To think that SOME high earners don't work that hard?

[Usernamemcname]

I'm a domestic cleaner. The people I clean for are usually quite well off, five bedrooms in a posh suburb of an expensive city. They are often in whilst I clean, sometimes they come back whilst I'm here.
I see a lot and I know they are in quite high paid jobs. Yet they always seem to be 'working from home' also known as fannying about the kitchen a lot and playing X Box. A lot of them either start late (10am so they miss the traffic) and finish early. One dad picks his daughter up from school every day even though his wife is at home!
I was always told that you have to work hard to get what you want in life, so why do I have to work two jobs whilst my partner works 45+ hours and we just scrape by? What have these people done to be so lucky? They're not old, seem around my age, what jobs do they do and why can't I do them, I have a degree.
Life just seems unfair sometimes. Unless it's a doctor, I'm sure I could have a crack at it.

There is another factor - jobs that are fulfilling, have a "feel good" factor of "I'm doing something useful with my life" (like teaching, nursing) often pay rubbish with rubbish hours because the government know people that fulfilment/money are interchangeable and both are a way of gaining happiness.

Some will be happy with a fulfilling job helping people and 20k salary.
Some will be happy with no fulfilment, for example a job that simply brings profit to the CEO but contributes nothing to society, and a 100k salary.

I'm happy with about 35k and middle-fulfilment...not really bothered about clambering up to 6 figures as I save half my salary as it is and like my free time too much.

I agree that public services are taken the piss out of in this country and should get way more money for the work they do. You are genuinely helping people with your job and that is something to be proud of!

What she won't see is that he works away from home 6-8 days a week

There are only 7 days in a week

I'll bite, I earnt £110,000 last year. I am a hospital consultant and have organised my hours so that I am done by 4:30 at least 3 days a week. A lot of what I do is massively enjoyable and I can (and do )work from home occasionally.

I started with 3 good science A levels which I got while doing a saturday job in a nursing home. That meant at 17 /18 I often stayed home while others were out partying. Lots of 10pm bedtimes.

Then medical school -9am lectures and 8am ward rounds placements in hospitals miles away. No student lifesyle of late nights and lie- ins.

Life as a junior doctor- 13 hour shifts, nights, weekends.Studying, more exams. Hospital placements miles away, nights away from home. Leaving my babies in the dark on winter mornings- knowing I would n't see them for the next 3 days. Doingvthis forva few hundred quid a month after childcare and travel was paid. Labour, childbirth and maternity leave was a relaxing holiday in comparison. I was a junior doctor for 15 years.

I freely admit I now earn an awful lot of money and have a terrific life/work balance.

When my cleaner see's me she may well think I'm lazy.

If someone was in my house during the day, it may appear that I do not do a lot of work. However, due to time zones i do a great deal between 19:00 and 01:00 most days of the week.

I am also self employed, with no sick pay, no contributory pension, no guaranteed income or contracts, no one to look after my business when I am away, substantial liabilities etc.

I choose this, as I prefer to work to my hours and on my terms. I could have a comfortable 9-5 without a lot of the stress of ensuring I have work to pay my mortgage.

Pros and cons of each - so even if someone does not 'appear' to work hard, the stress and strain they are under could be reflected in their remuneration. Obviously this is not a set rule of thumb.

There are loads of coke-addled, super-privileged, well-connected arseholes who earn stupid amounts of money for doing absolutely fuck all. These are the men (and it's nearly always men) who were born into wealthy families, went to private school, then university for a bog-standard degree, after which their family connections got them some sort of junior executive job which mainly involved a bit of paper-pushing taking clients to lunch

Really? Really?

Where?!?

No one is denying privilege exists. We are just saying there is plenty you can do with your current skills to earn significantly more money.

There are lots of people without the skills you have- languages and a degree. Stop banging on about some rich people you know who have it better and start a language tuition service, or apply to teacher training here or do some TEFL abroad. All options.

Hi OP - I just wanted to say that you seem to be looking for blame and/or reasons why things haven't gone as you'd like them to.

Thinking like that is just setting yourself up to fail.

I am 51. I left school at 16 with 3 O levels to my name, and couldn't get a job in a bank because I didn't have English (was very good at it, just misbehaved in school).

I was of the age when office junior jobs were around. Long story short - got into a software company where i showed initiative, studied and learned over the years, and have had a brilliant career in technology working all over the world.

