To ask what you earn?

[working925]

Just read another thread about earnings. How old are you and what do you earn? I'm nosey!!

35 and about £5 a week.

(Slightly more than that maybe)

Sounds knackering. I work part time but in reality it's around 50 hours a week ( more when there are special projects). Bitter, moi?

Yeah it's very tiring. I've recently taken on a full on project so I can earn enough to pay down my mortgage and go away for a bit. I just hope I don't die of exhaustion before that happens 😳

chestylarue that's like 100% extra overtime. It would be interesting for people to pro-rata their salary against a standard 37 hour week. Who earns the most for the least hours! Anyone on 200k just chilling on a nice 20hr week?

True, and I guess maybe an exaggeration. I probably do 4 x 12 hour days and 3 x 7 hr days. I am helped by the fact that I do really enjoy my job and it's linked to what I enjoy doing in my spare time so I suppose I'm a natural workaholic.

Sorry I meant 2 x 7 hr days

I don't work that hard.

I don't work that hard.

Wow I'd love to know what all these freelancers and high earning consulants are freelancing and consulting in! I thought I was doing OK

I'm 30 on 42k. I'm a doctor. DH is a PhD student

caioraich and presumably you have holiday pay, sick pay, a permanent contract, a professional union, indeed you belong to one of very few professions allowed a qualified lawyer at a disciplinary hearing. Let's not forget the employer's pension contribution and guaranteed job security and defined career trajectory.

Do you think all these so privileged freelancers have any of that? perhaps we won't mention unsociable hours allowances and on call payments made when you are at home doing some chores

caioiarch I'm with you about "consultants". How is that a job description? What are you consulting on?

Also 30 and £42k, oddly.

I often want to know what people's homes are worth as a multiplier of their salary! I technically own half our house, so 2.14.

Slightly off topic but we always laugh at dinner date, and the job titles and age of the participants! When I used to do telemarketing anyone with 'consultant' in their title was considered a grade a professional and the highest social banding. These days literally anyone seems to be called a consultant. Beauty consultant, for example... on dinner date it's often 'tim, 22, consultant' 'Lauren, 21, management consultant' 'Ben, 24, sales executive' its all consultants and executives. There's no way all of them at that age have reached the top of their career trees!

Your best earning power in knowledge based industries is in your fifties, though we are edging towards sixties. Other industries rely on other capital such as farming (land), sports persons (fitness) and modelling (youthful looks).

Having accumulated knowledge and experience in my field, some 25 years of it, I seem to now be reaping the benefit. I can get £6,000 for a days work though spend around 4 days a month topping my skills up which is hard mental work. Some days I do work, invoice, forget about it and customers still pay me. I am bad at my own paperwork, but good at theirs.

My best year was around £600,000 net (2016) of tax and my worst around £6,000 net of tax (1988). I was young then. This month according to my bank I have received from customers £7,356 plus £1,230, plus £4,110 plus £23.49 (not sure what that was!) plus £1,530, plus £8,400 - all figures include the 20% VAT I have to account to Customs for.

I pay a lot of tax, give a lot of money away and try not to worry about the future.

Very common where I live to discuss earnings and most jobs are on a band so it's easy to guess.

I freelance - web content management - for a single UK client sprinkled with very occasional ad-hoc clients. Earn around £35k for a family of 3 (DP is a SAHD).

38, City lawyer and approx £170k - I generally work long hours and often weekends and it's stressful and not enjoyable.

I remember thinking that salaries about £16k were not for 'people like me' and people who achieved them must be magicians of some sort

That's exactly how I feel. It's very difficult to come out of that mindset.

It's tough nightmare.

All I can really say is I realised the only way up I could see was to train in a profession. Nursing, social work, law, medicine, psychotherapy, occupational therapist, etc. I realised it was easier to achieve a decent salary if you have a solid skill on a professional register as there's a certain level you won't duck below and a going rate for starting out in these types of professions. Much more of a guaranteed decent salary than working in a company learning on the job hoping to be promoted when you're up against every other person at your grade.

I'm 29 and I've managed to qualify in two of the above professions I mentioned now which means wherever I go in the country I'll almost certainly be able to get a job north of £30k and if I stay put for a while, more. I'd never ever have been able to get to that working in any of the jobs I had before this.

So my advice would be find a profession you love and that has a path you can access and slog for a few years, if you're able to. I started on £18k after qualifying but has only taken three years to almost double.

Inside I still have that mindset of 'you want to pay ME more than £7 per hour!?'

I think what’d also be interesting is if people were really honest and talked about the downsides of earning shedloads.

Not just the obvious stuff but the stuff that isn’t talked about much. The keeping up with the Joneses, the excruciating networking, wondering who your real friends are, the worry and pressures. Money doesn’t make everything easy.

I don’t really get the ‘know who your real friends are’ thing. What’s the benefit of being friends with a rich person? It’s not like they’re going to pay your mortgage. Plus, birds of a feather and all that. Well off people tend to have well off friends.

I earn respect, love, gratitude, admiration and praise. I get paid about 160k a year.

Let me guess Gin, as a life coach

That’s a really interesting question Taffeta. I think that money also brings with it a lot of anxiety. In my experience a lot of people who have objectively ‘high’ salaries never think of them as such and are always looking to earn more, because it’s always easy to find more and more ways of spending it.

I used to earn a lot more than I do now, and I never really learned how to budget. Even though in reality I had plenty of money, I never felt like I did because I just spent it. I even got into a hefty amount of credit card debt at one point, spending it on... I don’t even know what. I would constantly say ‘I’m really skint this month’ when what I really meant was ‘I spent all my money too quickly on stupid shit’.

Now I’m only on 22k and living in London where almost half of my monthly salary goes on rent. It’s hard but at the same time sort of liberating... I think carefully about what I spend and I really appreciate the things I do buy. I hope to earn a bit more in future but if that happens I will do my very best to keep budgeting and appreciating every penny.

My dad was on about 300k before he retired and he would constantly stress about money and come out with the classic ‘if I’m so rich then how come I still have nothing left at the end of the month?!’ OK, so he had a large family to support but still... he also went on holiday roughly every five minutes and owned several very expensive properties. That’s probably why, Dad!

I agree re. the professions LemonShark - can I ask which two you have qualified in?

The thing is though - I am 48 - is it too late for me to up my earnings? Things like law and medicine are out of the question, but I can't earn the small amount I am earning for the rest of my life .

28 earning £300 a day

PMed you nightmare!