ripped off, I will spend good money on something if we think its worth it.
We prefer to spend our money on experiences, holidays, days out rather than designer clothes/bags and nice cars.

This is all perfectly reasonable but I think one thing it misses out on is that being able to pay off mortgage quickly, increase pension savings and buy pretty much whatever you need does put you into the category of relative wealth. The point is that as higher earners, you have choices about what do with your money. You choose to save for a future retirement rather than buy expensive cars, but it's still a form of wealth and flexibility that simply doesn't exist for a lot of other people.

DH and I often feel a bit skint but the reality is that our combined income does make us high earners - not stratospheric, but high earners. We are lucky enough to have bought a home but our mortgage is still quite high and expensive because we're self employed and no one has ever been willing to give us a good interest rate (worse now, obviously). We also choose to spend a lot of money on things like kids activities and things that make our life better. I'm not going to say however that we're struggling or that we don't count as high earners because we don't both drive fancy Mercedes. We have choices that a lot of other people don't have.

She said she lived frugally and went on to comment that high earners don't live like kings. She gave the impression that they can#'t afford holidays.

You see it all the time on here "Oh we have 200k a year but its all relative, life is expensive, we have nothing left over, its not as easy as you think".
Yes your life is expensive because you have chosen to make it that way, you have nothing left because you spend huge amounts of money.

The pretend poverty by high earners is pathetic. Its onl this thread even "It's relative, a high earner is not a high earner in London". Its still the same amount of money, if you spend more, you don't earn less!

I’m not pretending I’m using a food bank. That’s a huge reach from you there. I’m saying that people think those who are considered high earners are rolling in disposable income. It’s not true. We live in the South East, so everything’s fucking expensive. NOT in a huge house. The majority of the money goes on mortgage, bills, kids and savings.

£100k seems a decent benchmark to me. Obviously it goes further in some areas

It's called hyperbole.

And you have LOTS of money, and the freedom to save it. Playing the poor mouth is not ok.

I think the term high earner means different things to different people.

For me, high earner is probably 80k+ for a single person or 140k+ for a household. I often see posters who consider 100k household income to be high earning or other posters who think anything under 200k isn't high.

@RudsyFarmer

I dont think all higher earners are rolling in 'disposable' income.

They are rolling in income though

I'd say it's someone in the top 5% salary range - I think this is around/above £80,000 a year. If being in the top 5% doesn't make you a high earner I don't know what does!
However, there seem to be many wealthy people on Mumsnet who think you have to be on about £250,000 to be a high earner. They see £80,000 as verging on poverty. They really have no idea that many family survive on a 3rd of that (or less).

But to me that is different from “high earners” - the phrase lends itself directly to what a person earns rather than their wealth in general?