What do you consider a ‘high’ earner?

[Tsort]

In my head, a ‘high earner’ is someone who never really has to think about money. So, perhaps £200K and up. However, I’ve recently seen threads where people on circa £50K are described as ‘high earners’. As a Londoner, that seems like madness to me, but these things are obviously very dependent on where you are.

So, I’m curious. Where do you live and what would you consider a high salary?

I’m based in the Midlands. I’d consider 80k and above ‘high’.

I don’t earn anywhere near that!

The vast majority of my social circle are the second generation offspring of immigrants and in the top 5%. We are economists, bankers, lawyers, doctors, accountants, headteachers etc, I could go on. None of us had any inheritance or expect any, and have made our own way in life.

Assuming your net monthly is circa £10k, what are you spending £7.5k on every month after your mortgage is paid? This post must be tongue in cheek lol

The cries of “privilege” in an automatic response to anyone doing well is imbecilic.

It only works if 95% of the population (at least) is privileged and, in that case, it becomes a meaningless statement.

Surely that's a wind up? We're on 32k and quite comfortable (high energy bills will be an issue.) How can you be squeezed on 200k even after 2.5k mortgage payments? Do you import luxury food from overseas?

Privilege just means ‘advantage’ or ‘immunity’. There are different types of privilege. That’s the crux of intersectionality, no? Race, class, gender, education, economics, disability, physical attractiveness, intellect, it’s endless. Being privileged in one way doesn’t mean you’re privileged in all of them. An able bodied person living in grinding poverty has able bodied privilege that a billionaire does not. However, this in no way impacts on the significant economic privilege that the billionaire has.

And so on and so forth. It just means a person or group of people has/have certain things that other people do not. It’s not a value judgment and it doesn’t mean they don’t work had.

I’m pretty sure they were trolling.

In my opinion, a high earner is £100k and above. I think between £50-100k is still quite good in relation to the national average though. I used to think £75k+ was high but with the COLC, spending power is being eroded

I call bullshit. Our household income is marginally more than this and I couldn't for a single second suggest we are anywhere near squeezed

I think we’re pretty much all agreed that it’s bollocks. You note they haven’t come back.

It’s definitely bullshit unless someone has a gambling addiction or the like.

I think it is all relative isn't it?

I'm on £60k, and my partner on £45k. Our mortgage is low(ish) in the South West and my step son spends 2 weeks each month with us, we have no other kids but do have dogs (who we treat like royalty haha) and we also have an apartment in London.

But we can't spend mindlessly even though our income is decent!

@inaminute23 I think maybe the difference between you and others with low/ no mortgages and others in your salary bracket is the second property. Not sure about the relativity aspect.

50k and above imo

Some of the replies demonstrate that some people really don't have a clue how most of us live.

I would say £100k+ is a high earner. I think £180k+ for super high earners

North west

50k would be a reasonable salary round here and above average.
I’d say 70k+ round here would make you a high earner and you’d do quite well.

Nobody has really mentioned the cost of care/ family commitments. No conversation about earning is relevant until you understand someone’s full picture. DH and I worked really hard with no hand outs and now earn c.£220k between us, my sister is NHS and always looking for handouts from
my (very hard working semi retired NHS parents). Always comments made about how much money me and DH must have (big house nice holidays) but we also have a severely disabled daughter and no amount of money can compensate for that. We have a lifetime of care to provide for her which is a very real concern. I’d happily have a smaller house and less cash in exchange for her health and happiness- the two things money can’t buy :-(

To not think about money? I think you'd need to be on 150k+ a year for money to never really pop into your head?

I assume that the salaries of those in the 100k bracket probably gets spent much the same way as the salaries of those on 20-30k a year.

Just everything is 4/5x the cost.

Instead of the small vauxhall or Ford- it becomes the large range rover or x5 that's 5x the cost.

The holidays probably go from Spain for the more normal income household to I dont know, Mauritius, or NZ,AUS etc etc.

The rent/mortgage becomes for something a bit nicer.

I just think it's probably quite hard to get to the point where you don't think about money, just simple upgrades on what is "normal" probably eats up a massive chunk of additional money. It wouldn't surprise me If it wasn't even vastly more than 150k a year someone would need to earn to simply choose what they liked/wanted without worrying about the cost.

Said whilst wondering if I've turned the kitchen light off, because of the electric bill. Wouldn't it be the life to not worry about finances!!

Wow. Good on you.

I have a friend who earns c 150k. He has a very good life needless to say.

DH and I worked really hard with no hand outs and now earn c.£220k between us,

Wow. Almost like you are saying that people on lower incomes don’t work hard. My mother was a nurse. She never made anywhere near a quarter of your combined income. But my goodness she worked hard. 12- hour shifts. On her feet all day. And she did that until she was 67.

I make more than your combined income on my own. But I would never suggest that it was because I worked “hard”. I’ve been very fortunate.

As for “no hand outs”…if you’ve ever used the NHS, state schools, etc then those are hand-outs. Just stop with the “holier than thou” attitude.

I think that the entire discussion about luck vs hard work is unfair to everyone concerned. Thinking it was all luck (and no hard work and choices) takes away the control and hope from those who don’t make much - because it suggests that it’s really out of your hands and you can’t do anything to change your circumstances. It also denies sacrifices and hard work of those who are high earners.

Claiming it was all hard work on the other hand is equally unfair as it suggests that hard work alone is enough to secure one a financially prosperous life - which is definitely not the case.

in my case, it was definitely a combination of both. Did I work hard (and do I work hard)? Absolutely! Did I give up a lot of things to achieve financial security I have today? Yes, but so do many people on a much lower salary. But I was also in the right place at the right time when opportunity presented itself and I took it. Would that opportunity present itself without previous hard work? Probably not but then a lot of my former colleagues who worked equally hard were not presented with one.

I spent 15y in a lower paid job (academia), I now make 7x as much in finance and I am both - proud of my hard work and thankful to my lucky star!

I really wasn’t suggesting that and I am sorry if it came across that way. I meant money from inheritance rather than the state. We have used significant NHS services in the last few years and seen how hard people work.