To ask those who have high earning partners......

[Hollypies]

I’m shocked by the amount of women on MN with very high earning DP/DHs and I wonder, how did you meet and what is your life like? I can appreciate this is a little nosey, but after years of dating/being in relationships with men who are very low earners and with no ambitions in terms of their career....I’m very curious. I’ve always assumed that highly successful men/women usually mix with their own kind and meet an equally high earning spouse through their work or social circle... but thought it’d be interesting to ask!

My Dp earns 90-100k a year , we met online after both having had a few meaningful relationships previously,
I had no idea what he earned when we met , he works for a online company ,
I’m a support worker , earn 14000 a year.
He wasn’t fussed about what I did for work & equally I wasn’t about his ,
We are both Mid 30s

I think there's a few people on here who are above their station - there's high earners and then there's actual high earners like PaisleyCrib and talks about.

Why has this especially bothered you though @harajukubebe? Nobody said MN was free of fantasists! I’d say it’s fairly rife on a lot of threads. I don’t see you popping up to lay down the law every day .

I don't know. I usually ignore these threads. Something got my goat today with all these women replying about their dear husbands earning multiples of 100k etc etc.

I work in a very high paying industry and thought about the salaries I pay. It's just seems unreal that so many are earning this much and are all 2% are on Mumsnet replying to a weekday thread! 🥴

Actually OP said “...women on MN with very high earning DP/DHs..” so it very much reads as though OP is talking about women who have high earning male partners

As some PPs have implied, the premise is offensive
Ooh good - something else for somebody to be offended by. Why can’t op ask the innocent question that she wants to ask - in relevance to her own life, without you being offended? I’m offended by your offence.

Op - I was supposed to be the high earner as I had a traditional higher education and good job prospects. DH left school at 14, working for his uncle, set up in his own at 18. His business just grew and grew. I gave up my part time work 3 years ago because I wasn’t enjoying it, I only worked mornings so we didn’t notice the loss of my salary which was £1,500 pcm.
We’re working class people living a very middle class lifestyle, home is NW London, 2nd home in Hampshire, private schools, medical etc but it is all down to him and a good nose for business, extremely hard graft in the early years and a dose of good fortune.

I think there's a few people on here who are above their station - there's high earners and then there's actual high earners like PaisleyCrib and talks about.

I think it all depends on what is normal for you, what circles you move in and what you had growing up... my parents earned about 20k in the 80s when I was child, and I never felt underprivileged. So when I started earning more than 200k, I couldn't believe it. It was like another world. However, that's nothing compared to what we have now. We have three properties, each worth millions, and millions more cash in the bank. Impossible to type these words without sounding like either an idiot or a show off (or both). But I'm fully aware of how detached this is from reality. The only thing i will say is that, for DH, it was honestly 100% down to hard work, self belief and a little sprinkle of 'right place right time' luck. And he's also very bright. But you really can make it without a rich or privileged background.

My DH can be a high earner because I am not working and take care of literally everything. Otherwises he wouldn't be able to juggle kid/helping out around the house/etc... He hasn't seen Henry (the hoover) in about 4 years.
I do wonder how this is going to change when in 2 weeks time I'm about to start at a company. I'll be at work or traveling from 8am to 19pm. And he will still have both his contracts and a daily 12-15hrs of work :(
At least we live 8 min walk from the school and at 13 our boy can come/go alone.

Good for you paisley, you sound down to earth about it all.

I'm a nurse and work part time. My DH is a doctor and obviously earns significantly more.
We both come from quite modest backgrounds - neither of our parents have ever been high earners. I do appreciate that we don't and hopefully never will have any financial worries.
I was a single parent before I met DH and lived hand to mouth so obviously my life is a lot less stressful now and I have much more disposable income. Most of our social circle do jobs similar to ours and I'd say nearly all our close friends work in public sector/civil service roles.

@managedmis thank you, that means a lot - it's a bit scary being so honest because I certainly wouldn't talk like this in real life...

Sorry, to the question: we met while being at different unis. We were poor together and we are climbing the scales together :)

@harajukubabe - that might miss people taking a lower salary and more dividends in their own company. If mumsnet is representative then say 10% of mumsnet posters and that's still quite a lot of people.

I don't doubt you personally at all! But it does seem rather strange that 2% and above of high earners in the UK are all on Mumsnet. Or at least their wives are!

I think there's a lot of pretty intelligent SAHMs on MN who view MN as an intellectual exercise, so certain boards tend to draw a skewed demographic.

It strikes me as fairly London-centric, and also it's skewed towards pretty heavily ambitious mothers who are angling to get their children into the top set/grammar/public school- I expect a lot of women come here to discuss the 11+, hence the concentration of high net worth types.

earn about 100k single parent. I don’t think I am a high earner

Maybe in the circles you mix in 100 k is not a high salary but on a national scale 100k would still be in the top five percent of earners in the UK.

I work in a very high paying industry and thought about the salaries I pay. It's just seems unreal that so many are earning this much and are all 2% are on Mumsnet replying to a weekday thread!

Not really.

The U.K. has 66 million people
2% of this is over 1.25 million people
Plus this thread is also people who are partners of those - so we are talking about a huge number of people in the UK. This thread has about 200 posts and far less posters writing on the thread after all.

I met my DH at work although we have different disciplines. At the time I earned more than he did but he started up himself and that exploded.

