To consider £60-70k a high salary?

[rebsemmie]

Just that really, I just had a general chat with a few friends about work and salaries (not talking about our own salaries, just chatting in general). We are all in our late 20s, unmarried and childfree, so we were not discussing in terms of household incomes, just in terms of single people's income.

Much to my surprise, some of my friends did not consider a salary in the range of £60-70k (for one single person) to be very high, they though it was "alright". One of them said you "come on, you can barely afford to rent a place on your own with that income!"

I was a bit surprised as my salary is well over 30% lower than that, and I considered myself quite fortunate and well-off! Granted, we are in London which is very expensive, but still..

AIBU to think my friends are a bit detached from reality if they think a salary of £60-70k is just "alright" for one person??

My husband and I earn £34k between us. He works full time and I work just under full time.

MrsHathaway The point you are missing is that many companies- national and international- have their HQs in London. Not everyone wants a 2 hr commute, leaving home at 6am and arriving back at 8pm or later.

Anyone I know who works in London and earns £70K plus does not do a 9-5 job. You don't get paid that sort of money for clock watching. Many of my friends' DCs who are late 20s and in 'good ' jobs work from 8am to 8pm. That's the norm . It's expected.

Season tickets of £5-6K a year, parking fees at the station another £3K, running a car and those costs. Those add up to roughly £10K a year , so a higher rate tax payer would need to earn £20K to cover them.

60-70k is an amazing salary in your twenties. It is still good in your forties, even in the south.

Take home on 70k is very roughly double of take home pay of £30k due to higher tax rates, so for a couple each earning just over national average incomes of 30K pa, they would have have a joint household money of almost the equivalent of a household with a single earner on £70k, so I can see why £70k pa may not seem 'that amazing' (it still is though) for single household incomes.

60-70K is a huge salary, epsecially for one person in their 20s. I have never earned that much and if I did, I would consider myself rich

You are joking?

It's not if you have spent years studying , racking up student debts and are highly qualified.

I am exempting people like teachers, drs and nurses from this.

I don't get it anymore.

So 60-70K for a single person with no kids or mortgage is apparently little, but on the other thread today a woman is told that having £350 a month for 4 people for clothes, shoes, entertainment, days out, emergencies, holidays and all other expenses after bills is loads, and unless she is searching for pennies to buy milk she is a rich girl and has no right to worry about money.

60K in the NW would be huge. 60K in London would not go very far.

I just looked up the city of London council to see what DH and I would earn doing our jobs but in London. We have a joint income of 28k and in London we would have a joint income of 35k.
We have a four bedroom house, and two kids, and he works full time and I work part time. We are very happy and lucky. Christ, in London we would be practically destitute!!
70k is insane!

It is a lot of money to me and I live in London

I live in London as DH & I are Londoners & want to be near our families particularly as 1 is very ill. I love London but tbh if it wasn’t for the fact its home I would defo consider moving to another city (not interested in a long expensive commute) & take a lower wage.

Other cities are catching up & you can still earn well but have a much better standard of living. Lots of my friends & their families are doing this, 2 to Bristol, 1 to Birmingham & 1 to Edinburgh recently. Some of these families earn £150k but don’t want all their income going on a terrace with no off street parking & a postage stamp sized garden.

"The NW" is a very large area, you know Some eye-watering city centre bits where £60k would barely buy you a parking space and some exclusive leafy bits where it might get you an extra bedroom and some drug-ridden seaside bits where it would get you three terraces.

I wouldn't have £350 left over from 60k salary if i had 2 kids here. Also wouldnt be able to afford bedrooms for them :/

The point you are missing is that many companies- national and international- have their HQs in London. Not everyone wants a 2 hr commute, leaving home at 6am and arriving back at 8pm or later.

No, so they choose to live in a damp shoebox in Zone 1. Still choosing!

In the north west that would be considered high. My dh earns less and that supports the rest of us with me being able to be a sahm.

In London I think that would be reasonably good for someone in their 40s but very high for someone in their 20s.

BreakingGlasses I know plenty of highly qualified people (Phd+) who don't earn anywhere near 70K (in London)especially in their late 20's - they are still slogging away in 32-38K post doc positions with not much hope of tenure.

Most people I know in regular, salaried business jobs in London (lawyers, accountants,architects,managers, media, comms etc) earn around 40-50k.Friends who earn almost or over 6 figures work in very technical and/or lucrative areas of the law (they are NOT conveyancing solicitors or doing legal aid) or investment finance or medicine. It took most of them until their 30's to be earning that.

£60k puts you in the top 7% of earners. That in itself is pretty indicative of how good a salary it is.

Yep, payroll manager (I think something poncy like Assistant Director), the company employs thousands and she’s manager of one sector.

Interestingly she left school with one GCSE (a D in Home Ec) and has worked up from an office junior role to where she is now. So it just goes to show.

I live in London and neither me or dp would get anywhere near that salary.

For late twenties in London is class it as 'good' if it came with a bonus. Certainly not great though.

When I lived in London I earned less than half of what I do now, after commuting there for years to work (4hrs a day) for world renowned companies and doing 14hr days and answering the phone on holiday/weekends etc. I can now ask for that wage.

With 20yrs experience I now earn £60k, DH about £32k. We don't live in London any more but would still struggle to buy the house we rent on that. Not that I'm moaning...do 8-4pm every day and feel exceptionally lucky.

£1500 a month for a flat puts £60k on a third of income spent on rent. So for London it's OK. Not loads and not a pittance

Dozer DN is in her 20s and not a graduate. She started as a Saturday girl and worked her way up. Is now store manager (women's fashion shop in central London) and as I said up thread earns £70k.

Really don't believe this.

£60k in the NW would not be huge. Not around Wilmslow, Alderley Edge, Grappenhall etc...

Maybe in Accrington it would!

kikashi I know all about the salaries of PhD scientists etc in London. There is one in my family as it happens, and they ended up leaving the UK for a better income and career. Research is infamously poorly paid especially if through the MRC.

The point I want to make is that salary is linked to expertise, qualifications , location and job title.

You get paid a lot usually because there are few people who can do the job. You are expected to work long hours. 12-14 hr days are the norm.

Someone I know has been in investment banking for 3 years, after graduating. She works from 8am to often 10pm and weekends. Starting grad salary was £45K. if you work it out as an hourly rate , it's not as good as it sounds.

There are PAs in London FGS earning £50K quite easily!

People are paid a lot of money for doing jobs few other people can do and usually they work bloody hard for the salary they get.

A pay specialist told me around ten years ago that a women earning £45k was earning more than 95% of working women. Not sure what the position is now.