To ask what you earn?

[working925]

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

* The question was 'what do you earn?'. Why is everyone going on about what their partners earn??*

I read ‘you’ as plural too. We count everything as family money and in our case particularly 40% of his income is ‘mine’ in the form of shares.

Define earn? £0 paid wage. £0 benefits. Income higher than £0.

I don't think anyone should let it get them down if they don't think they earn as much as other people. It doesn't really matter as long as you can pay your rent and buy food. A few things are easier if you earn a bit more of course but people tend to find they increase their expenses as their income rises eg pick a better full time nursery for the toddler than they might have done, buy rather than rent a flat, buy a bigger place, pay a bit more for a holiday.

Sometimes it's hard to say. Until I get to the end of a tax year I don't know the figure. One week I might get paid by no one and the next a lot (one reason the self employed have to be very careful if they can to keep money back for income tax, national insurance, VAT and then for slow cash flow).

(The comment of "no one has mentioned very high pay" is not entirely wrong. I said between £100k and £1m because I keep my earnings private. equity partners in the best City law firms (I am not one of them) will earn about £1m as will leading barristers and in fact compared to those people it is often their clients who earn the huge amounts - the advisers and their doctors tend to earn less. The footballers, pop singers, Dysons, Virgins earn the mega bucks and are probably less likely to put salary down whereas someone on say £120k might be happier to do so and there will be a lot mroe on £120k than say £5m) We also have to remember to halve the gross income at the higher salaries by the way due to 47%+ upper rates of tax on the earnings. For those on those level of earnings in London the whole of the 20% and 40% tax band might well be spent on full time childcare and a London mortgage or rent by the way so once housing ahd childcare is paid for their "available" income is about half what the gross figure is and no one of course is crying for people like that as they are very lucky to have these levels of earnings.

No one has said they earn say £600k or £2.5m other than someone whose husband made £10m and we are not counting the husbands of course unless they are mumsnet posters posting on the thread)

Interesting thread.

I like that posters include their partners earnings too, you get the whole household picture then.

To give the full picture, my DH earns about the same as me, around £37k

Further questions

No University Education, one child, live in the Midlands, no debt, lease my car and planned retirement age of 55 so we can travel America!

DH is 39 no uni education, earns £49k only debt for him is mortgage (paid off in 10 years), company car.

We have high individual savings and high joint savings, retirment for him is also 55.

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

I don't understand how people see this as plural? 🤔 From what the OP said in another more recent post, I don't think she was asking about husbands or partners either.

Anything over 50k for the majority of people in the U.K (not talking majority on MN here) is a lot of money. Like it or lump it.

Quoted from a link I posted previously:
'The most recent data from HMRC shows that the median average pre-tax income is around £22,400. An income of over £70,000 a year will actually put you in the top five per cent of all UK earners.'

To dispute the above quote just makes you look a tit.

I like threads like this. It’s is interesting, and also difficult reading.
I earn £15k. I work 37 hours across two jobs. I used to have a well paid profession but was made redundant when my work place closed. Opportunities are few and far between where I live. A lot of people are working part time jobs. I feel lucky and proud of myself for doing what I do. My husband earns £25k. We were struggling to make it stretch, but were fortunate to get a windfall earlier this year that has paid off our mortgage. Now we feel comfortable, but still we seem to spend more than we would have imagined

Ps we are both university educated. 3 kids

23, working between 40 and 48 hour weeks for £18k plus a small annual bonus. It's alright. I pay the bills, am saving a couple hundred every month and I can afford some little luxuries so I'm not really complaining.

Oh, no uni education, rent a cottage in the south west (expensive area).
DP, no official qualifications at all but is doing far better than me, has his own business, so income varies but generally around £21-£24k I would think. Works mental hours and deserves so much more, but we're getting there.
We have a nice standard of life, so while I wish we were saving to buy a house faster, I really shouldn't complain!

I've name changed for this.

