To feel depressed at financial talk on MN?

[FluffyPotato]

I understand that people sometimes have to talk salaries for context but I think some people just like to throw out numbers so that they show their middle class status to the rest of MN.

A thread I've just seen 'DH works 30 hours a week earning 60k' and someone commenting 'oh my DH earns 100k'.

I work bloody hard 40 hours a week and get about 1200 a month before tax.

AIBU to think that some MNers just like to boast their household income figures to others? Getting quite sick at how middle class mums net is.

Hard work or talent does not equal financial success? vlad
What does then?

I think Iamdisagreeing (a bit).

I cant work out what you are disagreeing with. Luck is a part of it, i have already said that.

Wether thats making a career decision to work in a certain sector, or being a natural learner or extrovert etc

I was lucky, i didnt want a career. I wanted a job. Expected to be in the bottom rung forever. Turned out i was a natural at it and have progessed massively. I didnt sit and plan a well paid career. I just applied for a job thay fitted my dd.

I simply said that being recognised for that hard work isnt always down to luck. Sometimes it is. But not always.

She has progressed up the career ladder quickly because yes she's happy to spend a week in the New York office to cover sickness, yes she'll come in a bit early to chair a conference call with Shanghai, yes of course she;s interested in learning a new software package, yes she'll take the new recruit under her wing and show them the ropes, yes she'll deputise for her manager during holiday, yes she'll do that presentation at a conference etc etc etc. Some people are just not good with change or taking up opportunities, they just expect everything to happen.

Weirdly my experience has been the complete opposite of that. When I was younger I was that person (although no one ever offered me a week in New York) and I saw colleagues who were the same. We worked extremely long hours for no additional pay (and we were earning just above minimum wage, so actual hours worked effectively left us earning less than minimum wage). It didn't lead to greater opportunities. More work, but not more pay. I remember once begging my manager for advice on how to actually progress and he looked at me like this and said 'but why would anyone promote someone who is willing to do all the work anyway? It wouldn't make sense'.

Mumsnet seems like a fantasy land when I read career advice. Not with regard to money, because I know that there are big salaries out there, but where everyone seems to have access to training, career progression etc. I only know one person out of all my many friends and acquaintances who has been able to progress in that way. One, out of dozens.

No one I know, not one single person earns close to 27k

This is partly down to your job and class anyway though. I was born into a very working class family and now I slot into ABC1 (wouldn't call myself middle class, wasn't raised that way and I'm not about to drop certain traits I've got). Until I went to university I'd never really had anyone in my social circle who earned over 30k or who could afford multiple foreign holidays per year etc. Now I do, because of the job I'm in - everyone in the same profession as me comes above that line. All the people who went to university with me earn above that line because they all went into the same profession as me.

It's worth remembering that wealth and income are not the same either. My DM was a single mum and she only started earning above 20k in her late twenties. However, she saved her arse off for a few years and bought her house with cash when she was 25 (admittedly, this was the 90s and the house cost her 12k!).

I'm 25 and earn above 27k. I could probably afford to get a mortgage on a similar property to her, but it'd take me a very long time to save up to buy it outright like she did because property prices are insane. I certainly couldn't do it with a DC like she did.

DM is now on a similar salary to me (worked her way up massively, where it just took me going to uni and doing the right course) but obviously she has less outgoings and more wealth than I.

treacle i have been there. Its shit.

I realised that the words 'no that wont work for me' makes people actually appreaciate you more.

Or saying 'hmm not sure i will be able to make time for that', even when i knew i would be able to. Then say yes later.

Its stupid. But its worked for me.

Hard work or talent does not equal financial success? vlad
What does then?

That depends entirely on the company you work for, not your talent or work ethic. You can have two new graduates who take what appear to be more or less identical jobs in rival companies. One gets formal training, maybe some financial help towards further study, a mentor, the opportunity to work in different business areas etc. After a few years they have enough experience to make a significant leap in their earnings. The other gets no proper training, no development opportunities etc and they start applying for different jobs but they aren't successful because they don't have the experience. The gap opens up and it's very hard to close it further down the line.

It doesn't mean that the second person was lazy or incompetent. Just unlucky. And whilst the obvious answer is 'get' jobhunting', and that's exactly what any sensible person will do, jobhunting is only one part of it - you can't actually force someone to employ you, no matter how desperately you want the job.

There is luck, hard work, but also a willingness to aim high and sacrifice. I am a high-earner (and a woman, and a mum), but I studied something that I wasn't particularily passionate about because I knew it would lead to a good career, and I jobs were available. A lot of friends of mine chose glamourous studies like marketing or arts for ex and discovered when graduating that there were more jobseekers than open positions and therefore had to accept low paying jobs.
Obviously you never know what the future holds but thinking ahead is key IMO.

It would be a shame if people felt they couldn't comment on their true life on here. I cant give a fig what people earn or don't earn, why on earth should it bother me?

It is certainly worth at work if your contract allows it exchange pay bands with colleagues to help your own pay negotiations.

Absolutely. Which is probably why it's a disciplinary offence where I work.

I came from a very poor background with no real experience of uni in the family. I've done OK for myself through the usual mixture of being smart, being lucky (ok health, being born smart, nothing too horrendous happening) and considerable personal sacrifice (I've moved about twenty times in my life, so no longer have much contact with family and have very few if any friends.)
but... I would really counsel any child of mine against going into the field I'm in (science based) because it's VERY hard to make serious money in.

