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!

Met at college - most of our friends are also high earning (except for the academics) and also met OHs at university or at work at big professional firms. A few married siblings or friends of friends and a few married people they met at sports clubs or church. Only 1 friend (an academic) met someone via online dating as she'd had a very mobile career.

Life is comfortable in that I don't worry about the grocery shopping etc and have a part time housekeeper but we still have to budget - eg a big capital item means no overseas holiday that year as I'd not feel comfortable not saving for retirement (SAHM so not much pension). We both earned well before children so were able to buy a nice house we'd not be able to afford now and have paid off the mortgage but school fees and university costs are likely to consume a chunk of income for some time yet.

Biggest problem is DH needing to disappear abroad for work on a regular basis - easier now DC are older but he coulnd't have done it if I wasn't at home.

Oh, and I’m more qualified than him on paper. I’m looking to re-train from next year but it’s hard with childcare.

It’s very difficult to qualify ‘high earning’ because it’s totally dependent upon location.

We live in the north of England, out in the countryside, and have a 5-bed house, large gardens, small paddock, etc, but it’s likely worth less than a bedsit in central London.

My friend worked as a solicitor in London on 70k only a couple of years out of uni (Cambridge). She wanted to date sucessful, like minded men with similar careers and working patterns.

She was told explicitly several times after building a rapport with men that they were not interested in a career woman.

Most of the High Earning men I know who are under 40 also have High Earning wives. The ones that don’t have housewives. There’s no middle ground.

I can’t believe people still use the term ‘career woman’
🙄

@NunoGoncalves - actually it isn't necessary to spend everything you earn on expensive cars nor anything else. We're both naturally quite frugal; the mortgage is fully paid off, we have savings in place for a long period of parental leave, other savings for early retirement. I have some friends who are high earners but they have expensive cars (with high insurance costs), fancier holidays (not our style anyway), constant turnover of new expensive clothes, £300 bottle of wine for a special meal, pay a premium for a house that's "done up" instead of getting it done themselves... then they "have to" go back to work early to moan about the cost of living and grumble how they can't afford a big house nor longer leave with their babies. Later on in life, my parents retired early and decades later dad's very unwell friend still works long hours but "can't afford to stop" because his wife and kids spend so much (their adult children can't pay for their own flats nor holidays, I've no idea why). Money can give you options in life rather than just "stuff", if you choose to use it like that.

A few posters have said that they started in a similar sector to their DH, but his sector earns more. Why didn't you move into the sector that pays more, given that you knew about it from your DH? All things being equal, I don't understand why someone wouldn't want to earn more when it's possible.

Because all other things are not equal. Surely that's obvious??

I met my high-earning partner at university. When we first started dating I thought I would be the higher earner. But he decided to follow a different passion to the one he initially thought he might, took an unconventional route, and it has turned out to be very lucrative.

I feel wowfully inadequate that dp earns under 30, 000k. He works hard but hasnt been promoted. Am i a failure?

Woefully!

We met working in the same company. I was a pleb he was highflier. It was horrible when the people who had previously ignored me were nice to me once they found out we were together.

malificent7

My DH earned about 5k last tax year so we both fail.

Me and my DH not only work in the same sector but until recently we worked in the same organisation. We have identical qualifications and started our careers doing the same job. He earns twice as much as me.........the reasons for this is partly explained by the fact he is older than me so is further along in his career than I am but also that we chosen to focus on different things and one pays more than the other. I’m an academic so teach and research the subject where as he is director of a service that carries out the work in practice.

I feel wowfully inadequate that dp earns under 30, 000k. He works hard but hasnt been promoted. Am i a failure?

Your DH is earning above the national average ;)

I met DP online (POF). He was earning pretty well when I met him (he’s in software) but his salary has more than doubled in the six years we’ve been together, which he gives me some credit for, as I have encouraged him to grow up and to take some risks.

My income has remained pretty much the same, in fact probable reduced during that time. If only I’d put the same effort into pushing myself to greater things!!

@NotFatTransslender - software jobs tend to come and go in waves. The minute his job becomes unfashionable or can be done remotely by an offshore team he’ll struggle again.

My DH has a high earning partner. He met me online on OKcupid.com

For context I earn £650 a day before tax as an independent contractor (project/programme management in financial services).

