..to struggle to comprehend huge salaries?

[missbunnyrabbit]

I was reading the thread about how much people earn having been to grammar/private schools and I just cannot get my head around how much lots of people earn. My head just cannot imagine such huge salaries. People earning over 100k, what on earth do they even do with that money? Do they buy everything gold-plated? That's a joke BUT I have no idea what anyone does with that sort of money or what it could be needed for. This isn't a bashing thread or anything like that. I'm just a bit stunned.

Does anyone else's brain struggle to imagine such huge amounts of money?

@bordermidgebite

Is it really more comfortable to live in a big house or is that a social response ? Do you really believe you are happier because of the big house ? Data suggests that rich people are not actually any happier than those who live above poverty levels.

We live in a big house. A couple of years ago we were thinking of downsizing and then lockdown came. When we were all shut in together for months on end (at one point we had 3 adults working from home) I was so grateful for the luxury of space and a garden that I have a renewed loyalty to our home.

It sounds a huge amount doesn't it , my husband is on 100k . The tax takes a massive chunk of that and I work two jobs . We are far from well off .

If your husband's on £110k then that's £66,693 per year, or £5,558 per month after tax.

The median in April 2020 was around £31,461 a year - so half the population earn under that. And if you have two jobs two, then your income is more.

Living is expensive in this country, but you really are well off, compared to most other people with more than double the average income. That's not criticising you of not feeling well off, but it's so important to understand quite how badly off those who are on minimum wage working 35 hours for £17,300 per year before tax really are. It's barely subsistence level, once you pay rent/mortgage, food, bills, income tax and NI etc.

It’s funny what perceptions of ‘well off’ are isn’t it.

It seems most people don’t consider themselves well off, even if they’re in the top 10% of household income or even the top 5%.

What does it take for someone to feel well-off, if knowing over 90% of people are worse off than you. If you’re not well off, what does that make them? Whilst I think that some of those on lower incomes can have a real chip on their shoulders about anyone who is earning the average or who is a higher rate tax payer, for those on £100k to then say ‘I’m not well off’ seems to be rather clueless.

Yes, often those on good incomes have massive mortgages and big childcare bills and don’t have much left at the end of the month. But along the way they’ve had leisure and been out for meals and done stuff that to them is entirely ‘normal’ and not luxury at all, but which wouldn’t be possible for lots of people. They forget that a £2-3k mortgage might be a burden, but it’s not forced on someone and lots of people couldn’t have it even if they anted it.

So I remain quite shocked by how tone deaf and in self aware and unaware of others people from all ends of the spectrum appear on this thread. It’s not a race to be richest or poorest or to be struggling the most or to say you’ve got it bad.

To me, I’d say lots of families on £100k have very comfortable lives and often don t realise their good fortune. By mixing in similar circles, they lose sight of their good fortune and level of comfort and think only an astronomical level of income could allow you to be comfortable. They forget that either and/or being able to buy a car when needed, to pay a large mortgage, to have decent holidays, to pay for children’s activities and to have savings and security is in itself not usual and more than many people could imagine. To have all that and then say you’re not well-off is very tone deaf.

I’d say it’s perfectly possible to be very well off and comfortable and to still find finances a stretch. It’s possible for both to be true….and that’s something those who have less often struggle to understand about those on £100k. Most lifestyles expand to fit the budget or exceed it. Particularly the housing budget expands and many people with £100k actually spend more than they have and don’t have a great grip on their finances. People from all backgrounds have big debts which eat up large amounts of their monthly incomes. And it seems no-one is willing to have sympathy for anyone from a different income bracket for finding themselves in that position.

I think it’s such a shame when there is so much vitriol towards high earners - they are working for their money and earn that amount through good luck, or good planning. £100k isn’t really an obscene amount to be earning at all.

Like others we kind of grew into a higher income, school fees, kids extra curriculars, private healthcare and dental care etc. We don’t have a lot disposable but that’s because we have started putting money into savings for the dc, pensions and overpaying mortgage. We realise we are very privileged and it may not always be like this, we do also support parents financially and give regularly to charity for those that mentioned this earlier.

