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.

Lawyer here too, Work life balance is fine (needs to be or I couldn’t do it) nowhere near £50k sadly :(

How do you go about training for that, talking?

@Quitmoaning - when I realised that’s actually what he did I loved him even more. I heard his mum saying he ‘does something computery’ the other week!

I keep telling him he should explore the private sector as he’s looking for a new role. He doesn’t believe that his skills are transferable for some reason. I’ll show him your post and hope he listens. He could easily earn £20k - £30k more than he does now but he’s a bit underconfident.

Yes, in house lawyer, circa 80k FT (37.5 hours) for a large FMCG (am outside the UK but I think this is roughly equivalent to what I could be earning if I was still in London.

Company has an excellent flexible work policy so I pretty much manage my own office hours. There is a bit of travel though - maybe 1-2 nights every 2 months or so.

I've always been in-house so never did the crazy hours of the private practice big firms but definitely have more autonomy now I'm quite senior.

It's probably worth adding that the flip side of flexibility is that I never fully switch off - I keep an eye on emails after hours/at weekends/on holiday - but I don't find that too onerous given the benefit I get from working flexibly.

@Quitmoaning - are you London based? If so, would you mind recommending some good recruitment consultants my DH could approach to look at changing sectors?

PA in finance firm. Mom-Fri 9am-6pm, £52k

Joining in to balance out the women in STEM.....

£90k, usually work ~45 hours a week but only 10 min commute. I could work my contracted 35 hours, no-one would comment, but it would probably blow out any chance of the next promotion.

Biotech, have relevant degree, Masters, PhD and 20 years experience. (Job is fabulous, really interesting and rewarding)

kittthecar
The ones I know of all "inherited" the job - its what was a stevedore role - totally unskilled but never advertised

Sorry, just realised OP said specifically 40 hours or less.
Ignore post above!

This is an excellent thread. Im a teacher dreading go back after my babies. Then ill be failing all of us.

I am an account manager.

I earn 50k after bonus and car. I work from home but I am uk based if I need to go and see customers. Minimal at present.

I'm on £65k and work 35-40 hours a week with alot of flexibility. Senior management role in a niche sector
My work life balance is great and it definitely makes me want to stay with this company I'm currently in

@Linkyplease - DH is something like Senior Planning Officer - public/third sector job titles are so dry sounding. Essentially he works in management information so collates data from lots of sources and uses that to advise business leaders on strategy. Also presents data in fancy ways.

He hasn’t any specific qualifications but it advanced at Excel (essential) and Access, can write SQL and uses a load of other reporting packages and the university MIS. Also, he has extremely good communication and presenting skills and has a kind of ‘credible’ manner which is important for all that presenting stuff he does.

If you want to get in look for jobs like ‘reporting officer’ or ‘management information officer’ or ‘planning officer’ - that’s the type of thing you’d be looking for.

Lots of lawyers and developers!

Digital marketing manager. I work 830 to 430.

I work just under 30h/pw amd earn just under 50k. In London, in public policy type work (ie desk job). Sometimes work longer hours to cope with peaks in demand. I am very lucky but we do have high outgoings including a mahoosive mortgage on a very average semi.

Account Manager in an sort of digital agency - I would say that agency work is peaks and troughs. Mostly peaks. But most people are sane about it, and after you do a big piece of work and work extra hours, you tend to have a little lull. And good managers remind you to push back on clients, as they do like to demand!

40ish hours is about right, but sometimes more.

Another EA here. Hours 9-5 rarely work Work, never expected, able to WFH if required, wonderful boss who allowed me to flexibly work today from home around a sick child and drs appointments. Earn around £52 k plus bonus and other perks.

Rarely work Kate and it's never expected of me! Excuse the typos!

Bloody heck. Rarely work late.

I'm an educational psychologist in independent practice. My work is commissioned by schools and families. I work about 20-25 hours a week, 30 weeks a year ( not school holidays and I work on a voluntary project approx 6 weeks a year). I earn about 40k on this arrangement, and have a lovely work-life balance. The downside is the insecurity of self-employment, compared with being a public servant, but I love the flexibility and running my own practice.

To be fair, that's an accurate description of the Duchess of Cambridge

That was in reply to @thetellingerror

Yeah I am, sorry. But only just. I am a doctor and I'm 36. I still don't own a home as I am a single parent and have been unable to save. I know I am in a priveledged minority but I don't feel rich and have few assets