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.

wheat for me it is all about reaching certain career goals, now. Those goals will definitely earn me lots of money, but that's not the primary motivation.

DH is different. He constantly seeks to earn more dosh. And I do wonder when he will be sated. He certainly has no interest in early retirement (though he could pack in work today realistically - we could live comfortably from our investments).

"The thing I take away from this thread is that there are an awful lot of people earning an awful lot more than one might suspect."

Oh I really disagree with this!

The facts have not changed: the average U.K. Salary remains around the 28k mark. People earning over one hundred thousand are few. People earning over 250k are very rare.

Just because a self selecting group of high earners comes on his thread to have a frank discussion about wealth does not mean there are lots of wealthy people out there. It just means MN attracts a disproportionate amount of wealthy folk and lots of them chose to join this discussion

The truth is that people with multiple houses and cars and privately educated kids are wealthy, no matter how you (they) cut it.

"If you move on from your past, you're accused of forgetting where you came from/losing sight. If you keep it close, you're accused of failing to recognise you're current situation."

Very true.

MN has a highly educated demographic, plus a slightly older one, so I guess there will be more wealthy people here than would be normal in the general population.

you move on from your past, you're accused of forgetting where you came from/losing sight. If you keep it close, you're accused of failing to recognise you're current situation.

That's very true. My life isn't that different to 6 years ago. People who I work with who have an idea of what we earn, are always a bit shocked when they find out we haven't moved, what we drive etc.

Our solution is to do what makes us happy not worry about what others think we should be doing.

Do any of you have an end goal? A certain amount in the bank or a certain age or anything or do you just take it as it comes?

Our end goal isn't set in stone. We will either sell the business when we are older or give it to the kids if they want it. I don't mention that to the kids as I don't want to influence what they want to do in the future. I wouldn't want them to feel they have to take it over, or think they don't need to worry education because they will automatically have a job with us.

As it stands dd wants to be an engineer (12) and ds (5) wants to be curious George this week so who knows

We are just going to see how it goes.

I think too that it depends on the people you mix with. I live in an area where there's a lot of conspicuous consumption and to them we look fairly frugal with an ordinary nice 4 bed house and a 3 year old mid range car. I'm sure they have no idea of our income.

On the other hand, the sector I work in,in contrast to DH in investment banking, is not highly paid. I certainly wouldn't dream of mentioning our house, holidays or that I've got a child in a private school. When asked, DH works in IT and does something to do with databases and I don't elaborate and we've been on holiday to Spain - no details as to what we've done there, where we've stayed or what class of flight we've taken. I don't let the children post showoffy Instagram posts either and remind them that having "things" doesn't make them a better or nicer person and that it's lovely to enjoy our life but it's not nice to show off about it because a) it's bad manners and b) might annoy or upset other people and doesn't show you as a good and sensitive person.

Banker

I am a divorce lawyer so I get to see what people earn

The people earning the most are:

anyone working in the corporate sector ie the lawyers, accountants, bankers,
people working in IT
people working in the oil business
people who invested in the 1990s in property
people with own businesses

most lawyers and medics earn less than £100k - basically do not go into the "professions" if you want to be very wealthy as save for a few, it is not going to cut it ....

I do think that when people are trying to get to the top then money forms part but not the sole motivation. Once you get there, it largely becomes irrelevant as one of the motivating factors. You can live a very luxurious life with about £15k net per month, and after that you either save/invest the rest or go for Uber rich status symbols. Problem with the latter approach is that we worry about looking like utter knobs

"The thing I take away from this thread is that there are an awful lot of people earning an awful lot more than one might suspect."

I also think there are an awful lot of internet bullshitters.

Lots of people earning loads of money with time to post on MN?

I have noticed a few people on mn who claim to have high flying jobs where all the facts haven't added up.
I think some people like the dream about the life they want.

I have a grand plan to get DH retired early at 50 (10 years from now). In theory, he has agreed that if I can accumulate a certain amount that is not earmarked for anything else (I.e. on top of pension money etc) by his 50th birthday, he will retire. Lately, however, he's been hinting that he will just swap into a less stressful job instead of retiring. Urgh.

I my self am semi retired and benefited greatly from rising London property prices since the 1980's. There was a lot of hard work, and some risks taken, but an awful lot of luck too.

Oh I'm sure there are some people who live fantasy lives, and also those who put a spin on things.

Look at Facebook and how people portray their lives as an endless round of fun and frolics.

Though that said, people on FB would be doing that for people they actually know right? I can never get my head around why anyone would lie or self agrandise on an anonymous forum. I mean why?