We’re well over £100K and don’t feel rich but that’s because we have the privilege of owning our own home (over £2K a month mortgage). We have expensive commutes, no help with childcare costs and kids in state school.
BUT we obviously are rich compared to many because we can also do a weekly shop without worrying, holiday abroad once a year and if the washing machine breaks, we can repair it.
We are lucky in all those respects. We work hard but so do millions of other people in lower paid jobs

I agree @mowglika. Higher earners are also paying an awful lot of tax on their income which is paying for lot of the services that we all benefit from.

I’d say it’s perfectly possible to be very well off and comfortable and to still find finances a stretch

Yes, I said something similar upthread. We know we’re comfortable. We don’t have to add up what we’re putting in the trolley at the supermarket, we know we can pay our bills etc. But £2.5k a month childcare fees means we’re not living a life of luxury and we can’t afford lavish holidays etc. That doesn’t mean we’re not aware that we’re more fortunate than the majority.

I think you are completely right wombatchocolate and it does surprise me when I hear people list all the extras their income affords them but that they are not wealthy or well off. No need to compare yourself to Jeff Bezos, if you are earning £100k plus it’s not millionaire money but you count as well off, whatever you are choosing to do with that money.

The pp on £30k a month who said she didn’t feel super rich also surprised me. How much excess income do you need to feel super rich!

Im currently on near £200k. I grew up in a mining family in the North East where money was extraordinarily tight. Other OPs are right.. the salary increase comes in increments and I've 'invested' in my career though time or money so for so long I've been paying back debts

My first job out of Uni in 1998 was £8k gross and with crippling £50k debt (my parent weren't able to give me any money so I had to work when I could or rack up debt).

I moved to London for a better job and moved to £12k, then £16k and then £20k. The debt repayments kicked in at £16k and left me back to square one. 95% of my salary was rent and public transport. I remember writing a £30 bouncy cheque for two weeks worth of groceries on the eve of 2000 but I was focused on being promoted at work and moving onto bigger and better things.

Did a load of research as I was keen for a new challenge and better prospects. Found a new job in a new industry but which used my skills and had a much higher earning potential. Salary was now £35k I spent my weekends learning about this new industry to ensure I got the job and I was damn persistent in applications. Interestingly any of the people I worked with then could have moved into that industry but none did. All of them are still there complaining about their pay...

I moved in with my boyfriend and the rent I was paying in a 5 person shared house suddenly shot up now there was two of us. Believe me at no point between £12k and £35k did I feel any richer or have more disposable income! You move tax bands, your rent gets higher, bills get higher, transport more expensive. Suddenly you have to buy furniture! Probably the food I ate went from a packet of super noodles to spag bol and the wine we bought was a little nicer. Our holidays were few and far between. Self catering in Greece once and staying in a friends parents house in France

I moved job again, for £45 then decided to qualify as a lawyer. 4 years later and £25k in debt again I moved to my current legal role. Started on £50k again with a shit ton of debt and after 14 years specialising into a niche area of law I'm now on £200k.

That 14 years has not seen me suddenly become flush with disposable income and buying Maseratis! Rent went up every year. Debt needed to be paid but the Greece holidays turned into 3 weeks in Canada for example. We bought a car. Finally bought the furniture we needed. I was often working away from home for huge stretches (I hated it but knew that was the way to get promoted) so Treated ourselves to lovely dinners, didn't think twice about a night of expensive cocktails or buying a new outfit. Makeup went from Rimmel to Clarins to Chanel.

Importantly though any disposable income went into a house deposit. I was paying £2000 a month on rent and the rest was saved. In reality life doesn't change that much. We never managed to afford to buy in London.....

