I earn a 6 figure salary...

[herehearher]

Just reading another thread and pretty much every post is going on about "6 figure salary" - as if this is some sort of meaningful marker.

But obviously there's a massive difference between someone on £100k and someone on £900k. So by "6 figure salary" are they just essentially saying they earn around £100k? If they earned £250k, how is it acceptable to describe that?

@ChazsBrilliantAttitude I think PP who talked about coffees while out was spot on. For quite a few people, it's not obvious luxuries but little ones. Do you only food shop in Waitrose, do you spend 25-30 pounds on a standard bottle of wine or 15. Do you spend 200 pounds across a weekend on not much. Do you think that spending 18 pounds on two drinks in a London pub because it's sunny and you are catching up with a friends a lot or standard? Do you shop in Arket or H&M and Uniqlo. If you only earn 120k and have kids, you arent sending them private but you might not care about yet another coffee (5 pounds) that you just bought while watching them play in a park.

Chaz I won’t scroll back but your post re high earning women on here is a good one. I agree it’s beneficial for women to share information on careers etc

I have just discovered Matalan and it's great - quality of clothes pretty decent too.
I think most 'rich' people would buy good quality clothes at a lower end shop.
Money don't spent on those things + money is spent on homes, rental properties, shares etc.

It's usually people that can't really afford a designer clothes lifestyle that waste their money on it.

What like footballers and celebrities?
People who buy designer things are people who like to follow trends and aspire to a certain look. They're found across all income brackets.
A lot of very comfortably off people don't fit the
stereotype of sitting sensibly in discreet clothing, ploughing their money into conservative investments. Its a very outdated view of wealthy.

Footballers are hardly the people you would want to associate with.
They may be extremely wealthy but most come across as uneducated and uncultured & what bores.
The clothes the WAG's wear are disgusting - plenty of people trying to copy that lifestyle that can't afford it.
I was only speaking of my own choices and people I know.
Gucci is a definitely a brand no one I know would waste money on and feel embarrassed if they stupidly did.
My partner's manager / owner of the company bought him Church shoes as a present for Christmas - honestly I was embarrassed such an obvious label.
I've seen better made shoes in average Italian cobblers in villages.

Again cultural.
I'm not talking about white people in this country, I'm talking about Asians, specifically second and third generations of people I know.
Maybe we've yet to get to the stage of wasting money on clothes.

Designer western clothes to be specific.

Well regardless of your views on their taste and whether you would want to dress that way, there is no denying that footballers and celebrities are wealthy. As are a good many people who like designer brands. You said wealthy people don't wear designer clothes. I'm just correcting you in that. You're conflating wealth with snobbery.

When the average salary in the UK is £28,000, having a £100, 000 salary makes you a rich person. No need to brag! The majority of folks who earn in this, bracket are not actually worth that amount of money except in their own heads. And have absolutely no reason to moan that they can't afford to live as so many do on here. They should try living on £170 per week as many in this country have to, including older women.

This thread is about modest high incomes through traditional routes not celebrities and footballers.
Pimps and drug dealers wear designer clothes and are wealthy but they hardly for into the category of people that this thread has become about. Income of £100k or so and what some think of as extravagant spending, I doubt a family on £100k with a couple of kids are wasting their money constantly on designer clothes.

@Mirw

Well obviously it's not just in our own heads we are actually getting paid these amounts!

How do you know what someone is worth?
Are you doing the HR recruitment for the whole of the UK?
An economist perhaps?

No one is denying that carers work hard however, they don't get paid much as that skill set can easily be replaced.

It's not easy to replace a surgeon, doctor, financier, CTO, CFO, CEO - information and technology reformers, restructuring experience.

You don't know this world that is why you can't see the value of these jobs.
However, it doesn't matter, you're not setting the pay scale.

Who decided this thread was about a family with 2 kids on £100k? The thread is about one person who earns 6 figures - most people thought 6 figures would be between £100k- 200k range. A single person on £200k could easily afford designer clothing if that's what was important to them. Quite a bit cheaper than paying for a BMW or private schooling!
Do pimps wear designer clothing? I have never met any - are you acquainted with a great number or did you get this information from some sort of socio-economic study? I've met a few drug dealers though - mostly in my student days - they looked disappointingly normal, somehow a life of crime did not seem to be reaping the big rewards you might like to imagine.

This! The my DH big job high earner is old zzzz.

I want to hear about the women here. When a woman posts about being a high earner I do an outloud, yes!! Because it IS noteworthy and understand the challenges to get there.

Anyone who earns £100k + is clearly wealthy by comparison with most people in the UK and in current circumstances has a very comfortable life.