I personally find ambition and desire to achieve attractive. We had no idea how our life would turn out and we were engaged before business took off.

I work in a very high paying industry and thought about the salaries I pay. It's just seems unreal that so many are earning this much and are all 2% are on Mumsnet replying to a weekday**

Not really.

The U.K. has 66 million people
2% of this is over 1.25 million people
Plus this thread is also people who are partners of those - so we are talking about a huge number of people in the UK. This thread has about 200 posts and far less posters writing on the thread after all.

We met in freshers week at university and became a couple shortly after. 15 years later and 3 children and we’re still together. We’ve experienced years having very little as students, starting out on our own and saving for a house and he built up his business in his free time as well as kept up a full time job. DH now runs his own internet based business from an office at the end of the garden. It means we are able to eat dinner together every night and he’s able to help with bedtime etc. It’s also great as he never misses parent’s evening, Father’s Day crafts etc at school and if I’m stuck under a sick child etc he’s able to do swimming lessons l etc. I’m a SAHM and do the lion’s share of the housework/cooking/shopping/childcare (although we do have a cleaner once a week) and have been since our second child was born almost 4 years ago. We have a joint account and I spend what I want/need but anything particularly expensive we’d discuss first. I don’t believe money buys you happiness but it can provide security and opportunity that are reassuring to have.

It strikes me as fairly London-centric, and also it's skewed towards pretty heavily ambitious mothers who are angling to get their children into the top set/grammar/public school- I expect a lot of women come here to discuss the 11+, hence the

This may be it...

To the poster who asked - he 100% owned and then sold his pharmaceutical company.

Met at a Saturday job when we were teenagers.

Aren't these threads excrutiatingly dull?

Can't we talk about something that is actually interesting for a change?

I met my husband at work. He was a lowly IT service desk guy. What set him apart from everyone else was that I could see he had a strong work ethic and having been married once before I had a specific criteria for husband no. 2 that included a strong work ethic and common sense, which he has by the bucket load. Fast forward 12 years and he has worked his boll*cks off, I sometimes don't see him for days. He worked his up the ranks and loves what he does. He is paid a daily rate which equates to what some earn in a month. We are by no means wealthy but we have a lovely home, a fancy car, I don't work, I get a healthy amount from him each month to do with what I please and we have sufficient savings that should he be out of work we'll manage just fine. He arranged all of that with his penny pinching ways. I am a SAHM to school aged children and am (his words, not mine) the glue that holds our family together. I raise the family, keep the house etc. He is the high earner but we recognise that it would not be possible without me giving up my career ambitions for now. I would love to work and I do worry about my earning capacity the longer I am out of the job market but for us to succeed financially we've both had to make sacrifices to maximise his earnings to afford the life we have.
Having said all that if we were to lose it all tomorrow he is the type of man that would find ANY job and make it work.

I think people usually meet a wealthy partner one of two ways - because you mix in those circles yourself (I.e, work, posh uni) or pure luck!
I met my dh in a nightclub and we hit it off. I didn't actually know how wealthy he was until about a year into our relationship when he would talk a bit more about his business (property). We have very similar backgrounds and sense of humour/common interests but I think one of the things he actually liked about me was my own lack of ambition! He told me quite early on he wanted kids and I did too and also said I'd love to be in a position to be a SAHM. I don't think he could've been with a more career orientated woman as he is very alpha male and likes his dinner ready/tidy home etc. I know some people will recoil in horror at that but he is very appreciative of everything I do and he always credits me with how great our kids are. We make a good team. Now the kids are older I work for a charity but I dont think I could ever have a paid job as I value my freedom too much and like to have the option of going away whenever we feel like it etc.

We met as students with no money in our pockets. As it happened I went on to have a successful and highly paid career, whereas my DH had to retire at a young age due to ill health. We’ve been together 40 years and are still very happy together. It doesn’t matter where the money comes from, we have enough.

My DH is currently a very high earner (seven figures) although his work is contract based; at the moment he’s 4 years into a 5-year deal and we don’t know what (or where) his next contract will be. I earn just shy of £100k. We live and work in a country where there is no income tax. We met through work, though we don’t work for the same companies or in the same role but our paths often crossed professionally.

What is life like? In all honesty it’s absolutely wonderful not having to worry about whether we will be able to pay the bills each month, and it’s lovely being able to enjoy the finer things in life and treat ourselves and our loved ones pretty much as and when we want. Especially considering the fact that both of us grew up with very different lifestyles compared to what we have now - my DH was raised in poverty and slept on the floor in a bedroom he shared with his 5 siblings until he was 16, and I had a DM who was perennially in debt and having various services cut off and threatened with repossession.

Of course having money brings its own set of issues (not knowing who has genuine intentions or is trustworthy, distant relatives constantly with their hands out, investments that go wrong etc etc) but all those issues are much easier to deal with when you have the comfort of a lovely home, the security of savings, and the ability to afford things that make us happy or make daily life easier to handle. I think the fact that both of us have known financial struggles in the past means that we are generally very careful with our spending. We know that money can go just as quickly as it comes, and we know that we never want to go back to the way our parents lived before. I suppose with the amount that we earn between us, we COULD walk into any shop and not look at the price tags before buying anything, but because of what we’ve been through before, I don’t think either of us ever would.