We don't do similar jobs - DH is a personal trainer and earns about £28k.

I met dh when he was a junior Naval Officer at a party. As he got promoted over the years, the salary increased, but it was in the post retirement from the RN job that the salary got a lot bigger, and has enabled us to clear the mortgage (almost) and put ds through a BA and an MA without any loans.

We've been together since 1985 and I don't think he'd trade me in, as I understand him all too well.

For the past 13 years, I've been a trailing spouse as the work has been abroad.

But I think that it is true that living the dream for many men means earning a lot of money. While for many women it is having a lovely life as a SAHM.

You speak for yourself by equating a lovely life with being a SAHM. I know many women (working women like myself) who could not think of anything worse. Perhaps the circles you mix in.

Agree with the poster that it is a poor generalisation however you qualify it.

We got married young, while in university so he was not a high earner at the time but did have good prospects / high achiever. He’s not from a posh background or high earner family, and neither am I, but he worked himself up and is now a high earner. I’ve always been a sahm, with some self employment from home, so that has been a big help to him being able to focus on his own career, which he does acknowledge and appreciate. So we have a pretty traditional set up, and that works for us

Very true! My OH and I are both extremely driven and ambitious. If either of us want something, I have no doubt that we will get it. It's just that what we want does not involve spending 10 hours a day in an office so that we can have loads of cash and drive pointlessly expensive cars, etc.

For me, being extremely driven certainly involves spending 10 hours in the office. It's just not going to make me rich. Still earn under the national average. It's the nature of the job.

Ambitious for me means writing a book that will still have value in a hundred years time (I actually believe I just did). It means giving my students the very best learning experience I am able. It means staying behind for hours to make sure that my tutee gets the support that might just make the difference between them committing suicide and not committing suicide. It means supporting a colleague because in a world that is increasingly, so it seems, about shafting the workers, support and loyalty matter.

A relative worked very long hours and travelled across the globe in a temporary research job which might just provide the groundwork for curing certain forms of cancer. Unambitious? I don't think so.

Met DH just after uni- at a festival.
Fell in love quickly and I recognised he was ambitious and motivated which I liked as qualities but also has ethics and integrity so never saw him climbing the greasy pole.

He had just set up his own company when we met in the city and it has surpassed expectations over the years and he is now able to do better hours but maintain a huge income.

He also has family wealth which I obviously realised early on when I met them but didn’t expect it would directly benefit us but it has.

Despite this I have continued to work (am a medic) as my job is important to me.

But I meant we could secure good childcare without worrying financially and allows me to make career choices without always having to consider the financial implications.
That said I still worked long hours and burnt out. Money can’t buy you everything.

We don’t live a flash life. Nice house and have started trying to have a few more holidays now the kids are teenagers but for years we were camping or holiday cottages in uk just because we weren’t the type to
Fly the kids first class to Dubai even if we could have afforded to.

But money makes a huge difference in many ways- less anxiety and more choices on all sorts of things.
It can’t buy you happiness but it can soften the blows.

Having Money drives me, personally. I like having it. I like the peaceful existance having money gives me. And an willing to work hard and smart to earn it.

I'll try and answer what life is like from my DH's point of view....there are good bits and bad bits like other lives:

Good:

• He gets to live in a much nicer house than he could afford himself (not a mansion or anything but a nice 4 bed in the Home Counties)

• We get a couple of nice trips abroad every year; it's his 40th this year so I'm taking us to Canada for nearly 3 weeks but on economy flights (£250 each!) and AirBnB accommodation

• We don't have to worry about being able to pay bills or running out of money at the end of the month (we've both had very poor times previously though so we know how this is).

Bad:

• I commute 3 hours a day and am out of the house 7-7.30pm. Sometimes I need to carry on working at home...I might have weeks when I don't need to and then weeks where I might work until 1/2am

• We don't have children yet and definitely would have if I wasn't the breadwinner, he's desperate for children but as I'm self employed financially it's tricky

• He'll need to be a SAHD which he thinks he'll love but I'm not so sure (he's quite naive about what's involved in childcare)

• I have bipolar disorder so there's always the risk that it will get worse/I'll have a breakdown and our lifestyle will collapse.