If you are minted....

[FeralBeryl]

*What is your/ partner's career or job?
*
Not a TAAT more a TIBAT (inspired by a thread)

Someone has a monthly take home pay of £11k
Not going to lie, I fully intend to suddenly obtain the necessary qualifications overnight for whatever it is. sure there'll be an online course....

I know there will have been a great deal of sacrifice, no work home balance etc. I'm not wanting to judge at all-I'm enthralled

Please.

No, actually I was saying rich enough to take a risk on the pension. I've got one though because I've always been employed and had an employer's contribution.

We are comfortably wealthy. That I admit but we are not mega rich if you take London and close to it as your benchmark.

I have put in ten hours today in a public sectorish professional job. I love it.

It is interesting how few women on here are high earning in their own right and rather depressing that women feel that they should have to give up their jobs in order to enable their husbands to be high earning. I wonder how many men do the same.

My DH had no connections or leg ups. Went to a bog standard comp and had parents who were, if anything, discouraging, lots of, "No lad that's not for the likes of us".

He has made his money through technical knowledge, but primarily through sales: basically he is just extremely likeable and people buy millions of pounds of stuff off him and we take a 10% cut.

Of course we have been very fortunate financially but we have also had our hard times and taken risks. And like lots of self employed people we have never been massive spenders because we have never been entirely sure how long the fantastic times would last. Anyhow we have a big pot now and will be retiring next year in our early 50s. Most people think we have lost the plot; they have no idea how much money we make.

I have put in ten hours today in a public sectorish professional job. I love it.

Not many of those with an 11k a month take-home though, so what you do must be very niche.

I think that one thing hasn't been said on this thread is that financial success is, in many cases, down to expertise in one's field coupled with business acumen. Technical ability and qualifications will generally allow a person to command a decent salary but to get to the next level money wise they generally need to be a driver of their business in a commercial sense. For example - the rainmaker in the law firm. The exception to this might be an elite surgeon or barrister for whom technical skill is enough but these people are very rare.

Comiconce, I'm sorry to hear that things are challenging and I wish you well. DH and I do not come from financially privileged backgrounds at all, and we had no connections whatsoever when entering our profession, so I like to think of us as entirely self made. However we did have parents who couldn't offer much career guidance but did offer support.

DH earns the money; I just have a job. I earn normal money and usually work normal hours. But I love having a place in the normal world.

Thing is what is wealth changes depending on who you know who has more or less than you.

We have about 3-4 million in investments and maybe another million in realisable assets (car, house etc). DH should be able to continue working to feed this level of savings for at least another 10 years. He loves what he does. We have to put 3 children through private school and university in the US. We reckon we have about a million in education costs still to come. We give between 5-10 percent of our gross income to charity every year, most of it to homeless charity.

We are incredibly wealthy by any standards and in particular by the standards of where we live. We live in a nice but not wealthy part of town.

My kids go to schools with families who range from no where near our level of wealth to mega rich - owners of sports teams, venture capitalists, bankers (in my experience nobody earns as much serious wealth as the finance people). So we don't look like we are wealthy by comparison, believe it or not our children don't think they are rich. They know they are privileged but they see rich as different.

It is immensely cathartic to actually say what we have and earn out loud, even if anonymously. I would never tell anyone in real life.

Yep, DH has niche technical skill but it's so well regarded now that he's become a rainmaker iyswim.

The bit I hesitate to say is that when I met him, when he was late 20s, he didn't have much social confidence. I met him, fell in love and worked the room for him. His confidence has grown over a few decades but it's largely due to his technical expertise and because others don't care if he can't make small talk. He invites the clients to Glyndebourne and Covent Garden because he loves the opera. I deal with the small talk and steer him away from boring them rigid about pace and key and why it was written.

I completely agree with Pallisers. Our children don't think they are rich either.

I hadn't heard that term "Rainmaker". DH is definitely a rainmaker.

In my childhood, we had run out of food and had nothing to eat by Sunday before the Child Benefit et al was collected on Monday.

But your children do not think they are rich.

Staggering.

We are not minted but I see from the press that people who start IT companies and then sell them make huge amounts of money. It's a one off thing but they make enough so as not to have to work any more.

This thread isn't about families who run out of food is it though?

I am sorry if you were ever hungry but many children whose families have been very poor haven't been hungry.

But Queenliz if those kids are at school with super duper mega rich kids, of course they won't perceive their own good fortune as being rich.
It really is relative.

We can pay our bills, have the opportunity to do extra hours in order to save for Naice Things etc but I still feel very skint a lot of the time considering how hard we work.

We have different groups of friends though-some I feel practically on the breadline next to, others I feel like Richie Rich and feel like I downplay our earnings so as not to 'gloat' or be seen to.

I am the higher earner in our household on £130k plus a car allowance which pays for the one vehicle we need (live in London). I am in financial services. DH works in the public sector earning £65k. We are both in our mid-30s.

We both went to private schools and had a strong work ethic instilled in us despite coming from privileged (although in my case not a 'minted' background - Dsis and I were military kids so school partly paid for). I started my first part time job at 16 and worked throughout sixth form and university.

