"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?

A very high earner would be over 180k

We have a family income less than half of that . Only one DC - now grown up but when he was younger he did extra curricular activities and sports clubs. We have always managed a couple of holidays a year - including at least one abroad and eaten out regularly . I have always had my hair coloured regularly too.

I imagine there is a big difference in our housing costs .

I would say over £70k is high income.

They’re still a high earner regardless if they’re gambling it away or not. Is Elon Musk going to say he’s not a high earner because building his own rockets is just so expensive he doesn’t have much left over for luxuries. I don’t think the thread is about the differences between a high earner and a wealthy person.

The problem is Elon musk probably doesn’t qualify as a high earner @BellePeppa , his tax obligations will be at the absolute minimum allowable. His ‘income’ won’t be declared through the channels that the standard PAYE employee is.

🤣🤣🤣

And I can see the OP's comment after yours that they didn't even pick up on your irony . Hilarious . Or maybe not .....

I'm a high earner - but money really does not buy health or happiness.
And as for it mitigating misery - only to a certain extent. I've spent two weeks in A and E wondering if I would live or die. Money is no help there.

Acting like anything around d £100k a more is not a high salary, in any part of the country is just wilfully ignorant. It doesnt take much thought or life experience to work out that it is a huge amount and way above average. I can't believe people intelligent enough to earn that much don't know that.

This question needs reframing as “high/low disposable income”

Of course it doesn't . Why should the person on £100k PA get to feel impoverished with less disposable income because they are paying the mortgage on a 5 bed detached property with grounds?

The only time this is relevant is in a comparison between an average wage person renting a two bed property in Nottingham vs someone on an average wage renting a similar property in London .

I think it depends on age and where you live - all relative really.

yea my older neighbour (an ex nurse) thinks 50k is a very high income. She has a 800k house & a 500k btl. Meanwhile my neighbours on the other side earn well but pay a shit ton of rent.

That's not the point of this thread though is it @yakkyok
If she is now retired she is expressing her understanding of a high salary based on when she was working .

@ShinyAppleDreamingOfTheSea why is it not the point? People opinion of what's a high earner is shaped by their own experience which can often be narrow or outdated.

Oh I did.

I remember EMA. It was known as Extra Money for Alcohol.

Outside the top few percent, it's subjective. Depends on age, stage, level of unacknowledged privilege, location, life experiences. I always feel quite well off as an adult because of not having had a pot to piss in growing up. But were I to start a thread referring to myself as well off on the income we're on, within about 5 minutes I'd hear from half a dozen posters whose grocery bills it wouldn't even cover.

You are tight in a really narrow sense - flatshares, student and retiree housing is sometimes available in London for under £1k. None of those would be acceptable (nor would you be accepted) as a family, or even a couple in most cases. The cheapest 2 bed I can see advertised in all of London is about £1,300

That it wouldn’t cover their grocery bill doesn’t make them not a high earner though.

A high earner with high spending is still a high earner. They just don’t have high leftover/disposable income.

Well yeah but it goes back to the point of how we decide whether the amount being discussed is high or not!

High earner, like middle or old age, is surely just a concept that’s slightly too far away from where an individual is at any point of time for them to recognise it’s actually them. Until you’re about 50, middle age is somewhere 20 years ahead of where you are. But at some point as you approach 70, old age becomes 20 years away, though you never actually get any closer to it ;)

Same with earnings…for me, high earner is always someone earning twice what I do, despite the fact that, objectively, I am one :)

Depends where you live. Here in Northern Ireland that would be classed as a very high earner, average wage here is about £25K a year. It's a meaningless phrase really that doesn't really take into account regional variations, for instance our teachers are paid much less. Like 'well-off' - well, rent here is about £700-£900 pm for houses in the city and £600- £700 pm for more rural. That's very do-able if you're earning that kind of money.

You can buy a fairly okay house in Greater Belfast for anything around £120 K (ex authority even cheaper) though obviously prices rise in more 'desirable' areas. So someone on £65k would be very comfortable here.

The top 1% of income earners pay 28% of all income tax receipts

amp.theguardian.com/business/2019/nov/13/richest-britain-income-tax-revenues-institute-fiscal-studies

Also the tax burden as a percentage of GDP is t its highest since the end of WW2 and Gov spending as a percentage of GDP is at its highest since the end of the 1970s.

So we are taxing more, spending more but still the country (NHS, education system etc) seems to be broken.