In reality though the big gains in my salary have been through significant time or money investment in my career. Money investment leaving me in some significant and terrifying debt for large periods. Time investment like requalifying over 4 years part time while holding down a full time stressful job. I've also moved countries twice now for work. It's stressful, unsettling, scary and damn it's expensive! Our latest move (despite being subsidised by the company) cost us £40k

Where I live now is expensive and at 45 I've managed to buy my first house. Yes in a beautiful area but it's fairly modest but right now it takes up 60% of my income because we were so late to the party. My disposable income and my lifestyle feels no different to that when I was on £50k but where it is going has changed! I now have a mortgage rather than rent payments for example and it's twice the cost but that is immensely privileged I realise. We have a 12 year old Honda Civic and a 20 year old knackered Land Rover. What I'm willing to pay for things has gone up. My furniture is more expensive than the first lot I bought in 2004. I've invested in art. We enjoy good food and wine and I'm privileged enough to not look at the cost of anything in a supermarket. And yes I give a lot to many charities both money and time...

The upshot is it's a slow drip of incremental increase in salary but that has come from my time investment (90 hour weeks 300 miles from home for example) or getting into debt to get the next promotion (so the salary increase sometimes barely covers the debt) or being flexible enough to go where the opportunities are and sacrificing your entire savings to do so.

Yes, higher earners do pay more tax - and paying tax is a really good thing for society. It should be celebrated more.
But higher earners are still then left with a large chunk of money. Low earners also pay tax (or pay tax through VAT) and are left without enough to eat.

I don't resent people earning a high income at all. The ones that do pay tax in this country help to keep things funded. But lower-paid people still do pay tax (at far greater cost to themselves), and it's good to acknowledge that at least.

100k Salary is obscene and don’t get me started on 30k a month. How can anyone sleep at night earning that knowing how many families struggle to keep a roof over their head or make sure everyone goes to bed fed.

So, what do you expect people to do? Chuck in their jobs? Who would that help?

I like to live by John Wesley's inspiration - "earn all you can, give all you can, save all you can."

Jesus relied on rich people to enable him to further his ministry.

High earners are not the enemy.

Some people think higher earners get paid what they get paid just ‘cos’ - try and get one of the lower earners to do the job the higher earners do. It’s a meritocracy my parents are illiterate - my dad died in his 40s. I knew my way out was to work bloody hard at school go to a good Uni (not cos anyone told me ‘cos I researched and researched) then got a great sales job. I now do that for myself. I hate people who resent what I get paid if they want it they can do it. Trust me I saw my parents do it and they could barely speak the language or read or write.

I think the former head of our department had to pay the Top Rate of tax in Scotland. She once complained that due to it, she was paid more in Scotland than when she worked in London, but took home slightly less. Anyway, my guess is she is on north of £100,000 and her husband is a similarly high-flying person.

Not sure exactly what they spend their money on, but she was always very well turned out in designer clothes, dyed her hair but you never saw roots, foreign holidays in a hotel, three kids with a nanny (now in private school but I think if you have more than 2 kids nannis can cost the same or less than nursery without all the pick up/drop off nonsense), large home that they completely remodlled

@WombatChocolate

It’s all relative isn’t it.

Most of us will have people who are better off than us and people who are worse off.

Some people will look at us and our spending and think we have so much. Others would think it’s not much. It’s all relative.

Yes, the rich can lack empathy and understanding or the less well off. They can assume it is entirely normal to spend £3k per month on a mortgage or £50k on the school fees of 2 kids. Once they’ve committed to those spends, though, like all spends, they are committed at least for a period.

I am not a millionaire and Indont earn mega bucks. I can see though, how very easily someone earning large sums, moves up the property ladder and borrows more each time and therefore spends £3k on their mortgage. It’s a lot of money and more than many have for the month by far, but at the end of the day it has provided them with accommodation, in the same way £450 per month will cover accommodation in lots of areas of the country. Those people still need to pay bills and food and other stuff. They just spend more on all of it.

You’d think those people with high incomes must have loads left over and loads in savings. Some do. Lots don’t though. They are in a lifestyle which has crept up on them and feels inescapable now. All their money goes on mortgages, childcare, food, leisure. Some don’t even have particularly good holidays or lesiure because their money is going in vast sums on what might be considered the basics - accommodation and food.

