To ask your salary, profession, location and years of experience

[Nosey77]

I know I am being really nosey and it's not very British to talk money. I was inspired by another thread where people are asking questions to all sorts of careers.

I was just wondering if people could take part and say what they do, how much they earn and where they are. Also, could you also provide advice on how to enter the profession and whether you recommend it. Thought this might be more u self than just go ogling as I get real life opinions and have found the other thread really insightful

Please let's not make anyone feel bad for what they are. I'll start

Retail assistant, 3 year, Leeds, £6.50ph. Whilst I actually enjoy it, I'm looking to leave. No advice needed - just hand in tour CVs

Football mum from a fellow lawyer I think in your position I'd stay put. Your hours and commute sound a dream, and if you enjoy it there I'm not sure the extra money would be worth the lifestyle sacrifice - though obviously it's up to you.

Footballmum. What you are doing sounds great and your quality of life outside London is possibly than many in London on twice as much. I used to earn a lot if money pre children and then started again and have earned about what you earn doing something fulfilling for many years now with the bonus of a 10 min journey to work and being available for children's plays andcemergencies. Local is invaluable for children and became more important when they were teenagers and doing exams, etc.

Not wanting to irk the successful women lawyers in this thread but I stepped down from my career to support my lawyer dh. Both of us doing a demanding job wouldn't have combined with family life and his driven uncompromising tack and this way it worked for us. He freely admits he wouldn't have been as successful if I hadn't taken over all home related responsibilities and facilitated him to do it. I was ready to take a back seat career wise which is why it worked.

DH and I have watched so many lawyer's marriages collapse due to the hours and it saddens us.

Writer and editor. Work in political communications and research, and the education sector. Currently part-freelance and part-employed by a Russell Group university in the North.

Salary varies from £20k pa to £50k pa, depending on the amount of freelance work in a year.

Have a BA, 2 MAs, MDip, and 19 years experience (shit, that makes me feel old). Also have international teaching experience at secondary level.

Would recommend pol coms and research; would not recommend education sector. Freelance deadlines often mean working until the early hours (hence username). Dual nature of income sources screws me in a million ways (maternity leave only based on 0.5 fte etc, even though sometimes 40 percent of freelance in a non-campaign year will come from education employer who pays through PAYE route). Used to suffer serious burnout every 12 months or so.

Years of low pay getting political and editorial experience (even did internships while on JSA for a while), but got some crazy perks along the way. Route I took probably no longer exists.

Football Mum - I think your current set up sounds great and stick with it. If you don't have a gaping hole in your finances that the extra money is desperately needed for, then adding all of the incertainty of the city job might outweigh the benefits the extra cash would bring.

Also, I think its important to look at how far you've come rather than comparing with a snapshot of others who maybe didn't have as complex a journey to get to their position. I am guilty of feeling disappointed with myself that I don't also do X, Y or Z that I see others in my position do, and then I try to remember that I'm really not supposed to be where I am at all. My original career goal was so different just because my horizons were smaller (I am not, ahem, classic City lawyer material).

Lawyer. NW. 13 years PQE. £60K FTE (4 year non legal degree, 4 years in FTSE 100 graduate management scheme in law related sector, 2 years post grad law conversion + LPC, 2 year training contract, 13 yrs as qualified lawyer).

Haven't read the whole thread but what I have read gives quite a one - sided view of law (if I have missed posts from regional non - corporate lawyers I apologise).

Law is quite unusual in that there is massive diversity in salaries. Six figure salaries outside of London are rare (in my experience other than for equity partners) and due to maternity leave / part time hours / general child care there are less female equity partners than men. Law is still quite a male dominated profession with conservative views.

I work relatively long hours - 8 am until 7pm, logging on when the children are in bed and on my days off. H (also a lawyer - similar salary) does normal office hours but works at home in the evenings - until 10/11/midnight- too. It is a very stressful job (we are both in medium sized regional commercial firms in contentious specialisms- lots of Court work) and face being found negligent (and potentially struck off) for making a mistake or missing a deadline. I often think that we don't earn enough (compared to other professions - accountants / doctors) for the stress and hours we work.

Neither H nor I would choose it as a profession if we had our time again. We both enjoy what we do in the main, but the majority of our peers in industry / management / accountancy have less stressful jobs, work fewer hours and earn more.

beaufort your comment about stepping down doesn't irk me in the slightest

My DH did similar. Although he continues to work, he does so extremely flexibly. For example when our DC started a new school he took 7 months off to help them settle in to new routine.

My job is very international and I agree that two of us doing such a demanding job would have impacted on family life - even with the excellent support network we have so his career has taken a back seat and certainly in the earlier years I wouldn't have been as successful if he hadn't being picking up the domestic slack.

