Does everyone on MN earn loads of money!?

[whatsausername]

for context, I earn 27K per annum and so does my husband. We have one DC. We are early 30s.

I just feel all the posts I read on here more or less everyone is loaded. Don’t get me wrong we can comfortably pay our bills but we have to save for anything big (holiday Xmas etc)

we still private rent. I’d love a mortgage but it’s not gonna be in the next 5 years for us.

everyone on MN seems to have huge houses, loads of holidays and multiple DC’s 🫣

I filled it in and accidentally put our annual income as our weekly one… 😂I wish!

i imagine plenty of threads are made up, as usual.

When we were early 30's we were skint too. Our idea of a holiday was a Sun newspaper £9.99 caravan for a weekend and I bought second hand toys for my toddler. 15 years later and both our salaries have grown massively, we no longer have childcare costs and can both work full time and can afford the things we want with very little forward planning. I was much slimmer too because we couldn't afford many treats or much alcohol.

You only have to look at how many posts the private school threads get to realise a large section of Mumsnet is fairly well off. People like to think it’s fantasists but that’s just daft…lots of people are on here who have 30k per kid spare each year to pay fees.

I think it’s ignorant to think people do not earn these incomes but it does irk me on threads asking what women do to make 6 figure and so many answers are “I don’t myself but DH…”

The posters saying about people being on 6 figures being too busy to post on here! Well I’d assume it’s their partners who are working part time or not at all.

I personally hate it when high earners post a thread about something they’re struggling with and then a load of low earners pile on saying it’s time deaf,they live in 100 pennies a month and they should try that. Everyone should be entitled to use this as they wish!

I think there are a lot of people just in the middle. Too much for benefits, but not 6 figures.

Are you talking about schemes like Tax Free childcare? Because I definitely wasn’t entitled to anything when I was earning £40k as a single parent.

1.3M people is certainly not enough to keep certain industries and sectors afloat.
and once we get to the 98th percentile it just doesn’t add up , the income generated in this bracket just doesn’t sustain a very wealthy lifestyle , by logic very high end business would stop operating, or operate on a very small scale , or move elsewhere because just a very few can afford these services.

Why wouldn’t high earners have time to post on MN? Different careers will take different paths and I can only speak for myself but I have far more time to dick about on the internet now than when I was younger and in lower paid roles.

in part that’s because I now have young kids so I’m not out in the evenings anywhere near as much, but it’s also because I work far fewer hours now - early in my career I was proving myself and gaining the experience I needed and actually doing the work but nowadays I just use that experience to make decisions and direct other people’s work.

@queenofarles but isn't some of that because the difference between the 1% and the 0.1% will be billions.

by logic very high end business would stop operating, or operate on a very small scale

What do you mean by high end? Certainly expensive cars have limited production & designer clothing brands make the majority of their money from things like perfume & make up.

The Times Rich List just revealedd_the wealth concentrated in the hands of a tiny number of people. Let’s unpack what it showed.
Firstly: the number of billionaires in the UK has increasedd_ from 15 in 1990 to 156 in 2025.
Secondly, the scale of their wealth is comparable to nation states’ economic output: the 350 richest individuals and families on the Rich List holdd_combined wealth of £772.8 billion, more than the GDP of countries like Belgium, Argentina or Ireland.

You only have to look at how many posts the private school threads get to realise a large section of Mumsnet is fairly well off.

So many of the VAT on PE threads were bizarre, many posters claimed poverty.

What do you do op that is really low wage for early 30s?

If cleaners and shop staff live in London they will almost certainly be in social housing and /or being supported by universal credit top ups

People earn different amounts. Not news really. Pensions threads and salary threads are going to attract those with good ones.

Yes but still not comparable to a high earner’s income!

Also a lot of young people working in those roles and living with a parent who owns and had the benefit of purchasing when property prices were lower.

But yes, it's just plain fact that there are lots of low income people in London who are able to live there because they're sheltered from the worst of 2025 private rental and first time buyer prices. A person living on 25k in social housing, with a parent or in a property they bought in 2009 tells us absolutely fuck all about whether someone on a much higher income has anything left over after private rent and childcare. And a shop worker who has DC and privately rents in the capital will likely be getting UC as well.

Depends what you mean by a high earner.

If you have a low wage but lot of childcare and private rental costs in an expensive area, you can end up with an award that leaves your take home income the same as someone on a much higher wage with no top ups. Because that's how UC works. The distinction is that the person whose income comes fully from their wage doesn't necessarily have high childcare and/or housing costs, whereas the person with a high UC award by definition does (unless some very niche disability related situations).

Have a play in one of the entitlement calculators, try putting in childcare for 2-3 kids and rent in a dear London borough and see what it gets you.

Is it not just London Vs the rest of the UK though? Nearly all the high earning jobs are in London.

I grew up the countryside and I didn't know a single person on six figures. The highest salary my Dad ever reached (and he worked hard and only just retired) was about £30k. Everyone I knew was similar.

Now I live in London the lowest earning person I know well is on £80k, the highest is on £300k which to me is an insane salary.

But nearly all these jobs don't even exist where I grew up, and there wasn't a city within commuting distance with similar jobs.

I’m customer facing in a bank. I used to earn more as a manager for Debenhams in my 20s but was offered redundancy when I was on maternity leave in 2018 and took it. It allowed me to be a SAHM until my DS was 4. Now I do this job because it’s mon-fri so works round childcare.

Nope. Cancer patient. Riddled with debt. Never going to get employed out of it as who wants an old, chronically ill employee.

What do you mean by high end? Certainly expensive cars have limited production & designer clothing brands make the majority of their money from things like perfume & make up
I don’t mean Designer brands or just cars. But even brands are doing well in non perfume and beauty goods.
Let’s look at Things like Property management, home renovations and design, they Are all predicted to keep growing. there are no signs of any stagnant.
Not to mention the UK is still the second largest Art market after the US. Even if the majority of sales are by foreigners , uk based business are still benefiting.

@queenofarles which brands?

Property management, home renovations and design,

But a lot of this money comes from equity gains.

What do you think is wrong with the data from the IFS link?

Plus many people can't afford the next step up the ladder so put money into extensions instead.

Certainly in my part of SW London house prices are started to stagnant & many flats have sold for less of the same if they were bought post Brexit.