I’m. It suggesting sympathy for the well off for find their cash stretched. But I’d think people might be able to imagine a bit more how this could come about and that although it might be different as a lifestyle to many, in lots of ways it’s not different at all. Most of these well paid families are those struggling month to month to pay their accommodation bill, get to work and cover childcare and keep it all together. There really isn’t something mythically different about them or their lives that makes them totally different. It’s all much of the same, just done on a more expensive scale.

So whilst I don’t think the affluent middle classes need sympathy for the expensive lifestyles they’ve got themselves into, suggesting it’s impossible to imagine or that anyone with a higher income can have money struggles is also a lack of empathy and understanding….and in some cases a real desire to make a barrier or gap between people and drive a wedge and to never look for any common ground, but to have a determination to find differences.

You can be determined to decide all middle earners must be wasting money or having an easy life….in the same way you can decide all low earners must be dossing about…….or you can be interested to understand how other people live and to see there are many similarities in the human condition and commonalities, as well as some undeniable differences.

You've put your finger on it!

When I step back and look at it objectively it's all the 'othering' on threads like this that bothers me. And I've been swept up in it as well. The intent is about setting people against each other.

There's lots of rhetoric about how high earners are somehow at fault - comments about 'how can you sleep at night while some people are starving'. As though high earners earning less will mean more for others when it doesn't work like that (unless you're talking about those paid in assets or equity).
Furthermore in the corporate world women are already treated differently compared to men when asking for a payrise. Many don't even entertain the thought and have some hidden guilt about asking for 'that much' money, which also irritates me. Thiking high salaries - or even uni are not for 'people like us' is another issue for many from low earning backgrounds.

There is a lot of wishful thinking and again ridiculousness (choosing a bigger house yes is a choice) but I'm responding to the spirit of the OP (who hasn't returned)

@wigglerose

I think the former head of our department had to pay the Top Rate of tax in Scotland. She once complained that due to it, she was paid more in Scotland than when she worked in London, but took home slightly less. Anyway, my guess is she is on north of £100,000 and her husband is a similarly high-flying person.

Not sure exactly what they spend their money on, but she was always very well turned out in designer clothes, dyed her hair but you never saw roots, foreign holidays in a hotel, three kids with a nanny (now in private school but I think if you have more than 2 kids nannis can cost the same or less than nursery without all the pick up/drop off nonsense), large home that they completely remodlled

OMG!!!

Our wages have increased gradually over the years but now are in the region of that between us. But after paying for car/phone/bills/food/overpaying mortgage we put most of our spare money into our pension/isa's. I am sometimes broke at the end of the month (I have the lesser wage) and by no means feel rich. We are comfortable though and I know my OH could bail me out if I was desperate. But I didn't pay into a pension for so long as I couldn't afford to - I am trying to make up for it now. I don't buy clothes/shoes/bags or make up. We holiday once every few years. It doesn't always go as far as you think.

Its crazy isnt it? I remember thinking the same when my DP started earning over 100k. £1000 on the mortgage, just under £1000 on nursery and £1000 to his ex a month and that in itself is over half the monthly income gone!

@PiesNotGuys

So a 100k a year job means you take home £66,700 after tax. That’s not half, or almost half, that’s a whole yearly salary for one person above half.

I earned 9.5k a year as a single parent and paid a mortgage out of it.

That’s why people say it’s a different world, it’s the responses here. Nothing against high or low earners in any way, it’s just the ‘it soon goes’ mentality, like the bit about cars. One person is saying - at this level you will definitely need two cars at 80-100k each - and it took me until I was 30 to save up enough for a provisional license and lessons and just about managed to run a single car at cost £800 new to me.

The thing is what your saying is true. But everyone is used to a different standard of living. Those that live in the North or near may not be familiar with London even travelling racks up £££ for the underground alone. So if you are a family and you send your kids to private school within London I can believe how you would easily get through £100k. Even London rents and surrounding are astronomical compared to the North.

