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?

@RampantIvy and others saying the high earners on Mumsnet are missing quite an important point (maybe because they are new?).
Back in the day, seventeen ish years ago, the comment used to be that the difference between Mumsnet and NetMums was a postgraduate qualification and £30k a year.
Mumsnet was set up and aimed at a very specific demographic and those of us who've been here since then have had two decades of developing our careers and earning potential.
Yes MN does have a large number of the high earners on it, they were the target demographic . Just because the membership has expanded so massively in recent years doesn't mean those women have left, they're just diluted.

🙄

It's also ignorant to think that everyone has the genetic make up to overcome the abuse and trauma. There is a lot of evidence to show that resilience is a lot more complex than nature or nurture. It's almost certainly a combination of myriad factors.

To imply that just because you have managed to overcome adversity that everyone should, is both unfair and ill-informed.

The fact is that adverse experiences in childhood multiply by some margin the chances of addiction, unemployment and ending up in prison.

By all means be proud of your accomplishments, but don't make others feel shitty because they haven't managed it. It's really not a good look.

@TyneTortoise

• I was lucky to get a first job at a large company, with clear and structured HR guidelines showing the skills required to advance.
• I got the message out, my way, to the people who mattered.
• How will people know what you've done if you don't tell them?

Excellent points. I think that the first is significant - I'm shocked at how unstructured and unprofessional many (some very large) organisations are at hiring, developing and retaining talent - though I'm sure some navigate the chaos very profitably.

There are obviously more people than you think earning over £100k.

£102k puts you in the top 2% of earners. There are 24.5m full time workers in the UK.

So somewhere north of 610,000 people earn over £102k.

MN is, I would say, somewhat middle class biased and the middle classes are predominantly at the higher end of earners.

It's not at all unreasonable to assume that maybe 3-5% of working MNers might be on £100k+

@IVFPrayingForBioChild

I've yet to meet the £500k plus earners.

Those making that sort of money from their direct involvement in a business don't often socialise outside of their family or colleagues/industry figures. Their focus can make them very difficult to live with. Someone I know in the seven/eight-figure income bracket has an employee watch TV with him as the family make themselves scarce when he's at home.

That’s generalising though.

I run a multi 7 figure business and I work 4 days a week.

I work hard not long.

I agree with several posters up thread - most noticeable Jos point that a way to distil the info on how to get into these high paid jobs (also senior leadership jobs which may or may not be 6 figure but are also under represented for women) would be a valuable resource, and that what anyones husband earns is not particularly useful in the context of discussions about womens earnings. Except perhaps as a comparator somehow.

But remember that a vast number of high earners don't work for other people and will have the knowledge and skills to charge very high rates for consultancy work. These are among the ones who have relatively stress free lives and pick and choose where and when they want to work.

Exactly this. In 2010/11 when I was at the peak of my earnings, I was paid £550 a day as a consultant. It was completely stress free and I worked normal office hours.

‘Exceptional’ means ‘not typical’, yes?
You can’t claim that a headteacher (which requires a similar skill set to generic management positions) is a more exceptional individual in every single way. Especially since programming itself is varied, encompassing simple jobs to ones needing PhDa.

You also don’t need to spend any £££ on a career change. There are bootcmaps, degree apprenticheips, free for women and guaranteed jobs. Like CodeFirstGirls. There are already numerous threads on this site covering all resources , have a look

Then you more than most should know that the difference between working hard and achieving a six figure salary, working hard and achieving an average salary, and working hard and ending up homeless is more often than not down to luck / knowing the right people / being in the right place at the right time / whatever you want to call it.

No one, literally no one, is self made, yet those who make it to the top seem to end up with the delusion that they did it alone and deserve their success.

Do people discuss their salaries with their friends? We don't, but I know from the jobs that our friends have/had that they wouldn't be in the 6 figure plus category.