Not because I'm embarrassed and I do firmly believe that people should discuss money. Especially women. But because I like my relative anonymity here.

I have various sources of income from writing and teaching. It varies year on year. Last year I made just over 350k. I also paid myself a small salary from a company I set up.

Sorry I mentioned my husband's income because that is our household income. He is 46. When I left work (aged 30), I was on £52k, but I'm 42 now and never went back.

He's an entrepreneur and the £10 million was his net share following the sale of a company he helped found 15 years ago. He is still to sell his main company, but hopes to in the next few years. He has made similar money through other projects, but much of the money gets reinvested in all sorts of things. He was once an options trader and still has a portfolio and he also acts as a non-exec director for other companies, advising on IPO strategies, etc.

It sounds like a lot of money, but he has a lot of risk too because he employs a lot of people. Where we live, this kind of "income" is not at all unusual.

Me: 48, marcomms, £84,000 pa
DH: 45, finance, £350,000 pa

59. Used to earn £50k - £85k pa working part time for myself, now earn a measly £24k working full time for a charity. There's a moral there somewhere.

DH is a 54 year old paramedic with 30 years' experience on Band 6 + 25% overtime = about £35k, but he has an excellent NHS pension to balance out the low pay.

About 120k pro-rata (0.7 contract, so I work around 30 hrs a week). I work in the non-profit/philanthropy sector. I'm lucky because it's genuinely a labour of love.

I said up thread I am 25 and earn 32k, DH is 28 and earns 34k. He gets bonus too which can be up to 9k I think if they hit KPIs.

Me: late twenties. £32k. At the bottom of my pay scale so will rise to £40k over the next eight or nine years if I remain in same role, which is likely. I can take on private work to increase this wage if I need/want to, but other than that I'm unlikely to ever earn beyond £45k. I also volunteer several hours per week in a similar role to my paid job and have done for the past decade, plan to continue doing so indefinitely.

Partner: mid twenties. Around £36k. Will double/triple over his career due to his profession. So currently around £70k household income in a very cheap cost of living area, no kids.

I will add that until around three years ago I had never managed to get beyond minimum wage jobs. I remember my first 'professional job' at £18k feeling like absolute riches. So I remain very aware of how fortunate I/we are to be earning so well at our ages and never take it for granted. I feel enormously lucky. My dad will often say 'but you did work so hard for it' which is true, but then again I worked just as hard at retail, waitressing, factory, call centre jobs with barely any reward. So I know it's a mix of hard work but also absolute luck. I've found first hand that people in better paid professions don't necessarily work any harder than those of us on NMW, sometimes less I think (my work requires my mind a lot more than working in a car wash in all weathers but I know which I would find most difficult/draining). It's insulting for those of us who've done well (and I know I haven't done brilliantly! Just feels like a lot from someone born on a council estate whose mother never managed to earn more than NMW) to pretend it's all down to hard work, as if people on lower salaries don't work incredibly hard too.

I earn way less than I should
I have a degree and a professional qualification
But I manage a nursery so if I was to be paid what I was really worth none of you would be able to afford to use a nursery and I would be out of a job and so would you

I'm 22 my partner is 21. I work in a office and earn £ 22,330 but do overtime often and also have a 5% bonus a year. My partner is a gas engineer and earns £34,600 basic a year but he earns a fair bit on top as he gets more money for harder jobs and also does work on the weekends if he wants to but as I'm 9 months pregnant he hasn't been working much weekends at the moment as were getting the house up together for babies arrival. So total income of nearly £58,000 on basic annual wage.

Horribly little at present! I'm hoping to get back to full time work but really can't do that until I've moved (month or twos time. Frustrating, I'll have to be patient).

30, was 240k last year, been on maternity leave this year so likely to end up much less. £175k average

About £34k/yr, age 51yo, research scientist.
If I was someone else, in same industry and ability to take better decisions, I could have got to £60k+ by now.
I like being overqualified for my job, though. It's low stress mostly & still well-paid.

You can ask but I decline to answer.