For me the lure of MN is being able to be truthful without any comeback.

But I wouldn't read too much into people having time to post. High earners are not too busy for frippery. In fact, they're at their desks/on their phones more than most.

I also think that a lot of the time the money becomes secondary to the work. My own father came from nothing and is very successful. He's pushing 70 and still working. His concession to age has been to cut down to 4 days a week whilst still seeing clients on a Sunday morning, working in the evenings etc etc. This is not about money, he doesn't need to work a minute more, it's about motivation and stimulation. Apparently he will retire in about 3 years but hold on to a few clients.

I have no idea what he earns, but I can't imagine it's much less than £250k plus he has half a dozen investment properties plus the 5 bed family home that he still lives in. His aspirations aren't for more money, it's for stimulation. He has a plan for when he retires, and he's working on it at the moment and it doesn't involve relaxing and travelling the world. People who are successful don't stop, their mind is always on the next thing. It's not always to make more money but it's to constantly challenge themselves to see what more they can achieve and failure or giving up just isn't an option they consider

I'm more truthful on here than in real life.
None of my family and friends know our income.
I suppose some people could be exaggerating or just making things up though.

I think the ones most likely to be making it up are not lying about their income but more the breezy way they say "oh, 11k a month is really not hat much" when they know full well that it is a shedload! But it plays to a bugger picture of ease with extreme wealth that is appealing to them.

I honestly think you must be on a different planet if you don't think having a home in Surrey, another home in France, nice cars, children through Independent school, staff etc is not a spectacular lifestyle. Sure it is not quite the Beckhams but dear God .

I say this as someone who's comfortably off and I thank my lucky stars every day for where I am.

Banker and lawyer

We have plenty of money but shitty shitty work life balance. And no sleep thanks to combination of long work hours and small non sleeping DC. It's stupid and I would like to "downsize". Can't get DH to agree though, he is all about the long term.

I'm with hoppinggreen and others. Our neighbours have no idea we have another home, no idea of DH's job. Occasionally corporate types will say "not xx xxx who does?". At work I keep very quiet. Far more honest on Mnet.

I honestly think you must be on a different planet if you don't think having a home in Surrey, another home in France, nice cars, children through Independent school, staff etc is not a spectacular lifestyle. Sure it is not quite the Beckhams but dear God hmm.

But there is a difference between comfortable and minted.

Minted IMO you could prob stop working and live off investments etc

Comfortable to me means a very nice life with decent homes, holidays, lifestyles but that it needs to be maintained via income from some kind of work... A change in circumstances for someone netting £11k per month who has an expensive house, schools and other "luxuries" to pay for could mean a LOT of big changes.

I went to a Comp and was the first in my family to go to Uni. DH was an immigrant from a developing country. One of my parents died whilst I was still at school. (this is not a woe is me post - honest)

I think our backgrounds and uncertainty in our early lives probably made us both seek security through higher earnings. We live a relatively modest life (apart from the school fees) because I really value the security that having money to put away each month gives us.

It has also made us resiliant or perhaps we coped because we had the capacity to be resiliant. The skills you learn picking yourself up after a big event like the death of a parent are transferrable, I cope reasonably well with stress because I am reasonably good at thinking "Sod it, its not the end of the world" when people are being drama llamas.
However, the key skill for me is the ability to make a decision, act on it, accept the consequences and learn from it. I see in my job in the City that what I am often paid for is the ability to assess options and suggest what I think is the right course of action.

I honestly think you must be on a different planet if you don't think having a home in Surrey, another home in France, nice cars, children through Independent school, staff etc is not a spectacular lifestyle.

There are a few mitigating factors here. Firstly, your sphere of reference and the people you know socially and through work. When you see people around you having a more lavish life, yours will feel more modest in comparison.

Plus a generation ago, a house in Surrey and children in independent schools was just 'solidly middle class' rather than 'spectacular'. Expectations have shifted in the last 20-odd years, but it is fairly easy to imagine why people wouldn't see that as living the very high life if it is the same life their parents had, possibly on one middle-management income

"Minted means you could stop working and live off investments" - yes, that's in my mind what minted means, although I'd phrase it as "you could stop working and maintain current lifestyle whilst living off investments".

We certainly couldn't. Give us 10 more years of earning, and we probably could. We save considerably more than we spend - which is unusual in our circles.

I also agree about the point that there's a point at which more money isn't the motivating factor - and some of us work in industries where you either keep rising, or get cut.