Anyone in a job paying £50K+ working 40 h per week or less?

[notnearlythereyet]

Inspired by the work vs. life balance thread.

I have a Masters degree and five additional qualifications (all related to my profession and three of them postgraduate). I am on around £50 K and should be at a place in my career when I am reaping the benefits of my studies and 10 years of experience. Instead, I work 50-60 hours per week, suffer from work-related stress and anxiety and dream about retiring, although I love my profession and feel like I make a difference (full disclosure: I work in a school but work through around half of my holidays).

If you have a career related to your studies/experience, you are happy and have a good work-life balance (e.g. working 40 h/week) and earn £50K+, what is your job? I struggle to think of a career where you can earn a decent living and not be pushed to work more than 8h/day. I would like to advise my daughter and students on career choices that won’t ‘break’ them AND provide a good living, because I feel I failed to see the realities of the career path I chose.

Also-are you in a career that you feel ‘failed’ yyou in providing the work-life balance you hoped for, I would love to hear about it too.

I earn about £160k plus 40% bonus as an accountant, Finance Director. I average about 40 hrs a week, but that fluctuates when I travel or do entertaining etc, I have the flexibility to take the odd day or afternoon off, so I now have a good work life balance.

But I am in my early 50s and I certainly put in the hours during my 20s and 30s - jam tomorrow. I love my job, my career has been exciting, flexible, rewarding and downright fab and I would recommend chartered accountancy to anyone.

Its a bit more complicated than just salary and hours though.

My advice would be pick a career not tied to London (and therefore not tied to London's property prices and long commutes) so there's flexibility to live elsewhere, if you want to.

£100k and two hours commuting where property prices are ££££ can be worse than £50k, low property prices and a 10 min drive to work. It means less family time in practice too.

Also having to frequently travel overnight for work can be tricky to balance with childcare - might be easier to do more hours on paper but knowing you can be home each evening.

DH earns about €75k gross pro rata for 4 days a week. He's in supply chain management.

My top tip for predictable hours would be to BE the client, not to go into client service / client facing roles. Or to be buy side, not sell side.

Scotland based, 80K for 35hr week, flexible in and out hours and can work from home. This is in software consultancy. I did work crazy hours in my 20s and early 30s, now early 40s and reached a level where I can call the shots for salary and working conditions. Did a comp sci degree and masters. Great careers in this area and not all london.

There seems to be a common thread of many of here jobs having high entrance hurdles. Either very difficult exams, long training, crazy hours the first ten years, niche skills, or a mix of those.

Yup, supply and demand, isn't it! Not as many people can, or want to do the requirements.

Your twenties is the optimum time to knuckle down and get hours under your belt and build your credibility. So much easier when you have the endless energy of your twenties and no dependents.

I work about 3.5 hours per day and make £25,000 so if I doubled my workload (which I could) I'd make £50,000 for 35 hours a week. I'm a freelance writer.

I'm an Actuary and earn well in excess of 50k. I started earning £50k+ in my late 20s after qualification.

I'm contracted to work 28 hours a week, sometimes do slightly more. I very occasionally have a crazy week and can work in excess of 50 hrs but that's very rare.

I can work from home if I need to and can generally come and go as I please from work to fit in with kids.

However to get here I had to put in a lot of hours of studying and pass 16 exams to get in this position.

supply and demand, isn't it!

That's it - where I work a lot of the people could be doing city jobs on 3x the salary. So if people stay, on good but not exceptional salaries (considering experience/ education level), it's because we value the work-life balance and other benefits - which also have a value.

I work in corporate governance, in house. I earn approx £60k (depending on the $/£ exchange rate!) and work a standard 40 hour week. My boss earns at least double what I do, I would imagine - but works round the clock. I have made an affirmative choice to limit my progression because my free time is worth more to me than the extra money.

I work in Software Development as a programmer. I am 40 and earn just shy of £42k FTE, which I consider to be a great salary even if its not £50k. I don't work full time, instead opting for 22 hours over 3 days. I have a work life balance and minimal stress.

