29.5k earnings who are you and how?!

[AtSea1979]

BBC reports today say the average salary in the UK is £29,500.

I earn 12k but i’m part time (otherwise 18k). I live in the north. I can only dream about earning nearly 30k. I’ve thought about retraining but I wouldn’t know where to start as the job market seems so difficult.

AIBU to think the majority of people earn much less and it’s just the minority fat cats pulled that figure up?

Loads of people earn more then that and loads earn less. I used to work in PR and after 4 years, was earning 28,500 a year as senior account executive. If I stayed another year or two, I would have made 30k. I quit, due to low pay and having two kids (salary would not cover childcare). This is in London though, higher salaries, but a much higher cost for living!!! Some sales jobs you can make 200,000 + !!

And yes, London, you need A LOT of money to feel rich. People can have 200-300k earnings in households, but don't feel rich!

I’m a teacher and earn 48000 as does my husband ( also a teacher). We’ve both been teaching over 20 years and I’m in my early 50s. We earn significantly less than a lot of our contemporaries from University. Not really fat cat territory!

Just over £25k here but most in my department earn less. And that's on the south coast where a small 2 bedroom row house in a dodgy part of town costs in excess of £250k so is impossible for us "lower than average" types to get on the property ladder.

Nurse here in London - full time pay is about £39000 - however that’s the top of band 6.
Nursing is good pay really if you live in the north of England.
I work part time and clear £1100 for 15 hours. I consider myself fortunate.

also won't some people on lower salaries be topped up by benefits?

There are always several on these threads who claim -I'm on tonnes and tonnes of money but when you factor in the mega loadsa tax I pay, my morgage, childcare, car, hobbies, grain fare, my expensivs suits so I don't embarrass myself by looking poor at tge office, fucking blah blah blah ad nauseum- I end up no better than a minimum wage worker and conserably worse off that them that's on "benefits"

How about those types go do one, eh?
That is a load of bollocks.
If you pay a lot of tax, you get a lot of money. The government DO NOT take every penny off you above NMW.

And NO, most people on low wages don't get any fucking benefits to round there wages upnto the average.

FFS.

Disingenuous gits.

I read this as £29.5k earrings and thought we were talking blinging diamond studs...

I work in a college in admin my ft salary is 17500k. I feel exactly the same op! £29k seems a lot for us. Dh is on £25

Yeah, that had many typos.

Was quite pissed off when typing it.

In my area you are lucky to get £10 an hour so nowhere near the national average.

Secretary in the NW and earn just shy of £30k.

When we get our increase in April, it will take me over this.

I am very fortunate to be in my job as it has a final salary pension, lots of annual leave and full time is 32.5hrs per week.

Teacher-20 years in. Earn £39k but only part time for my emotional and mental well being!

I’m retired, but was on over £80K for my final years in work.
My DDs are in Edinburgh, both earn £40K in their 20’s. One in marketing for financial software, one in risk analysis for a major bank.
A lot depends on the career path you choose - some things are undervalued and underpaid, such as care work, others ridiculously overpaid, such as BBC presenters...!
The average may not reflect your own circumstances, OP, but it will have been calculated across the U.K.

To add I've worked as a carer, in restaurants, contact centres and emergency services (NHS) and I've never earned more than 25k

Apologies if anyone's already said this, I haven't read the full thread but I just want to post about the "average" element of this. When things like wealth and salaries are reported, almost always the "average" is not the mean but the median.So the mean is what most people think of as the average - it's the one where you add up all the salaries and divide by the number of people. However, as most people have noted, that means it's very affected by a small number of people earning very large salaries.The median is the middle value, if you were to order all the salaries from smallest to largest. So it's a better representation of what an "average" person might earn.

Hey diddle diddle
The median's the middle
You add and divide for the mean.
The mode is the one that appears the most
And the range is the difference between

I think teachers/ any qualified specialities in the nhs will all earn more than this (physio, salt, all doctors etc). I earn 85k by pure luck - living in London and work in marketing. I say this was luck as I was never intending to earn this salary and whilst I have worked hard/ pushed for promotions, I sometimes forget I have actually done quite well financially. I have no idea what most of my friends earn but know it is a real mix.

Most full time admin jobs in south east (not london) are around £20k. Once you get to management level you can hit over 29k. PA jobs seem better paid.

I earn just over £30,500. Top band 5 nurse in Scotland, I was a band 6 before but it was awful, my wage took a massive hit and my responsibilities more than doubled so I moved areas entirely and went back to a band 5.

I earn 58k as a principal consultant for a firm that delivers government contracts. I last earned under 29k doing admin work but as soon as i got a project officer role at around 26yo it went to over 30k. Dh works in finance on 150k plus up to 100% discretionary bonus (usually closer to 50%). That's finance though i guess. We're late 30s with post grad degrees, plus dhs financial qualification.

Not all fat cats I’m senior social worker on 37k a year in northwest so suppose it goes further

I was so excited 4 months ago to get a promotion that came with a 30k salary.

Now it turns out that's the new average. I thought the average was 24k. Feel like sobbing into my chai latte. I'm 33!

I'm on 30k, I'm a top band 5 paediatric nurse. I trained with a bursary abs was at my local uni. So no debt.

Professional in a local authority - FTE is £47k

Charge nurse (band 6) here on 32k a year at the age of 34. But it's taken me 10 years to climb up to that and my starting salary was 22k. DH is 36 and works in IT and earns 25k. I'm aware we're a lot better off than a lot of people and are lucky to be able to afford a holiday each year etc, but I don't think of us as mega rich (probably partly living in the South East). Aside from over £800 a month on mortgage, £500 a month on bills, and childcare bills (August has particularly stung at £900 for the month as it's the holidays, and that's only for 2 days a week)! We also both need cars for our jobs, with all the associated running costs. We're lucky in many ways and certainly not poor, but we're hardly rolling in cash either.

@Lifecraft, I've never seen that before! I love it.