What would you consider a "high", "medium" and " low" salary for where you live?

[SnowyPaws]

DH has just been offered a new job- great! I think it's a good offer he doesn't seem as impressed. He is more driven than money by me though. Would be interested to know other people's perceptions of salaries.

I am South East and work in London
Low- 27000 and under
Medium- 27000 to 40000
High- 40000 and over

I am sadly on the lowest bracket

Niks wow! Could you give me tips on how you do all that with 40000? Asking because I have a wee one on the way and my whole salary will go to nursery fees and trains. In the south east too

Hampshire here. I think
Anything under £25k is low
Medium is £25-70k
High is £75-100k
Very very well paid is £100k and above

A 50k salary is an unimaginable amount of money to me. I graduated with a good degree from a good university 20 years ago and threw myself into the world of work, working long hours for a low salary, doing anything that was asked of me. I was obsessed with work, obsessed with it. I used to end up quizzing strangers on the bus about how they got into the field the Yb worked in, because try as I might, I never even broke through the 20k mark. My life has frankly been a huge disappointment. I am very wary of telling my children that they can achieve whatever they want because frankly I don't believe you can. I know far too many people who are living with the disappointment of not having had the career and salary that they aspired to, despite having worked very very hard, and it has crushed them. My life would most likely have been a lot more bearable if I hadn't been educated, because then I wouldn't feel that I had missed out.

The £25k 'average' figure is a median figure according to the ONS. It's the figure that 50% of people earn more than and 50% earn less than. The fact that there are a few enormous salaries at the top of the distribution don't affect the median.

High income is a cleaner, several holidays in nice places, Nyetimber not champagne. Bills -do we get bills? Cars as birthday presents for children, private schooling, private healthcare. Golf club membership. Cloth napkins. Ocado deliveries. Guess above 75K.

Are you missing a 0 there? 750k maybe? Even at 2 x 75k you can't have cars as presents! This is clearly for a family not a couple on £150k combined with no children.

treaclesoda depends on what you study surely? I think a graduate software developer from a non RG university can easily earn £25k in their first job.

treacle. I think as well as hard work there is a certain element of luck.

I certainly consider myself extremely lucky to have a very stable professional job that pays £40k pa with a good work life balance, which is a very good salary where I am. I could get a better paying version of the same job for £10-20k more plus bonuses and benefits but it would probably require longer hours and not be as stable. A bird in the hand and all that.

I've been in this job (with some increase in seniority) for nearly 25 years and started just after A levels. A couple of years later I went to university part time and was on the same course as a few people who had beaten me to jobs in their companies. Over the next few years a lot of them had been made redundant or moved all over the place, and while some may have ended up earning more, a lot had to take cuts in pay and/or status.

Yes luck had a lot to do with it too! And depends on where you live, you need a different amount to live comfortably as housing cost varies so much. I don't even know how younger people can afford buying a house now looking at house prices! I can tell you the graduates at my place don't see any hope of buying a small 1-2 bed house or apartment unless they have parents help. I assume some will be earning £30k or more as many have a few years of experience or in their 30s. But those 1-2 beds are £250k!

*EnormousTiger" - as long as a family has enough money and both partners are happy with their roles why does it matter who earns it?

treacle, let us compare each other. I earn a fair bit,. What career did you pick in your teens before university? If you pick a high paid one you tend to earn more later. What was your degree in and roughly without telling us too much what job do you do?

I would say

Low - under 25k
Med - 25-50k
High - above 50k

Most people where I work are on 30k plus not me

We live in the south

Our first home recently cost circa 220k for a 2 bed semi with a small garden and a bit of work to do

It's not all about money. I could probably be good at whatever element of banking they want maths or science graduates for but I have zero interest in being owned by my job, working stupid hours and having no life outside work, so would never take up banking as a career and merely stick to a few investment schemes, stoozing and building a small share portfolio as a hobby that earns a bit of money instead.

rural Norfolk:

Low: min wage
Med: 10-16/hr
High: above that

South Wales Valleys.

Low-min wage

Med-15k

High-25kplus

Actually Ill ammend medium to 18-20k

Northwest
Low-below 20k
Med 20-60
High anything above.
This would be for full time.