When Theresa May became Prime Minister, she talked about those who were 'just about managing'.

I can't remember the details and am not going to look it up, but it was probably about those on £30 - 40k, who had a decent lifestyle, but were not resilient to things going wrong - such as a new boiler or car repairs.

I don't think as higher earners, we particularly spend a lot more, but one thing is that we are resilient to unforeseen boiler replacement or car repairs.

You bought when property was cheaper, but still pay £3k a month mortgage? Why?

Unless you mean you bought when property was slightly cheaper, like 2 years ago.

We bought in London about 15 years ago and are on our third property with increases in mortgages each time. But we wouldn’t be able to afford what we have now without the massive deposit we put down because of the money we “made” on two sales. Our mortgage is big, but our service charge is really expensive, too. We live in central London in a great block with amazing amenities that we really do pay for.

If we moved further out of our zone, we could buy a freehold house. In no way, on our salary, could we do that in London if we were first time buyers with no deposit now. Those houses are more than a million, which is what our flat is worth. If we were borrowing with no deposit now (which you can’t do anyway) we’d maybe get to £600k.

Most of the posters on here just don’t understand what it takes to be on a salary of £100k plus. It’s not an overnight accomplishment and takes sacrifice and luck.

If everyone could, everyone would.

For me, £100k job is around 45 hours a week. However, I know that I can’t do it forever so I’ve got assets which deliver £35k of profit each year as well. Plus there’s my spouses income.

What do we get in return?

No dental treatment so have to double pay for that through NI and private dentist.

No decent level of medical care as people who have never put in or out very little in are whinging about every ailment going.

Oh wait though, I must get childcare assistance… well no. Nothing.

So I am a big contributor to the tax system paying an array of different taxes and what is the perception of me by small minded individuals? That I am greedy and well off and burn £5 notes.

Seriously, there is opportunity out there. You just have to want it and be prepared to take one step at a time to get there.

I was on that Before I went back to university and now am part time.

I just paid 50% into my pension. Mortgage on small flat already paid off.

So I Just saved more and used it to fund a few years (so far) off work.

@ImNotDancing
100k Salary is obscene and don’t get me started on 30k a month. How can anyone sleep at night earning that knowing how many families struggle to keep a roof over their head or make sure everyone goes to bed fed

I pay £100k in tax. I'm happy to do so and would pay more if it meant everyone was warm, fed and comfortable. It's the governments fault that this is the case not high earners. I have never voted Tory for this reason.

I spend an evening a week in a CAB giving free legal advice and using my knowledge to support people on low incomes with legal issues

The work I do in my career directly benefits individuals' financial well-being. Especially the vulnerable and those on low incomes. I literally fight for your rights.

I invest in small business start ups. More often than not these are set up by low earners with a dream. I've lost a lot too.

I give monthly to 5 charities close to my heart and give them my time. Believe me on 70 to 90 hour weeks that time is at a premium for me

When in London I also used to spend my Saturdays collecting and sorting at the Brixton food bank.

Is that sufficient in your eyes for me to have a few hours sleep?

Ive spent my childhood years in poverty and 15 years of my adult life struggling to keep a roof over my head and food on the table. I've invested time and taken risks that have got me to where I am and struggled with the debt. I know too well the stress. I do my best to help out but I will not feel guilty. I think the greatest privilege of high earnership is spreading as much wealth as possible and using it for societal good.

Being a high earner doesn't happen overnight and often comes through experiencing poverty or low income in childhood which drives you relentlessly to break out of that.

I feel thankful that I could get out of the trap my mother fell into. She gave up her job as soon as she fell pregnant back in the 70s and relied on my dad's modest income for the whole family. We got by growing up but nothing more. She has hardly any state pension now.

As a result money has been a big motivating factor in my choice of job. I've worked 50-60hour weeks for 20+ years and did 7 years worth of professional exams to get where I am now. If I hadn't been motivated by money I might have chosen a different path, who knows.