I've earned over £100k for at least the last 5 years, plus all the benefits that come with that.

Do I work as relentlessly as a nurse, support worker, etc? Absolutely not.

Could those people bring in the revenue I do for my company? No.

Do they have my profile, connections, influence? No.

But I got there myself, OP. No college, no uni, no parents to support. I'm still learning now and continually evolving my role. I love it and run a programme to support women into STEM as a hobby.

Have you read or listened to any inspirational books recently? The Secret is a good starter for 10 - essentially focussed on the power of positive thinking.

There’s physically hard work and there’s mentally hard work. I’ve done both and I can tell you what’s better for your body and mind: physical hard work.

My DB earns an obscene amount as a partner in a magic circle law firm, and yes he has a lot of responsibility and can't exactly slack off, but it's absolutely not the 'pound of flesh' it's made out to be. Not at that level

I expect to get there he sold his soul to the devil and the firm had their kilos of flesh

And he has unlimited liability as a partner if it all goes south...

I don't know why people keep mentioning languages when OP said her second language is only on a "get by" level and not in writing or reading. It's absolutely irrelevant for a career then.

The only people I know who earn good money work bloody hard. My brother often works more than 70 hours a week so I don't begrudge the fact he earns good money. It may be the case that some high earners don't work but I don't think it's true for the majority of them. It could be they are productive when they are at work. Or do work in the evenings/weekends.

What have these people done ‘to be so lucky’?

Worked my arse off at school, university and throughout life
Made sacrifices
Grabbed every opportunity I could
Applied myself
Took risks
Moved away from home & my family for a better life & better opportunities
Took risks
Some days work 12+ hour days
Never get to switch off
It’s not physically demanding, but mentally demanding.

It’s not about ‘being lucky’ it’s about the choices and opportunities I believe we all have in life and grabbing them.

I come from a working class family & was the first person to go to university. My dad worked in a stinking factory all of his life. Life is what YOU make it.

Well capitalism is alive and well on this thread. Honestly, I earned a very high salary and worked with people who earned multiples of it and none of us ever worked really hard. My friend has massive earnings and she works 3 days a week - and she is not in charge of the nuclear button (not that even that is a lot of work).

High earning are down to luck and connections, but those that have them want you all to believe they have some sort of entitlement to it and since we all stopped believing in class or noblesse oblige we have to be convinced they earn it due to hard work, IQ or some other fairy dust.

None of it is true. A worker in a mine in Congo works harder than any CEO.

Totally agree one of my massive bugbears is the implication that high earners are the only ones who have worked hard. I am a high earner but at the end of the day it’s a desk job and mostly from home. I would NEVER claim to work harder than those doing cleaning or domestic carpets etc (I’ve done these jobs too and they are far harder).

I think you need to switch your though process. What high earning jobs is related to your line of work? Or close to it? Research that. Work backwards, look at qualifications and experience required. Work backwards even more. Look at how you can get onto courses for those qualifications and experience. Look at bursurys, research what help you can get. But you need to look beyond the here and now and plan for the future. Hope that helps.

My DB earns an obscene amount as a partner in a magic circle law firm [...]

And he has unlimited liability as a partner if it all goes south

All the magic circle law firms are limited liability partnerships.

High earning are down to luck and connections
In a substantial minority of cases, yes. In a majority of cases, no.

Goodness the green eyed monster again. It never surprises me the prejudice that comes from looking a one snapshot of someone’s life and assuming something so prejudiced.

Next thing we know everyone will be voting Jeremy Corbyn in and taking away anything these people have worked hard for in life just to make the green eyed monsters feel equal.

I come from a poor background. I haven’t sat back and thought poor me I haven’t got what they have they as so unfair.

I looked at my life and said right what can I do to get out of this, I will study the arse off myself and get as much knowledge as I can to get as good a job as I can. I wasn’t in a position to go to uni so I got an entry level job and an evening job in a restaurant followed by a weekend job and worked and worked. I found constantly looked around at jobs and eventually found one that I could link to an evening and weekend university degree and I again worked and worked. I got promotions on the back of that training and I continued to work and work.

I had very little social life or spare time or money.

My husband came from what could be seen on these pages as a privileged background. He went to private school. He however did the same as me and worked and worked. He did go to uni and we met soon after he had finished his course.
We both continued to do weekend and evening degrees up to MBA level and got to our respective careers by sheer grit and determination. No one has given us jobs or money nor our 6 bedroom house or private schooling for our children on a plate.