There may be a vast range of reasons for their relative wealth. They may have worked really hard or got a very good education. They may be lucky. They may have come by it by questionable means. It's impossible to generalise

I am not someone who believes that its intrinsically wrong to earn a high salary and nor do I think high earners should be taxed into the ground: I am a relatively high earner and I feel like I work bloody hard for every penny I earn and deserve it. But I also think it behoves anyone who earns that money to have the grace and self-awareness not to brag about it or claim that they are hard up because they live in London or have kids at private school or whatever. It's just basic manners in my book.

I also don't really understand why people feel the need to tell anonymous people on a chat forum they earn "six figures" unless its extremely relevant to a discussion (which usually it isn't). Enjoy your good salary by all means, no one begrudges you it, consider yourself lucky but for God's sake keep it to yourself.

I don't want to know what your husband earns.

And I definitely agree with this. If a single woman has amassed a big fortune on her own I'd cut her a bit of slack for boasting because its still bloody rare. I don't need to hear about people winning the Man With Important Job lottery.

That's missing the point of believing others can achieve.

There are activities people do that will guarantee you won't have a high or decent income.

I'm sorry, I don't understand your point?

I've repeatedly have told people exactly how I got to where I am.

Then you're not one of the 'most' who haven't then are you? If you're a genuinely helpful person who has shared in detail your route to success, I'm obviously not talking about you. You must admit though, a lot of people don't. Several on here just quote their, or their husband's, salary, and then refuse to give details as 'why should they' or suddenly its 'outing'.

I earn £200k. I'm from a deprived background. Council estate, raised on benefits, one parent an addict, the other mentally ill.

How did I do it? My mum had her head screwed on. Yes we were poor but she made sure we were very aware she was only ok with doing cash in hand jobs and working all hours God sends if we "got out". We knew from primary school age we were expected to drag ourselves out of that life. My mum has no education, was very ill mentally and was a victim of decades long domestic abuse at the hands of our dad. Who was she to be telling us to get out of this life? To this day I don't know where she got the clarity from to hammer it into us but it's what spurred us on. My siblings and I went about it in very different ways but we've all ended up very senior in our roles and £100k+.

Can it be replicated? Because it worked for me does that mean all kids from my background are able to do it? I don't think so. I consider myself incredibly lucky to have had the mum I have. Every knock back, snide comment at work about my accent, people talking down to me, she was there demanding I hold up my head and get back into that workplace. And I did. I never let it get in my way of my goal (and there was plenty of it believe me!). Unfortunately not all kids from my background have a parent with that kind of inner drive, which is understandable because when you're worrying about eating or heating (and maybe neither) I'm not sure you have the presence of mind or energy. You're living hour to hour, day to day. As I said, I've no idea where my mum found the space in her head for pushing us on. As they say, there but for the grace of God go I.

Women owe it ourselves, our daughters and grand daughters to be open about our salaries. I don't mean coming on mumsnet bragging (my life is seriously unbraggable right now despite my wages), or by prancing around telling the world. But we must have these conversations at home. My children know exactly what I earn and always have done. I make sure they know. I'll be damned if my daughters don't know their workplace worth and how to negotiate for better terms, which opportunities to look out for etc. Companies aren't teaching their female employees this so someone has to.

People who think everyone is lying, I think shows that you must be new MNers. Back in the day there were sites called baby world and net mums or huns as it was called. MN targeted a VERY SPECIFIC demographic. It was aimed at the middle classes whose children wore Boden and similar. There was a heavy bias towards SAHM mums living very comfortable lives or career women earning a very comfortable salary.

It was the whole target demographic of the site in the first place, it’s very clear that it has now changed. However, no getting away from it, there was a targetting of comfortable, well educated middle classes. It’s not difficult to then realise there will proportionality be higher incomes on these forums.

If you had read the whole thread you would have noticed it's moved on from the opening statement!
Lots of posters attacking a normal woman with 3 kids.

Actually through my earlier work as a forensic accountant I've met all walks of life, probably people like you too.

Using drugs, nothing to be proud about.

You have no idea how much the life of crime pays perhaps go and do some actual research.

Just because you haven't experienced something doesn't mean it doesn't happen - surprise!

Well not if you'd read the research in Freakonomics by Stephen Levitt and Dubner you'd know the surprising fact that the vast majority of drug dealers aren't very well off - but you don't seem like someone who deals in facts when you make judgments about people and how they live, never met many pimps have you?

To be fair, that’s not entirely true. Not that many people make particularly good carers, it is a far more rare skillset than it is convenient to acknowledge. I know I could not do the job well. Society simply doesn’t care enough that people get inadequate care, so we pay crap money to overworked people who are not given the resources to do a good job in the first place, so that we don’t have to do the work. Then we whinge about it. However, to prop up the people doing other types of work, we have to maintain a sector of society we used to be allowed to call slaves (or women), then servants, but now grudgingly pay as little as we can possibly get away with as a society without admitting we are just not willing to pay fairly for a good service. It’s because we need carers too much and need too many of them that we deliberately devalue their work - they must never be allowed to profit from their work, because they are too essential, so we deliberately devalue them, instead.