I have two degrees and am Chartered in my field of work, as is DH. My second degree was for interest sake which I did in my late twenties.

We have a comfortable life. Meals out, lovely holidays etc. Our children are at a local state primary but may go to private secondary schools.

My line of work involves credit cards so I have a good understanding of the financial demographic of this country and think we are very, very lucky to live the lifestyle we have. Yes, we have worked hard but our parents have a lot to be thanked for even now. They gave us love and support, role models, ambition and now help our careers by helping care for our DCs.

Doctor here with 10 years+ experience. Take home around £3.5k. I feel well off and privileged to earn this amount. Staggering to read what others earn, and interesting that's mainly the DH who are earning it not the women in the main.

I make sure that my children know they are rich. They are in the richest 1% of children in the world and the richest 5% in the UK based on parental earnings. The BBC regularly have a quiz that you can do- b0th my DH and I came in the highest earning 5% in the UK individually when we did that last year, interestingly when we did it joint it stayed at 5% - so there must be. big gap between getting in the top 5% and getting into the top 3% etc

the IFS one is also good:

www.ifs.org.uk/wheredoyoufitin/

I wouldn't describe us as rich - don't know what minted means but we are very comfortable. Among my family we are the poor ones - and we did not come from privilege!
DCs know they are very lucky, they get everything they need but do not get spoiled, they thankfully have no interest in designer clothing...they would like the latest gadget but they don't get it.
We have interesting holidays - the dcs have to rough it a bit....I don't want them to have an - "I only stay in 5*hotels" attitude.
We drive 2 very modest cars - one is begging to be scrapped, the other is 3 years old - neither would win a beauty contest.
Dh works very long hours and enjoys it for the most part, but it does not affect our relationship, sometimes we don't get to talk much through the week but we make time at the weekends....I am a SAHP, stress levels in our household are low.
Despite or maybe because of being at a level where contributing to a pension costs dh more than he puts in - he no longer contributes - but dh worries about the income drop we will feel when we are older.

I think you have to want to earn money as part of your career...I went to a well regarded uni and many of my peers took grad roles in accountancy/management accountancy firms. I couldn't think of anything worse. When I asked them about how boring/corporate it was and why they did it they were all very focused on long term and the short term financial rewards. They all do slightly different stuff now (mid 40's) and are very well off. They work long hours doing stuff I would find soleless and uninspiring. My job is amazing, fascinating and a privilege to do, but will never earn me that kind of money.... But if I'd wanted that kind of money I'd have taken a different course...

My DC know they are rich. So do their peers. They are reminded of their good fortune and privilege regularly.

As for luck versus hard work, well it's always a combination, isn't it? DH and I really don't come from well connected families. Quite the opposite. We were both poor growing up ( me especially as we were on benefits a fair bit of the time).

But we are of an age when it was easier to be socially mobile. University was free. And hardly anyone went so it wasn't difficult to stand out and get a decently paid job; IIRC my starting salary in 1991 was 18 grand. I wasn't even qualified! And I bought a flat on 100% mortgage in central London.

Though I loathed Thatcher with a passion, DH and I are most certainly her poster boys/girls.

That said, we have done everything in our power to capitalise on that good fortune. And therein lies the difference between us and others. Yes, to accruing marginal gains, yes to never crumbling under pressure, yes to grabbing opportunities.

juggling I think the reason why it's one spouse who earns the £££ and the other stats at home/works very part time is that family life would just not be sustainable if both parents worked to the same degree. That's how it is for me and my similarly "minted" friends. All the kid related stuff, domestic tasks, admin etc etc wouid have to be majorly outsourced otherwise (which is fine if that's what happens). And knowing that I am dealing with all that stuff provides some comfort to DH that he can concentrate on what he does without distraction.

Absolutely hettie - my DH deliberately took the ACA route to make money. He enjoys his job but he would rather bring home a good salary rather than job satisfaction.

My brother went to Oxford and chose to work as a media luvvie - he has produced household name TV shows and films and his entry on IMDB is stunning. However, he feels skint especially when he sees the very few people in his industry who are very rich.

My DC know that we are comfortable. If DS asks how much money we have I usually say " enough"
DD has just started Private Secondary from state primary and she knows she's very fortunate to be there when her state educated peers talk about the fight they witnessed at school or how short of resources they are. However, she's now among other people with money which she wasn't really before and I think she's starting to see some differences in how some of them live. For example, they had all been discussing the new £5 note at school and one of the boys brought a load in and gave them out. I made her give him 5 £1 in return!! There are also a couple of showjumping families at school. However, we ARE in Yorkshire so nobody really gets above themselves!!!
We aren't flash, we don't come from money and I make sure my DC value what we have

Comiconce we didn't need anything to start up. We took a risk. We have an IT business. DH resigned from his job and went straight into a contract. His salary doubled overnight but the contract was for 3 months so no guarantee of any further work. Fortunately he has worked solidly for 5 years. Moving around means he has met a lot more people. In the last months we have branched out a bit. Again a risk as dh has dropped his hours of paid work to start something new. We are fortunate that we are in a position to do this but it is of our own making. I work in the company too but more of admin role.