We continue to work crazy hours. Have mortgaged ourselves to the hilt and more in order to own our home and some investments towards a pension for the future.

All of this was out of a lot of blood sweat and tears and cost to our relationship along the way.

For 25 years neither of us have drawn breath. Now due to the jobs we have our hours are odd. My husband might be working on a proposal until 2am and sleep in or be in the Middle East and need to be there over the weekend ready for the Sunday business hours, they don’t work Friday, he will miss weekend family time so instead he will have an occasional day midweek to chill and might help with the children even though I am at home.
My job necessitates me dropping everything at a moments notice so often I can be chilling of a week day and then be working late into the night or weekends.

Often best not to judge or have green eyes. Continue to work hard with determination and reach your goals by taking the odd risk and making a judgement on which path to take.

Don’t see what others have as being given on a plate or assume people are privileged just because they had private schooling or a nice life. They did it because behind the scenes they worked bloody hard and sacrificed a lot to get there.

I am getting sick and tired of assumptions it is a dangerous game when you divide up the supposed haves and have nots into a right and wrong game. Labour and their current policies are dangerous and will be ruinous to our country, our values and our community.

To be fair Safety the OP "sold" it as I have a degree and two languages, where on earth am I going wrong when actually it later turns out she's got a degree in something not particularly useful and "gets by" in one of those languages (I'm not clear re the second?). Anyway given she has a good base in at least one language I would wonder why she hasn't built on that?

Sorry OP but when it comes to the whole 'privilege' thing you're arguably one up on me because you (and others) have described my working class upbringing in a disadvantaged area but I didn't get to go to university!

You've had opportunities. More than some, less than others. You're not different from millions of us but we all make choices in life and looking at the details you've posted it's not terribly hard to see that you took a few (arguably pretty obvious) wrong turns. I mean being a dentists receptionist is a perfectly fine job but there was never going to be any career progression was there? It's not like you do it for 5 years and then you too can be a dentist!

In your position I would aim to advance in your nhs role or similar because it sounds like you really love it. Look at your skills and consider what you need to build on. Are there courses and qualifications you can do, projects/workshops you can get involved in? Ask colleagues and managers for advice, let it be known that you want to advance in this area. Fine you'll probably never earn the £150k that equals "high earner" to some but hey, most of us don't! I don't think my almost 70k salary is anything to sniff at... Despite what so many on MN seem to think it's not a case of you're EITHER the elite OR you're scraping by on minimum wage. Millions of us earn reasonable salaries and live comfortably with money left over for some of the nicer things in life. We often didn't for the first 5 or 10 years of our working lives but nobody said it was easy.

@SaveMeBarry 1 is Spanish, 1 is English?
Agree re the degree

DH and I worked like dogs in our 20s and 30s, him creating a business and me freelancing. In those days, I would get up at 2.30 am to be in a suburb of London for a breakfast meeting, travelled constantly, and we lived off my earnings as he took nothing from his work. I often worked 20 hour days, for eight months a year, and it was not unknown for me to be working on Christmas Day itself. Then it balanced out, we had our small family, and now he earns well and I am the oil that keeps the machine turning over. We don't earn millions, we pay well above local market rates (plus all the tax) and treat our people fairly, in a very specialist field that is resolutely unsexy. We are prosperous but not conspicuously so (no more than your local GP). We put everything on the line to start the business and it was precarious for the best part of 20 years. And now, we are nearly 65 and would like to slow down a little.

You might have done similarly. DH has no qualifications beyond O levels, and not good ones, but somehow, he has seen opportunities that others missed. It's not always privilege or talent or money or connections, sometimes it's down to sheer hard work. We missed endless weekends away because work intervened, and cancelled holidays several times, because our future livelihood required it. In retrospect, you could view it as advantaged. Every penny has been earned; in health terms, some have been earned several times over.

Honestly, I earned a very high salary and worked with people who earned multiples of it and none of us ever worked really hard.

Ah well if you didnt work hard then, debate over. No one who earns well can possibly work hard because you and your mates didnt.

With all due respect to OP. A miner on Congo works, physically harder than her as well. Probably not as well paid or employment regulations, health and safety as OP either

I haven’t RTFT but you often find that high earnings are linked to demonstrable financial contribution.
It is much easier to say I deserve an income of £100k if you can show you have generated £1m in net profit.

High earning are down to luck and connections

I know its been said...but not always