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.

Wombat almost all the high earners I know in my industry have children, and the childless ones are fairly equally split between men and women. I think the days of choosing between a career or a family may be (thankfully) behind us, as are the days of men seeing the high achieving woman as an unattractive life partner. If anything, the career woman is now seen as highly desirable - the new trophy wife, as I mentioned earlier.

small - picking up your luck theme. Surely you accept that the same people can have the same luck and not end up in the same position? Thus something more than luck comes into play (even if you do think luck is the most important element)?

Noofly to be eccentric your house would have to be modest too, instead it's a visible display of your wealth.

How would anyone know who the richest person on the thread is? .
Xenia (and she is still here under another name) proclaimed that once and the sheer arrogance of stating that is immeasurable.

I'm one of the high earning women and I have children. I have always paid for good childcare, which has come out of both our salaries, it isn't just my expense. And I've been unapologetic about needing time off when children are ill - although we have shared it so it hasn't just been me, it's been dh as well.

small Earlier I had to look up what an Actuary was. If I don't know then I doubt my DD will.

Not picking a fight, just saying that was a very poor way to phrase it, it certainly wasn't obvious because the point made was you are " never going to aspire or reach your potential."

And no, not saying that people don't achieve things through talent, but I can't stand the hubris of the "it was all down to me" thing that comes across in these threads on occasion.

Its interesting to see that for those born since the 1980s the highest indicator of your own income is what your parents made. So hard work, good choices etc whilst necessary are not the determinants of success for many younger people.

Aww, come on guys, we've got this far without a bunfight on the thread, let's keep that spirit going.

Peace and Love, People, as OliviaMN would say.

However, there are certainly people out there who might have had the ability and the drive and everything else needed, but who just didn't have the right information to make choices that could lead them to high paying jobs. Perhaps there is a little bit too much of 'just do what you enjoy' involved in the advice.

That might be me to a certain extent. Not that I am unhappy with where I am at all, but I'd say I had the potential to be in a high-earning field (straight As, Oxbridge etc). At school the only careers advice was some questionnaire you filled in and it popped out with some supposedly suitable professions. At university it just seemed that everyone went to 'the City', but I didn't really have an idea of what the jobs involved beyond high pay and long hours. As I didn't want to be in London it all seemed irrelevant to me, and I just did what I liked to do. I think there are other things I could have done that would also have suited me and I could have earned more, but I didn't have the knowledge/experience within my family to push me more in those directions. Or, to be fair, the drive at the age of 21 to find out more about the choices I had.

ilovehedgehogs I don't even know who my richest friend is, let alone who the richest MNetter is!

Samuel Goldwyn said "the harder I work, the luckier I get" and whilst I accept that it's not all about hard work, it's not all about luck either.

I'd also say that it pretty much WAS all down to me. I had no help from parents or connections, I got there on my own merits. (with the usual caveats about being born in a developed country etc etc)

whatscoming the problem of not knowing what careers are out there is only exacerbated nowadays.

I'm currently recruiting an entire division in roles that didn't exist even 5 years ago, because the technology either didn't exist or was so nascent that it had no scale application. Whereas now, boom time for people with skills-sets that could be valuable in these new roles.

Oh, and my Uni careers advisor told me to be a consultant. Had I followed that advice, I doubt very much that I would still be working in that role today. Too many hours and too much pressure at a senior level.

Beautiful - didn't you even have any mentors who gave good advice or introduced you to people?

I have had the good fortune to have had two amazing mentors during my career who have helped me enormously. Both women. I owe them a lot.

Beautiful - are you clever (perhaps not academically but with the ability to analyse and make good decisions)? Are you healthy? Did you have a supportive upbringing? If so, haven't these factors been necessary to your financial success, and surely they are down to luck rather than your own efforts?

I think people often overlook these "basics" when thinking about luck. For example, many high earning City jobs are only open to those with top notch academic qualifications. To get those qualifications, you have to work hard yes, but you also have to be clever in the first place. Which is down to luck.

but I can't stand the hubris of the "it was all down to me" thing that comes across in these threads on occasion.

But that's not happening on this thread at all.

Bruce I don't think it is either.

Queen, I think the problem for me was that I only saw the options as being what I do or something better paid but didn't interest me (though I could have done it, e.g. actuary). Despite the benefits of private school and university there wasn't anyone who ever stopped me to say, "hang on, you could do this" (but then neither did I have the wherewithal to stop and investigate for myself either).

Apparently starting salaries for graduate engineers in the big companies in silicon valley are up to $400k...

Silicon Valley money can reach silly heights very, very quickly - but the current goal of almost everyone working in tech is to get a job at a potential "unicorn" pre-IPO and benefit VASTLY from equity shares.

Jobs at Snapchat are highly desirable right now, for example.

Of course, there's always the risk that you end up working at a dead unicorn - one that crashes and burns before you can realise the financial gains.

I haven't ever had any mentors, no. Yes, I'm clever. But have no qualifications beyond O levels. No, I wasn't particularly supported at home, I left home fairly young. I know I'm lucky to be healthy and born in the 20th century etc. And yes, of course some of it is luck. Of course!

But really, most of it is down to hard work and good strategic choices.

Honestly don't want to fight with anyone though :)

Beautiful kudos to you, in that case. You're a real rarity.

Me, not so much, a classic immigrant-background over-achiever!

I certainly know who my wealthiest friend is, she's not a close friend but boy does she wear it openly, not something I aspire to and probably do find vulgar if we are speaking of such .

www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/ey-firm-says-it-will-not-longer-consider-degrees-or-a-level-results-when-assessing-employees-10436355.html

I know it's a bit old but I read something again today about another of the big four doing this more aggressively and I can't find it.

It's a good step forward I think.

Yeah, you just wait and see who gets those places, or who hears about when the tests are. ;)

They are not doing it for the greater good, their research shows that the big money makers for them don't always have the highest qualifications.