Just to make the point that not having any menopause symptoms is not really down to no junk food, fags or booze though. You're a lucky bunny on that one :)

TheNightman was Artandco outed as a troll? I missed that! S/he (?) was the one obsessed with families sharing tiny spaces, claiming her own family of four all shared a bedroom by choice not necessity wasn't she? Who claimed it was the best way to live and a cultural norm where she grew up and that she had shared with her brother and sister all through their teens, and her older teen brother and young teen sister shared after she moved out and it was perfectly normal despite living in a massive house?

Aye. Someone did a search and she had no DC at the time she should've had 2 under 2.

That kind of proves what I was trying to say about fantasy lives though - she was a regular for years and kept one narrative going for at least a year or more without being rumbled! she (he?) was distinctive but not outlandish or sensationalist or obviously goady...

If someone would spin her as an alter ego why not a fantasy alter ego with a very wealthy lifestyle?

Artandco was a troll? Blimey. Just goes to show that them trolls can mingle amongst us for quite some time.

I simply said that being recognised for that hard work isnt always down to luck. Sometimes it is. But not always.

Well... yes it is. Good luck is a part of everyone's success story, even if it's a case of not being run down by a bus on any particular very important morning.

Crikey that's stretching it a bit there East.

Agree that area can make a great difference. Where I live you can get a 2 bed terrace for under £100k and a vair naice detached 4 bed for less than £250k. So while I might not be earning that much, I could in theory be better off than someone on big bucks in the south east thank goodness I dont need to pay those prices or my crappy pay would not be enough

If your work is about completing tasks that you are set, and you have little input into how they are done, because there's a set system to be followed, your chances of earning highly are limited. There will be a minimum expectation for how many calls per hour, if you are in a call centre, or how many loads picked if you work in a warehouse. Neither of those allows much scope for a person to shine. A few will, but most will just aim to meet the requirements, feel pressured, and so are unlikely to get the big money.

Successful people are those who are able to conceptualise and do the same tasks better, who prove themselves able to do so, and who when they go outside the organisation to sell products or services, grasp the idea that selling means achieving a price that delivers a tasty net profit for the organisation, and allows them a good commission on the value of the sale. When someone is consistently successful at negotiating substantial deals at excellent margins, they tend to be highly rewarded. They take risks, they see opportunities that others don't. To a degree, you cannot teach that; it's an instinct and a good manager will spot it, and develop it for the benefit of the whole company. Often they are greedy, relentlessly ambitious and a bit cut throat but business needs them and their hunger to succeed. With some exceptions naturally, it's a psychology more common in men than women.

I totally agree that it's down to luck, and circumstances of birth (which is really the same thing). My mum worked a hell of lot harder than me for 40 years and never earned more than £20k a year. I've been working less than 10 years, have a cushy office job where I can browse MN and knock off before 5, and I earn an awful lot more. I've been very lucky.

I do find most people tell the truth on MN. I think I'm pretty honest.

On career progression, a topic that's always interested me, it certainly can be very difficult. |If you can get your teenage daughters to consider careers with a structure and progression - perhaps start with very hard professional exams most people cannot pass, then with a fixed clear training route where you probably will move uip and if not where you are employed somewhere else that is a very good start. It's why every parents' evening in the land has parents pulling reluctant daughters to those employers in those kinds of careers as it is easier to move up in them and earn more than in some jobs where there is more luck involved in if you can get promoted.

Some careers require a degree these days to get promoted which is a bit silly but is a prerequisite at some levels of the company. Sometimes yuou have to move. My daughter's moved jobs a few times in the last few years to get higher pay and seniority as did I in my day. ( work for myself now).

I did like the list above - that is exactly what I did - someone asked me to do XYZ - go on radio getting up at 5am (having been up all night with the baby _ ) ugh... but I'd always do it; talk at 50 conference a year (I'd always do it and many many many more men do that than women sadly); even tonight I've done some work no other lawyer would do by tomorrow so not surprisingly I got the work. It's finished now thankfully.

Not easy though and a lot of luck in it too - no one is disputing that oh and I had to move hundreds of miles away from family to get work. Even this week I am missing a family funeral on Friday and were I still in the original region I would have been going (it is not that close a relatively but it is a pity I am hundreds of miles away)

Dh was born into far worse circumstances than his own dad but has done really well for himself, far better than his own dad.

Nothing to do with luck.

To everyone who says it's about luck it's not. It's about graft and risk taking and about not giving up, not having an ego, and learning from and capitalizing on your mistakes so you never make the same one twice. It's about getting into the office of your recent bank call centre job 4 hours early (the one you got after 5 years working your up in retail - shops and warehouses) so you can interview people who work in the job you want to find out what skills they have and learn them & then ask them if you can support them on any upcoming projects as unpaid overtime. I got myself from not knowing any excel to becoming an advanced user in 6 months and from a call centre rep to a senior corporate manager within 3 years. After that I kept my learning going, moved into operations analytics and research, and am now at the top of the true.

It's not magic. It's not luck. Anyone can do what I did but they have to want it enough.

Sorry for the spelling, dyslexia. I don't have GCSEs or A Levels. Am studying my degree now.

I'm with you op think a lot of it on here is pure fantasy TBH.
But then I've never been lucky enough to bag a DP earning 50k plus!

And I came from a horrifically poor background - dad was an immigrant, no money, sometimes no permanent home. Salary of 8k to support 10 people. We were abused. Straight to work at 16 because couldn't afford not to be.

Dh was born into far worse circumstances than his own dad but has done really well for himself, far better than his own dad. Nothing to do with luck.

Good for him.

But I'm sure you'll accept that someone could be born into exactly the same circumstances, work just as hard, make just as good choices, be just as good a person and not do really well for themselves through bad luck.

So you're husband's been lucky, as well as hard working. Great. I'm glad for him. I don't get why people can't accept that luck still plays a part in success. It's not a judgment on them.