As I said now it's very different - I can (and do) work from home - like a pp says no one actually cares whether I'm in the office or on a flight to China.

Thanks for all the feedback. You've confirmed what my gut has been telling me!

I also hope that my story gives those looking at the thread a slightly different view of lawyers. It's not compulsory to go to Uni and get a degree. There are alternative career paths. They may take a little longer but the advantage is that you're earning whilst studying. I currently have a 16 year old apprentice working for me who'd been told she'll never be more than a PA if she doesn't get a law degree! Nothing wrong with that but she's desperate to become a lawyer and had written it off because her family can't afford to send her to university and she's a carer for her Dad.

She's now looking into local vocational legal courses and is planning her career in the law. If I'm lucky enough to be able to train her up to qualified status it will be one of my biggest achievements and worth more than a £20K pay increase!!

www.bwd-search.co.uk/2015/06/the-80000-job-nobody-wants/

There are hardly any women doing this I could say conservatively one in 12 at the most!

I'm a carer I get £62.10 per week in benefit - which I'll lose most of from next April due to it being household means tested benefit and thethresholds all changing.

DS1 has Autism and is high needs, DS2 is neurotypical and DD is a complex case with physical and social integration/ communication issues under investigation (not pursued any disabled registration for DD pending outcome of investigations)

Not a career choice. DS1 had no suckle reflex when born and was high needs. XH was going to be a SAHD but couldn't cope and left when DS2 was 1.

I qualified as a Mechanical Engineer. Started out in construction then moved into manufacturing, then project management and finally data control.. Money was good. Ten years ago I was earning around £40k plus a £6k car allowance plus around 15% salary as shares for an in theory 4 day week. I found keeping the days to 4 very hard and did some work 7 days. I was on the phone to work sorting out things three days after my emergency csection. Theoffice used to send a taxi to take me into meetings because I couldn't drive. I loved it. I loved the variety and constant challenges. I liked that I had thousands of bits of data going round my head and that I was very well respected and considered a reliable person who'd give direct answers.

I would have quickly progressed and i'd already been told that a directorship at a group company would be mine at some point so my salary package would have hit six figures.

I don't think engineering is generally family friendly for men or women. In each of the companies I worked there was lots of travel at short notice. It is very rewarding mentally though and financially pretty good.

30 and tired. That's fantastic. Really curious as to what you do and which is the poorest county but you're only 30 and you are tired so I'm wondering that it's maybe not so great.

Just wonder how to advise my grandkids. I'm sure their parents will be advising them too. Plenty of time yet. The nearest one to university has 6 years. The other seven but his parents were probably ypthe last of the lucky ones who managed to leave without debt.

Have only read half the thread and my eyes water at some of your ( well deserved ) salaries. You've all worked so hard. You have really put the hard graft in and in so many cases you seem to really enjoy your jobs and a lot of you are still grafting away albeit with good rewards.

Both me and soon to be DH are pensioners so not a lot of money coming in but we live quite frugally by that I don't mean weak tea and gruel. We eat well but not extravagantly. We drive cheap ( but reliable) second hand cars. We are bargain shoppers ( who isn't?) . We are not quite in gods waiting room yet but we watch our health.
One thing I think we do have apart from a loving family and excellent friends is a very good quality of life. Long may it last ;-)

I wish it for each and every one of you,

Leave university that is

Nursery cook.
32 hours per week.
£16,000 pro rata.
Yorkshire.
I fall into the category of 'could a', 'would a', 'should a'.
But, I was idle and thought I knew better all those years ago....
Having said that, I do love being around the children and there is nothing more lovely than them running up to you for a big hug, just because you're there. Big love, big time.

Footballmum, that's interesting I dropped out of a law degree at uni, and became PA, I know that I am a much better PA than I ever would be lawyer

judging by what I have read on here, if what you do makes you happy and it's not illegal then I count that as being successful. Whether that's a six figure salary or earning no money as a SAHP, if it works for you and you are happy doing it then that's a big tick in contentment box.

Only one person's mentioned media sales. This is where I earned most of my money. You can do it for local or national media; there isn't a lot of crossover between the two, and there are differences.

For local advertising sales, you would normally start in telesales with your local paper or radio station. It doesn't pay huge money but is usually very good for the area and you get social kudos. You'd be trained up. The job is very much about selling and you also get to know a lot about the media in your area, local businesses and how it all works. Degrees an advantage, but the really want friendly & numerate people with a can-do attitude.

National advertising sales, either in London or a regional centre, is more scientific and more likely to require a degree or marketing qualification. Many will put you through professional courses if you show enough promise. For instant money and plenty of glamour, try television: there's a lot of competition for entry-level places. Magazines and radio can be tremendous fun to work with, and of course the biggest growth area is online advertising. Those three streams offer a lot of creative scope if you're an ideas person. Cinema's also fun. National newspapers pay very well: they tend to be quite macho hard in terms of sales intensity.

