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?

I don’t work, but my husband is on £140k a year. The down side is he works abroad and does 28 days on 28 days off. I do realise we are very fortunate.
When we first married he earned £40 a week!

I would happily swap all the time apart for that sort of wage! I am imagining he is on an oil rig or a spy. Something exotic!

Actually having dp here 28 days and then gone 28 days sounds bliss to me.

I adore dp. But didnt enjoy being a single parent. If I split with him I would happily remain a single parent. I had no intention of meeting anyone and I did.

As much as I love him I do miss those couple of hours when the kids have gone up and I have the house to myself every night.

I would definitely be ok if he was bringing in 140k on top of that.

A nanny in London can easily earn this

I live in the North and earn somewhat more than that. I work in IT. I would guess that no one doing any technical role even at a junior level with the very large employer I work for is on much less than the median salary. I have qualifications up to masters level but not in a STEM subject. It's a lucrative area and also one where many companies are keen to improve their diversity profile which may help women to get interviewed for trainee or entry level positions.

My DS who has a degree in a STEM subject and is 23 started on more than the median salary in his first graduate job and is based in the Midlands.

Sorry, haven't RTFT so apologies if someone has made this point but I think the BBC wording of the "average" UK salary was misleading. It's the median average UK household income. The mean average - so pushed up by those mega salaries - is over £35k. Shows how unequal British society is and no wonder you're pissed off.
See uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/fewer-than-half-of-britons-expect-to-ever-earn-30000-a-year-average-salary-uk-091706738.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAMsdfIKCLYhxUGLPKm3ZAVGt3N6sqXfXyIBbVRs-prCnXRbGZcGP8Gju6i2rTWUXF3f1tXymqsc8-gA-daK8qMhK4shvkM0Tc40SzouDa3j6sB660pQVZNzdTkVp8Nu4pv2ubOvrGxfknhCb4CaS4tXoSabxEu1dH-Q3bu1ys9Fd

He is a security consultant @3LoudBoys, so no, not exotic. 😂

I earn about 3 times the quoted amount.
I work in a technical area of accountancy.

Key to my high pay are:

• degree plus post grad training contract (3yrs) then additional 8 yrs of experience. Training contract exceptionally academically demanding exams & long working hours.
• willingness to regularly ask for more money and be aware of what external jobs are paying/ being blunt & discussing salary openly with peers

• it's a "boring" job. I don't get fun lunches with clients, or useful freebies. When people ask what I do, they usually glaze over when they hear the response. You have to willing to spend a lot of time working with big spreadsheets or trawling through detailed technical materials.
• I work with people in countries all over the world, many of whom are difficult/challenging, there's a real skill in adapting what you do & how you do it to work successfully with people in China in the morning , and Brazil in the afternoon, & companies will pay a lot as a result.

- There's a shortage of people with the experience and willingness to work in my field, but the work relates to some big numbers in company financials (millions of pounds of shareholder value at stake) so me & peers can ask for big wages & we are in demand enough that companies will often comply.

Oh and its very london based. A few jobs in places on fringes of London but career prospects are basically quite limited if you don't work in/near London.

I’m still thinking about this and come to think of it my manager and previous managers have all been on less than 25k, none of them have been under 40 and they have all had at least 15 years experience to even get that far.

I find these threads incredible.

My starting salary back in 2000 was £25K, and it wasn't in any way a specialist role, let alone a managerial one.

I earn 44k,South East and believe me it doesn’t go far down here

I wish I was in the "wow these salaries are low camp" Ive got 2 good degrees and not earnt above 30k. I could perhaps have benefitted from better career /life guidance!

I m looking to retrain/reenter the workforce its really difficult at 40. There's a lot I would do differently. I

At school our careers teacher refused to provide us with information about earning for various careers - he was of the opinion that you should choose your career based on your interests not earnings.
Money doesn't make you happy but not having any can make you feel miserable - at least now we have MN and google!

That was my full time salary in the north west as a Council planning officer. It required me to have a postgraduate qualification, membership of a professional body and several years experience.

I’m on track to earn just above that figure this year working part-time for myself from home, as a private tutor. I’m not especially ambitious in career terms but have worked hard to get to the point where I earn a decent amount doing something I really enjoy in a stress-free way.

The key for me has been:

• Excellent qualifications (I have a PhD), including a professional qualification (PGCE)
• Experience as a teacher
• Really knowing my stuff
• A willingness to diversify, both in what I can teach (I offer 5 subjects, 4 of them at A-level) and how I teach it (I learnt how to be good at online tuition as well as doing face-to-face, which sounds easy but it’s definitely a skill to be learnt!)
• Learning how to be ‘business-like’, even though it doesn’t come very naturally to me (e.g. marketing myself, putting a proper payment system in place, etc.).

For me, it’s not just about the money. I love what I do, I’m around for the DCs and I don’t feel stressed. Having said that, I’m looking forward to being able to increase my earnings once the DCs have left home. (Not too long now...)

The lowest paid full timers at my work are on £20K - kitchen, maintenance, cleaners. Average full time wage is £30-35K and I'm on £70K in senior management.

That's in Scotland

If you can get into the civil service it’s possible to work your way up to this as they generally do competency-based applications, especially for internal staff. I started out there and worked my way up several grades with five years.

Public Sector, earn £47k for a specialist role. DH is a nurse and earns £32.5k. We are in Scotland.

The themes mostly coming out of this are having difficult qualifications to achieve help.
I also agree that moving for higher pay h elps. My husband followed my career to London as I would get higher pay there.
One of my children (London lawyer) moved jobs a few times to get higher pay each time which can be easier than staying put and hoping for higher pay and it's paid off - £100k+. Also they stayed in London too which is where higher salaries are. Also ask - i had a lot of chats with my child about how to ask for more pay, getting comparable pay from reports that are available, how to present that and how to agree if no rise that a rise will be ocnsidered in say 6 months and then making sure you go and ask for it in 6 months.

I’m a social worker, work 4 days per week for £25,200. Would be £32,500 if f/t. I didn’t qualify until I was in my 30s.

DH is a civil servant and is on about £42,000 f/t. He started on the lowest grade and worked his way up with no relevant qualifications.

University lecturer on 37k, I'm a HCP, going back into the NHS on 43k but have 15 years post grad experience in specialist area.

Postgraduate and professional qualifications are definitely key for most people I think. Unfortunately there is a catch 22 situation where if you have low earnings you can't afford to do further study. I think things have changed recently though haven't they, where you can get student loans for postgraduate study too? So I suppose that might help. But presumably that wouldn't apply to professional exams?

FWIW I didn't equate a £29,000 salary with being middle class, more the general vibe from here that it was not much to write home about.

£29k in the North is just average, that's approx what DH earns, slightly more like £30 if gets any overtime.
It's not rich by any stretch of the imagination.
I used to earn about 12k, but this was 15 years ago before children and became SAHM.
Gets us by on one salary but it's tight.