North Midlands

Low = £14-20k
Medium = £21 - £40k
High = £40-£60k
Very High £60k plus

Enormous when I was a teenager I wanted to study medicine, and would have been academically capable of it but I'll health made me fall behind at school and whilst I found it easy to catch up again in arts subjects, I struggled much more with science.

I considered law but my father vetoed it. My school (a very competitive grammar school) insisted that the best thing for me was an arts degree. 'Practical' degrees (with the exception of medicine) were deemed to be for people who weren't capable enough to do an 'academic' subject.

By the time I had graduated I thought I would like to work in HR (a job I had never even heard of at school). But on graduating, I couldn't afford to work for free, I had to take 'something' to support myself. Something was an admin job, because that was all I could get with no experience. And that was the end of the road. Hundreds, thousands probably, of job applications over the years. But without training and experience, it has been impossible to progress. I have never worked for an employer who offers any sort of professional development or training. I have investigated doing professional study but it's catch 22 because I can't afford the fees, and in any case I was told to come back once I had secured employment in the field.

So that's that. I would be financially and emotionally better off if I had left school at 16.

Hertfordshire/London border

Low - Up to £30,000
Medium - £31,000 - £60,000
High - £61k+

Although my thresholds move every time I get a salary rise. I felt very wealthy indeed when my salary hit £30,000.

Treacle I know you are an NI poster and I think if you are still here that that may be why you did not progress as much because we all know that opportunities and career progression here are much more limited than the rest of the UK. I was highly academic at school but followed the arts and only earn £42k as a teacher which is actually good for NI but my friends who left NI and were less academic than me now earn much more working in London, USA, and NZ etc. They followed better opportunities, but they also came from better off families than I did. But I live very comfortably as both my husband and I earn similarly which equates with a very comfortable lifestyle as my mortgage is a pittance and we feel rich!

Cleebope I am almost 100% certain that it is due to having stayed in N Ireland. Unfortunately I had no real choice in the matter. I would happily leave if I could, and always dreamed of doing so, and I live in hope that maybe some day I will. But even if I walked into a highly paid job tomorrow (impossible, seeing as how you don't exactly walk from an admin job into a highly paid role) it's all a bit late anyway. I can't get 20 years of feeling worthless back, and I can't make up for 20 years of poor earnings, 20 years of lost pension contributions, 20 years of experience.

I just wish someone had told me aged 16 about the reality of the situation I was in. Not 'oh, you'll never regret your education'. I regret it every day.

Well I'm guessing that you are around 40, not too late to do a second degree or career. If it really makes you feel like a failure then you should take a risk and start again. There is always a choice. But of course you can find fulfilment in many ways not just what you earn. I feel jealous of friends who went on to do brilliant jobs but then I remember all the other things I have that matter more than salary or social status.

Not too late in theory, but in reality it is way out of reach because of the cost. I would imagine there are a lot of people out there who are in the same situation. Plus there is the terror that you could go through the misery of another few years of study and still not be able to break into a career.

treacle, that sounds awful that you were ill as a teenager, but my daughters did arts subjects at university and now are London lawyers. 50% of City lawyers in London have a degree which is not in law. I was cycling to the local library in my mid teens (no internet then) to borrow books on what people earn and I chose law because it was interesting and good money and I deliberately moved from the NE to London because the higher paid law jobs are there. You could have taken your arts degree and done law after that like a lot of people . Women tend to go into HR which tends to mean it's low status and lower pay so the kind of thing to avoid if you're bright. Hopefully your daughters if they are interested in money will make a different choice. For anyone considering lawy by the way if you are good in the big firms they pay you through law school - not just the fees but financial support too so unlike other careers where you may need to be an unpaid intern law for those with good exam results is actually one of the easier things. Even the 1 - 2 week vacation scheme jobs in university holidays pay you £500 a week which they call a nominal sum (they mostly recrtui people who worked those schemes).

I am not saying though that money should be everyone's principle aim. The only thing that really counts for me is not being ill and being happy. Other stuff like interesting work, high pay is just background to the other more important things.

I must get to bed - lots of work tomorrow