What I mean by exceptional was actually how many people from a particular profession make it to six figures. Teachers probably 1/100 (and in part that is because of the amount of effort, the different and varied skill set, opportunities etc) - what about programming? You do not need to be an exceptional programmer to get to six figures but you do if you are a teacher.

Having lived in a country where teachers start on 120k - I really do see pay differentials as arbitrary and political.

And as someone with a PhD - I think they are fairly easy. Yes, you have to have some stamina and brains but actually the number of different skills necessary is fairly straightforward. Running a school in times of austerity however and only being paid 60k is mad.

I don't like to be precise but I earn 6 figures (it's higher than £100k but lower than £200k), although I never really discuss it irl so I guess I would just say "six figures" unless I had to be precise for some reason.
It isn't normal, but why do people assume it's always made up? My job is exec level, the first job that "led" to this one I got just after my postgrad, probably a little through luck. Ended up going elsewhere for a better salary using knowledge and experience I'd gained in a very specific area that happened to be very in demand. It's now easier (although still quite niche) to recruit into that area, but I was offered a higher salary as part of a package of incentives to take my current role, mainly due to my experience.
I don't think anyone else in my friendship group earns as much, but then again we don't talk about how much we earn. 🤷‍♀️

No, of course he's not. It's not a case of there's him and everyone else is like pp's husband working 17 hour days either.
There's a lot of top heavy companies paying a lot of money for people to do not very much.

There are several hundred thousand people in the UK alone on six figure salaries.

I don't begrudge anyone a good salary and I certainly will be factoring pay in when my children start talking about careers.

I enjoy teaching, but there are other things I could have done, and enjoyed just the same, but in something much better paid

Sometimes it is somewhat easier the higher up you go too.

Absolutely. I always get a little sad reading posts on MN about how women discuss choosing 'family-friendly' careers, not taking that promotion, not going for the training offered that could lead to a promotion, because they are already working hard and believe you MUST work 17 hour days in anything that pays well.

No you don't. I earn those 6 figures (170,250.31, if people want numbers). I'm there for sports days, we eat dinner together, I have a team to delegate things to. People pay me for my skills and knowledge developed and acquired over the years, they don't pay me to have my backside on the chair for 17 hours. Yes it's stressful and the work gets more complex, but I worked much much harder as a junior on a fraction of the salary.

There's a lot of top heavy companies paying a lot of money for people to do not very much.

Roles do change though, one key part of a company is someone who can bring in business and that might take fewer hours than doing the work lower down

So as you go up if you find it ok to be that person responsible for winning work it gets easier than the hard slog

It’s not so much about hours but what you can offer too in terms of profit etc

NRTFT

Don't think the OP is boasting as they've never said they earn six figures themselves, I think the title is just designed to be click baity and is a quote from the other threads.

It's interesting to hear the statistics. I suppose the term helps differentiate because a higher or higher earner is still something I would probably hear and think £50 - £60k, as that is high already.

I wonder what jobs they work in! There is something a little tacky and not done IMO about labelling your earnings. I still earn below the average and I wouldn't go around calling myself a low earner in conversation. It seems even more naff to go around calling yourself a 6 figure salary earner! Eek. Maybe that's just our cultural attitude to talking about money though.

Mumsnet has a million registered users and skews more middle class, more southern and more highly educated than the UK population, so there should be at least ten thousand users in that bracket - and they're going to show up disproportionately on threads about high incomes.

Its never occurred to him to highlight his salary....yet its the first thing you mention..

I don't disagree this is sometimes the case.
I was highlighting that it's not all regular 17 hour days or endless 14 hour ones.

Mizzo true

That makes sense. But frankly, a lot of the comments made by the people supposedly in this bracket don't really suggest a high level of education or exceptionalism. There is often an astonishing level of naivety about the economy, and a very simplistic view of social mobility, that I struggle to associate with high levels of education and intelligence. Not all of course, there are some interesting and enlighting posts, but some I read and I admit to thinking...are you sure?