Specialist media - business or in-house publications, websites & conferences - are generally a bit less frenetic, both sales-wise and socially. They also pay very decently and are wonderful if you've got a real interest in the subject areas.

Media jobs come with expense accounts and often a car. If you genuinely like people, love going out, can do arithmetic and think on your feet, it's a brilliant career.

The other side of the job is media buying with an ad agency. Great for fast-thinking number crunchers and has a more intellectual path into media planning & evaluation, which can go stratospheric.

It's amazing how few people ever wonder how the ads get into the media! There are specialist media recruitment agencies; employers also hire direct.

Freelance translator. Would be on about sixty thousand if I hadn't gone part time. I'm at the higher end of the earning band thoug. Been doing it fifteen years.

beau - not irked at all. However pity you were not a man writing this:

Not wanting to irk the successful male lawyers in this thread but I stepped down from my career to support my lawyer dw. Both of us doing a demanding job wouldn't have combined with family life and his driven uncompromising tack and this way it worked for us. She freely admits she wouldn't have been as successful if I hadn't taken over all home related responsibilities and facilitated her to do it. I was ready to take a back seat career wise which is why it worked.

DW and I have watched so many lawyer's marriages collapse due to the hours and it saddens us."

So why was ti you and not your husband who gave up work? Is he better than you are? Did he get better exam results or have a higher IQ? Or are you from sexist families where women support men and men are the earners? Or is it just "natural" that women serve and men earn? or did you just happen to marry someone who was more successful and earned more perhaps because women marry up and men marry down?

Nope, none of that. I had a very successful City career in my 20s and early 30s. 12-15 hour days and was burnt out by the time we had our first child who was very unwell as a baby. He's nearly 21 now. At that point most of our equity was mine and I owned my own house in London. I wasn't particularly well parented and wanted to focus on that. I had some wonderful years at home and then retrained to do something I love. A professions job but in a different sector which I've done for ten years or so now and which I think I'd have done anyway even if I hadn't met DH. When we met, DH was on the point of leaving the bar because he had no backing, it was tough and the fees were coming in too slowly.

I hope that answers your questions and reassures your concerns about stereotyping.

And lest I forget RedDaisyRed in the last 24 months I have project managed two property renovations. Our old family home and a short lived family home. Net profit on the former was £539k from starting valuation and £460k on the latter. Not quite on a par with DH's annual earnings but done alongside my little £50k pa job.

I wouldn't normally put that out there but the tone of your post was was so unpleasant it required a response. My success meant my DH could build his and subsequently I think I have more than earned my keep.

Beau - RedDaisy has form for demeaning the choices of women.

But I have to ask: you've made almost £1m from property and your DH earns more than £1m?

Or did I misread?

nosey
I'm not in corporate finance but rather asset management (aka a fund manager) for a UK household name. I highly recommend the career for women but it's unbelievably hard to find women at entry level - they don't actually apply in the first place.

I have an undergraduate degree in accounting & another vocational subject, I worked as a graduate in the vocational subject which put me into regular contact with fund management clients, then transferred to the buyside. I have also done the CFA designation which was extremely tough. The latter is only necessary for asset management, investment consulting or equity research. It's nice but won't open doors in corporate finance.

Corporate finance is usually either graduate entry or from the Big-4 post ACA. A good MBA (i.e. LBS) is another route but quite an American approach. ACCA isn't usually the right qualification but there's a dearth of analysts at the moment so they can't be as picky. It's bloody long hours but the upside is a bonus that can be multiples of your base salary, and you can exit to private equity or really any part of the industry if you put the right spin on it.

I'm surprised to see no investor relations/capital raisers or investment consultants here - there's good female representation in that area for the city.

sparechange you don't need to be studying finance or working in finance to take the CFA exams. They will happily accept anyone's money!

Winnie, the pp did this over 24 months so I would read it as her DH earns more than £500k pa (though he might earn over a million for all I know!)

RedDaisy why would you respond to such informative, and thoughtful posts from BeaufortBelle like that? Why in earth would you ask someone who is clearly so capable such small-minded and negative questions, and jump to conclusions about her family's decisions?

Congratulations on your enormous achievements Beaufort! I would love to do such property renovations.

I started a marketing related business 15 years ago...at its max we employed 40 people and I took home anything from £250 - 350k a year in dividends through working my butt off day and night. I was single, free and loved it all. Could never have done it with a family.

I sold most of the business last year, had a baby, and now trying to restart as an independent consultant. I am finding it very difficult...I seem to have lost a good deal of confidence, creativity and I guess 'balls'. Hoping it comes back soon!

I so admire women who get things straight back on track after having a baby....I don't think I am doing a very good job so far.