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.

And he mainly works from home.

My dad works as a senior scientist in a hospital and earns just over 50k though it would be a bit less for someone starting out now. He does on-call overnight but rarely gets called in (he usually just gets phoned to authorise specialist products being issued) and has good work life balance. When we were children he was able to do flexible hours, starting and finishing very early, and was always the parent phoned when we were sick. He has been very happy in his job.

I'm a doctor and although I work 48hrs per week plus on-call, I chose a specialty where I actually have very good work/life balance. On the days I'm not on-call I'm usually guaranteed to get away on time and though the on-call can be busy and demanding it's not all the time and is easy to swap with colleagues. I earn just under 50k at present as I'm nearing the end of my training to be a consultant but consultants working similar hours start at 78k now. I would definitely recommend it.

However this is very specialty-dependent - friends who are full time GPs or emergency medicine doctors at the same stage as me routinely work 60-70hrs per week, much of which they aren't officially paid for. Looking at their stress levels, it's not something I'd recommend to someone starting out at present.

I do think there's something to be said for accepting you might have to work all the hours early on in your career, but then being able to reduce to part-time working later once you're established and still earn a good salary - like the PP lawyers have described. It's probably worth young people getting that sort of advice early on, so they can weigh up their options properly.

My husband earns around £50k for a 4 day week (9-5). Does maybe 3 hours a week from home. He works in a very specialised creative job.

GP. pays £8-10,000 per notional half day per year. so for £50k you'd work about 3 or 3.5 days. but they are very long days - might well be 36 hours in those three days, or upwards of 40 in 3.5.

I would be on about 48k FT, working as a software developer. I rarely do extra hours. I actually work 3 days a week and earn 29k.

I'm a Safeguarding consultant for an Multi Academy Trust. I work 7.30-3.30 and I work 3 weeks of the 13 weeks school holidays. I earn 51k. But I do work at home some evenings (usually in front of TV!)

Not me but dh, 50k+ for a 40hr week, quite specialised project management. Occasionally he works from home extra for an hour and sometimes gets work related calls but very rarely works past 5ish and even rarer to have to nip in at the weekend. He is also allowed a lot of flexibility for time off when needed too and can go in later/finish earlier when he needs too. He has a good balance.

Civil service, specialist role requiring science or engineering degree. 37 hr week, 30 days holiday and good pension. £56k (but it took a while to get there)

OublietteBravo will probably be able to guess the exact job.

My husband. He runs his own company, and goes through phases of working every hour God sends, but the reasonable hours seem more normal these days. He can spend a couple of months on 20 hour weeks.

He runs a PR and communications consultancy and also does crisis management as a part of this.

Quite a bit over 100K, lawyer. I keep an eye on emails and yes there's an occasional evening conf call, plus some travel. But on an average week, I probably work less than 40h. Full flexibility to come and go as I please. Was quite different when I was a junior, mind.

DH does, £50K plus, 40 hrs and very flexible, lots of international travel. He is in middle management in an engineering company. Has a PhD and 15 years experience though.... not many women at his level, more coming up through the ranks though.

Writer.

I earn about £150k working in international trade and it's destroying my life, just hope I can hang on like grim death for another year then downshift.

I don't earn 50k yet, but senior people in our field do and have a REALLY good work-life balance (37.5 hours a week, lots of PT/WFH/contract roles). Pharmaceutical statistician.

Circa£60k ..37 hrs per week.Can WFH. Civil servant. But I’ve had to do a lot of crap roles to get where I am now.

Dh earns over 50k working 39 hours a week, 2 full days off and a late start (after lunch) after his days off. In the motor trade. Don't want to say which company though because will be outing, but 99% of companies in the motor trade do not pay this well! Obviously has targets to get to but they are achievable.

Dh earns more than double that working for the regulatory authority for our industry. 9.15 to 5.15 Mon - Fri, 32 days leave plus Bh. Its a bit boring but he can retire early also.
I currently earn a lot less in the private sector but only work 25 hours per week (30k).

I’m a nurse earning in excess of that for a 37.5 hour week.

As long as I get my job done and am around for meetings/ most of the core hours I have flexible working including working from home. Can start late/ finish early etc if needed.

But this came after a lot of hard work and slog working in the wards - unsocial hours, nights etc.
It also came at the cost of my husbands career as he was at home looking after the kids to allow me to work. He works evenings and weekends in a low paid job, but with four kids and potentially four lots of childcare it wouldn’t be worth him working during the day.

I know I am incredibly lucky. I have a journalism degree - worked in journalism for a few years then moved to London, moved into PR. Post kids I started doing some freelance work for a lady who owned a pr agency in London and gave me my first job in quite a niche sector. Turn the clock forward 5 years and I now own the company, Work from home, Work 20 hrs max a week and earn about £45k. That for me is perfect. I’ll perhaps take on more work when the kids get older but also, I am happy to earn this on top of my husband’s salary which is double mine. I know every day how lucky I am but also that I have made it happen myself and that’s down to hard work not luck.

DH does, works 37.5 hours, WFH on a Friday, earns c75.k. Very, very rarely does any extra hours. He’s a Senior IT bod.

I work in digital marketing for a uni and on just under £50k. Rarely work past 5.30. Work life balance is fantastic. Wasn’t like this in my last job when I did long hours and lots of out of hours.

I'm on about that. 38 hours a week as marketing manager for a small co. Before I had dcs I made about 80k for unlimited hours. Global travel meant I was home only Saturday 11am - Sunday 3pm every other week.
It was a miracle I found time to conceive

Warmworm - I presume you're a patent examiner. I've always wondered what life is like on the other side

DH works as Project Manager in IT, works 35 hours pw but will do more if needed and works away a bit... not much. Earns just over 50k with annual bonus and PMI

£130,000 a year here.

Technically on duty 144 hours a week (yeah...) but 72 of those are night on-call and 20 more are day on-call (ie, I need to be available, but I'm not actually working).

However the job pays food, board and expenses so every penny goes into savings. The idea is to work 8 years and then live off the investments.

So quite the opposite of having any work-life balance right now, but the reward will be complete life balance when the job is over.

I'm 26 and have no qualifications above A-levels.