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.

Another Accountant here. Reached £50k when I was 27 in the late 1990s.

But again a common theme here seems to be the accountant/lawyer role where you have to study until about 25yos. The money is compensation for an extra 9 years of education over those who left school at 16.

I earn £47k and work about 45 hours, but I get 18 weeks holiday (prep school teacher).

I’m a Head of Department, hence salary.

I’m an accountant. €50k for 24 hour week. It’s a specialized area. Not necessarily a difficult one though. My role is not typical in the industry. I like it. Company probably not the most secure but wider industry robust enough that I’m happy o could move into it and get a job on similar salary if needed.

Do webcams. £50k a year for 25hrs work a week

Your DD needs to think about lifetime earnings, not just what she'll be earning when she reaches your age, OP.

If she wants to have children and work part-time, she may be much better off with a career that allows her to earn a decent amount and - crucially - continue to progress up the career ladder while part-time, even if it doesn't pay as much on paper as another job where she will plateau if not full-time. A big part of the gender pay gap is that women often earn less for their entire careers after motherhood, not just the years that they are part-time.

My own career, medicine, is good for this - it's well suited to sessional and part-time working (though even part-time hours can be unsociable). Having said that, only a lunatic would go into medicine for work-life balance

I’m a headhunter and earn 85-100k per year for 4 days per week, shortish hours too. Did put in longer hours earlier in my career though (although I’m only early 30s now).

I work three days a week (so officially 21 hours, in reality 24 hours) and earn a bit over £50k for those hours.

First earnt £50k a year or so after qualification (so age 26ish) but then was working much more than 40 hours a week then.

First went under 40 hours a week when I came back after first maternity leave and worked part time. (So age 31.)

I’m an actuary.

Yet another job that involves sacrificing your early 20s to exams, your late 20s to working like mad but then gives you a pretty easy ride in your 30s.

Yes XFactor I agree with you - law is good for this too (though it's competitive and there are probablyt oo many lawyers!)

But the qualification is flexible (you can use it for jobs other than being a a lawyer - for example I've also worked in corporate affairs, or if you are a lawyer you can practice in various ways - in a firm, for a company, as a contractor etc).

The work is also portable - most of the time you just need a phone & a laptop - so can fit in well round other committments.

And it's (generally) well paid, which helps me a career manageable in terms of being able to afford childcare, holidays, mortgages etc...

You put in a lot of work up front at uni and then in your 20s working your way up but now I'm in my mid 30s expecting DC2 I'm very very glad I chose law as a career.

I earn c£42k for 21 hours per week as an accountant (in house company account, used to earn similar in practice but it was much more stressful and required some unpaid overtime).

£51k for 37 hours here.

I'm a lawyer in the public sector. Quite flexible with home working etc too.

Im the lab manager in a medical device company. I very seldom have to do more than 40 hours a week. Switched from clinical lab for roughly same pay, 1/3 of the work load and zero stress in this field. No weekends, no holidays, its great
Oh and I make the dollar equivalent of 53000 pounds

I’m lucky I know. I work in accounts in a smallish business. I took a pay cut to get the job as the stress was so high in my previous role. I’m here 15 years now, and for a long while we all got regular increases. So I’m on 50k and work 8.30-4.00 Mon - Fri. Hardy any stress at all, and 25 days holidays plus bank hols, Christmas etc.

I have a great work life balance and decent salary (£110k)
Build up respect and a good reputation
Put the hours in especially to start when people are sussing you out
Always deliver great quality work and more on time
Pick a company with flexible working

@merryoldgoat

Thanks, that's good to know. I'm shit hot at excel and also very good at presenting, so it sounds like my skills set aligns fairly well. Not got any SQL yet, but I'm about to start a job where I will learn some.

Programmers generally have a good work life balance, and can work remotely. And earn way more than 59k.

A few months back, I was earning £56K for £37 hours. Sounds ideal? Well it wasn't because I was actually doing two jobs which would normally have amounted to over 60 hours worth. It therefore came down to the choice of either working these 60 hours (or at least 50), meaning that I would have had no life outside of work for a job I didn't enjoy, or limiting it to 40 hours but as I still needed to perform and provide the expected outcome, it meant working at a speed that ended up making me very ill with dizziness, lightheadeness, headaches, and unable to sleep as my head was still buzzing and therefore feeling even worse in the mornings.

Nowadays, I don't care about the money any longer and am prepared to sacrifice a lot to be able to work 40 hours to perform a job that can be done properly and satisfactory in 40 hours. With the constant cuts in the public sector though, these jobs don't seem to exist any longer. I used to love working, I now hate it and dread going. I am desperate to retire, but that's still a long way away.

Wow wish I could earn 50k

Freelance translation working from home, on about sixty thousand a year.

Where I work (business unit of a large company where most of the employees have professional qualifications or a PhD and pay to match) it is really common for people to work their allotted hours or only a bit over.

People will work late during busy periods or if they have a piece of work they want to get finished, but it's not a regular thing. I mostly work from home, but when I am in the office I am often the last on the entire floor to leave if I stay after 5.30pm!

There is no presenteeism culture and people are trusted to get on with their work. Very low staff turnover as you can imagine, which means that employees are experienced and highly skilled and generally very effective at their jobs.

I’m a nurse in a GP practice for 13 hrs per week and earn £20k

My dh is a transatlantic pilot and does 6 trips per month earning at least £250k . He’s away for 1-2 nights at at time where the crew stay in 4/5 Star hotels and receive a generous allowance for meals .

I tried to encourage me kids to go into this career but sadly they’re not interest . One is doing medicine where she will probably end up working 60-80 hrs per week for less salary than her dad 😢

It's true that lawyers normally have to do ridiculous hours, but there are a number of non-client facing roles where the hours are regular.

These are obviously less well paid than the fee-earning equivalent, but if you're highly specialised and have been doing it for years then you can get a very good salary (as someone pointed out, generally only in the large London firms).

But you do have to prove yourself over a number of years before you can get the more flexible, relaxed roles. And be in the right place at the right time.

Engineering. DP earns a very good wage on 9-5 hours with some business travel chucked in. If my kids show an interest then I’d happily steer them in that direction. I think you need A Levels in chemistry/physics and maths though so I know it’s not easy.

Forgot to add that a number of my dh’s colleagues kids are trying to get into flying . You generally need to have a degree in an STEM area. The starting salary for a newly qualified pilot is 50/60k depending on the airline . Pay is lower in budget airlines and in the US . Pilots salaries are unreal in the Middle East . I know a number of people working there .

I work in IT sales, basic is circa £55k work full time, often from home when not with customers