50s, lawyer. I don't want to say. I usually just say over £100k and under £1m (and remember the state takes half in direct taxes and you get no single person allowance - not that I expect anyone to weep for me over that). I work for myself and have worked full time since £1983 without a break even for babies (I took 2 weeks holiday and went back full time), Mind you lots of people working full time on £15k a year may well have gone back full time and just taken off 2 weeks when a baby came - nothing special about someone at my income level doing it.
I have been scanning my 1980s and now 1990s diaries which has been interesting as there is so much detail about money (and children and sleepless nights and all the rest too - we had very non sleeping children babies, toddlers, 4 years olds etc) I am now at 1993. We bought 2 buy to let flats a few year before (which I now call "buy to lose") and it was all building up to go very wrong. We moved house in about 1990 and bought our last house for about £275,000. We took out for those days a massive mortgage which was really risky - it was called a deferred interest mortgage. All interest over 10% pa was not paid but added to the loan. We were paying about 15% interest so masses was being added to the debt and we had negative equity. To make things worse the second flat had a 13% interest loan over 10 years fixed for the 10 years at 13% and the rents were less than the loans so the only way that investment worked was if property rose in value. Instead it had fallen so far by about 25% (this is outer London). I probably win London's prize for the worst property investor ever. We are putting in about 50 hours a year of painting of the flats, doing them up, moving furniture, unblocking drains and all sorts. It is like reading a story book except I know the ending.
So in 1992 we started trying to pay back some of that deferred interest to try to get the mortgage back to what it it had started with. We had no savings at all of course although the 3 children had a little bit. So 3 properties, both working full time with second jobs and no savings and no capital and negative equity. Eeeek........ Then we suffered the day in 1992 when interest rates rose 2$% and then 3%, Luckily the 3% was reversed but it had meant financial ruin as our interest paid would have exceeded full time childcare costs etc.
In a way 1992 was a good and a bad year however as suddenly interest rates started going down. They went down so much that we were £4000 a year better off and the 13% loan on the flat suddenly was worse than the standard variable deferred interest loan. On the other hand I was expected to be made a partner at the firm I was working at and was told that had now changed - disaster. By 1993 the recession was getting worse and my interviews, the few I had, were not yielding a new job anywhere. however interest rates were lower so we were paying back debt whenever we good particularly the mortgage fixed at 13% interest. I took on even more weekend work. i was making A level law papers, law papers for an accountancy body and for the Law Society, loads of high towers of scripts would arrive meaning yet another weekend spent marking - A level law was £2 a script.
We will have to wait until I have read more of 1993 to get the further details as I am finding my memory not always accurate. I know I set up on my own in early 1994 with no clients but I can see in 1993 these extra things like £500 advance for a book were helping to repay some of the massive debts never mind the reducing interest rates and I loved our house.
There also details every year of business plans that failed too. IT is almost a diary of failures as much as success. I seem to thkn each one will make us a fortune. there was Sophie's Wedding services - sold one item which didn't cover the advert cost. Then Eagle Blades Publishing - expensive advertisement not a single order. Time after time after time failure heaped on failure.