To think there’s no point earning more money

[Dimblebimble]

For context, I’m a 29 year old University lecturer with 4 years experience post-PhD. I work at a well regarded research intensive University (but not Oxford or Cambridge). Married but with no kids, hoping to start a family soon.

I earn £43,000. To earn more I will need to be promoted to Senior Lecturer, then Reader, then Professor, which will take me at least a decade (probably much longer as I’m planning on having children) and a huge amount of work (think evenings and weekends for the foreseeable future, progression is based on conducting and publishing high quality research). Speaking to a colleague who was recently promoted to professor, I found out that their starting salary for this role is £60,000. I can’t help but feel that this isn’t worth the tremendous effort it takes - once tax, NI, pension and student loan are deducted their monthly take home salary won’t be much different from mine. Not enough to make a huge difference to quality of life, surely?

AIBU to think screw it, it’s not worth it? I’ve always been very career oriented, hoping that this will provide a better life for me and my (future) family, but is it just me or is it completely not worth it? AIBU to just coast rather than pursue career progression? It seems a waste of all my hard work and study, but there’s very little incentive to progress.

(Before anyone says anything, I know none of these salaries are bad salaries, and that I’m very lucky, I’m more confused by how little difference there is between the salaries despite the huge difference in experience required)

There's an Academics section here. I would post there too if I were you to get some advice from academics who can comment more on the work/life balance and promotion side of things.
I am assuming you're in the sciences. Have you thought of leaving academia? You would get better paid jobs with perhaps a better work/life balance

Babycham that would depend entirely on their current standard of living and what they had to do for the extra money though. Most people might consider it significant but to someone with a comfortable salary and a good work life balance a couple of hundred quid might not be significant when combined with a massive increase in work load and responsibility- which is the op's point.

I think this is a problem common to many public or education sector roles - a relatively flat pay structure where a promotion might entail a significant jump in responsibility, but only £2-3k more per annum.

I would be worried if the primary motivation for an academic was money.

Do you not get paid in relation to the grants you secure?

No

Most of our professors are paid departmentally but also have a large proportion paid by however many grants they hold.

Are you in the US?

Wow thanks everyone for all of your comments, there is a lot of good advice here.

I worked it out and if I ever achieve a professorship, at £60k I'd be around £700 better off a month after tax, NI, student loan and pension. I think the starting salary for a professor is around £63 (they don't have the professorial salaries publicly available online as far as I know but this is where the Reader grade stops) and it can go much higher after a few years but it depends on a bi-annual review. We don't get big grants in my field (social sciences) so I don't know whether we ever get the top salaries that are on offer.

I'm not saying that I'm going to stop working hard or getting fulfilment from my job. I need to continue to research and teach to a good standard in order to keep my current position, and writing and publishing is my favourite part of the job so I'll concentrate my efforts there . I suppose I'm saying I'd like to slow down a little, and feel guilty about this as it's completely contradictory to how we're brought up. Colleagues are often asking me when I'm going to go for promotion to Senior Lecturer (realistically it would be another 2-3 years minimum, even with the right publications), if I'd consider moving Universities, etc., but I feel I deserve a little lull to enjoy myself and start a family, and also to avoid burn out. However this itself feels very self-indulgent at such a young age. Most of my female colleagues are not planning to have children, so they are very much maintaining that upward momentum, and those who don't progress or progress slowly (usually because they start families) are quietly looked down on/pitied in my department.

I appreciate the suggestions to try to get promoted before starting a family, but it will be another 2/3 years before even a Senior Lectureship is on the cards and I'm worried about my age/fertility. We're currently trying to start a family and it's already taking longer than anticipated, so I'm actually pretty glad we didn't put it off! At least this way time is on our side.

I'm a little surprised about the comments that academics/professors should not be motivated by money and should simply work hard because they have a passion for the subject. Of course some degree of passion for the subject is necessary, and I do appreciate that I have a job that provides me with flexibility, autonomy (to some degree) and mental stimulation, but I refuse to work all hours under the sun out of the goodness of my heart. Many academics are very intelligent and hardworking, and could be earning double or triple their salary in industry (or higher!). I don't think it's greedy or uncouth to want to be adequately compensated for a very demanding job, enabling us to live a reasonable comfortable lifestyle and provide for our loved ones. I feel my current salary accurately reflects my current skill level and workload, but following the 1-2 decades of hard work and accomplishments that would be necessary to secure a professorship I would find the £700 extra a month a pretty poor reward.

@cheeseoverchocolate Thanks! I will go and take a look. I have thought about it, but my skills don't fit neatly into an industry job. I'm in the social sciences and my work is quite theoretical and often critical, usually without direct managerial implications...

Why on earth not dad?
What careers allow you to be motivated by money?
I know doctors who did medicine rather than nursing as they were driven by the money

I don't know why I thought you were in the sciences. I am in the humanities ( although on the teaching track) so I know what you mean about limited opportunities for sideway moves.
I must say I find your attitude to work/life balance and mental health a breath of fresh air. I think it is a very healthy attitude to life as I have seen so many colleagues burn out. These were all researchers rather than teachers.
It is hard to make any recommendations without exactly knowing what it's like to work as a researcher and lecturer in the social studies (hence my suggestion to look at the Academics' corner) but from an outsider's point of view I would say that you have done incredibly well to have achieved so much at your age -those who match your profile in my field are the stellar ones who have a bright future ahead-, so I would be reluctant to let it all go unless I had a clear plan and idea of what to do next.
Also bear in mind that your next career could involve less intellectual stimulation and job satisfaction.
Is your university a member of Athena Swan? We aren't and actually rank very poorly in terms of gender equality in the sector so there is a lot of emphasis on making it easier for women. This includes flexible working, support when coming back from maternity leave, etc. Perhaps I am very naive but I do think some efforts will be made in the future.

I think you should consider that you won't necessarily earn more in industry, especially if you have no commercial experience.

Also you might think a university pension is poor but I work for a blue chip pharma company and am looking at a company pension worth about 5 % of my currrent salary after over 30 years.

If I was you I'd keep pushing for promotions until you get pregnant. You have no idea if you will get pregnant or how long it will take. And you may be comfortable now but once you are paying over £1000 a month on childcare and go PT then maybe you won't feel quite so comfortable.

I would do the "don't leave until you leave" thing, and keep working as if you are career minded until you have your baby. You wrote that your next promotion will not be for a couple of years but it is not unthinkable for it to take that long for you to give birth and I would imagine that you would kick yourself if your colleagues who are not planning to start a family were by that point a bit ahead of you.

If you move up the grades and can manage without the salary increase you will have wriggle room to go part time, from a financial point of view.

I think you should consider that you won't necessarily earn more in industry, especially if you have no commercial experience.

Obviously if a professor leaves academia and goes to industry int their 40s or 50s they will not necessarily earn more because they won't necessarily have the right experience. However, people are comparing a career in academia with a career in the private sector when they are say that they would earn more in industry. It's very hard to even get a tenured lectureship, let alone be promoted to professor nowadays and a person who manages that in academia would very probably be at a very high level and therefore highly paid if they had gone into industry at the start of their career.