Agree with Mistigri too. My DH could earn 3 x his current salary in London but family life is a priority and we have enough with him staying local and flexible for our family.

‘There is a shortage of women in engineering’

Yep - I’m one and would leave the profession ASAP! Can’t retire for at least another 10 years. When you start out - you Bink you can change the world but in a male dominated world it is hard! Try being pre-menopausal when the only female on a team!!!

DH c £55K Civil service - 37 hours flexi time (generally does 9-6 and has a day off a month) no weekends or evenings - 30days leave plus 10.5 public/privilege holidays - he's never bloody there... I work part time and take care of the rest of "life" - work-life balance is pretty good here.

DH works well over his core hrs which are 42.5 I think.
However, he is senior management with a basic salery of 100k but believes his role doesn’t just end bang on 17:30. He usually leaves more like 18:30 and gets home an hr later.

However, their company have every other Friday off (whole site) so that’s a massive pull and is a real moral boost when stuff is busy.

Whilst core hours are there for a reason, when you’re in a senior role and managing staff, walking out the door at bang on 5 every night doesn’t look good and is noticed.

I’m am IT service deliver manager. I work from home and have full control over when I schedule work and meetings either at a customer site.

Some weeks in the month I can be really busy, and others not so much, so it evens out to be a 9 to 5 job working from home.

I work in HR, earn above 50k. 37 hour week, office based mostly but can work from home or in the evenings if I need to make time up on days I pick the kids up from school. With an hour and a half commute still long days and if I need to work extra hours to get the job done I just have to get on with it. There is flexibility on both sides though.

My OH does atm but not when he’s sent to sea he does 6 hour on 6 hours off for 3 months

I only earn £35.5k at the top of band 6 in my NHS profession. We work ridiculous hours (late shifts, early shifts and nights in the same week) and work many weekends so ZERO work-life balance. It is very tiring and most of us are desperate to leave.

I am educated up to MSc level so if anyone has any bright ideas on how I can escape the NHS then please let me know!

Insurance in the CITY

I was on £50k a year 8 years ago aged 28 and worked 9-5!

We have our own company and both DH and me work in it. The company makes around 170k/pa, what we take out varies.
BUT! 1) we have 2 ongoing full time contracts 2)we specialize in CAD software development which needs a very specific skillset - my DH used to be a civil engineer before becoming a software engineer 3)we worked 20 yrs in shitty jobs to get here.
Hours: 10/day for DH, ~1-2 for me. This means that my DH hasn't done any housework in the past 2 years (obviously). But even he considers it great work/life balance as it's work from home (fully), if he wants to have 2 hours to go swimming in the middle of the day he can.... if he wants to work in the night..fine. And the stress levels are way lower than in previous employments.
Me: not even going to go there. Of course it's great....
(downside: no payed holiday, sick leave, pension pot,....but it's worth it)

Before that I earned around 60-70k working as a Project Manager in the software industry. Hours were 40-55/week. Stress levels: always high...

Blimey - do Governess’s still exist?!

I earn £60K per year in a head of digital role and have a good work life balance. Prior to this role I was working in a very stressful environment where I was putting in serious hours that were never enough. When I sought this role I was very clear to recruiters that work life balance was at the top of my agenda. I could have earned a lot more than £60K had I chosen to sacrifice the balance that this job gives me but wasn't willing to.

I have 18 year's experience in digital roles and so there aren't that many people who have been in this sector for that long so it means I am in demand and can ask for more.

My advice for your daughters and students would be to find a career in an emerging market so that their skills are in demand and there are few others who can fulfil the roles. Things like Artificial Intelligence and Cyber Security are growing markets that we won't have enough good people for in the coming years in my opinion. Could be exciting jobs too for the right people.

Blimey - do Governess’s still exist?!

I hope so, else I'm having a very worrying hallucinogenic experience.

I’m on just over 50k and don’t work more than 40 hours a week. I’m an academic (senior lecturer but don’t actually do that much UG teaching any more for various reasons). Not sure I’d recommend it for W/L balance though as I think I work less and am less stressed than many of my colleagues.