What do you consider a ‘high’ earner?

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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?

Should add, I'm a teacher on 26k (early into my teaching career) but previously earned a lot more so would consider myself on the lower side income wise. DH earns significantly more and is a high earner.

I think all the mumsnet threads have skewed my perception. When I first joined I was shocked at all the big salaries.

I live in a North East town. 30+ here is generally considered good, so 50+ would definitely be well off.

You seem to be taking an attitude with a lot of people on this thread, not sure what that's about. You CAN look it up by the way, as I suggested in the first post, pop it in the search bar and you'll have millions of posts on subjective high salary opinions.

HTH

High earner to me would be £250k plus.

In London you’ve got to be on that and move to have anything decent in terms of housing and area.

Most people in Greater London are not on anything like 250k

Most people in Greater London are on around 30 to 40 k

I’d say 100k. Looked it up in the salary calculator and you’d take home 5.5k a month (this doesn’t cover pension deductions). 66k take home a year.

if average earnings are around 30k, then this is a big enough jump to be a ‘high’ earner.

I live in the SE/Home Counties. Have no idea what anyone else earns except for my team who are based all over the UK and we don’t base salaries according to where they live.

BUT if you are talking about a high earner driving a 100k car, living in a posh area of London, couple of houses, a yacht etc - then I just wouldn’t have a clue how much you’d need to earn! I was looking at holidays and got very confused when it went from 5k to 10k to something like 30 or 90k for a week or two. Can’t even remember what it was as it didn’t make sense!

I live in the south west. I consider 70+ off high earner but 40+ A decent wage.

im not sure it’s just location but also wages of your family/friends. My parents are both low earners as are majority of my family so they consider anything 35+ high.

we live in a very unequal society so peoples perception will be skewed by their own circumstances.

No not genuinley. But anyone being remotely factual got told not to be so I made up my own new measure of a high earner.

I meant as in the area I am in. Zone 1.

The problem is that it’s never a neutral thing. The implication very quickly becomes you’re a higher (than average) earner so how dare you not be rolling in disposable income.

And it does vary regionally. Being in the top 10% of earners nationally does not necessarily translate to close to that for London.

It also does matter if you’re 18 or 45.

I would say standard rate taxpayers (or people who are below the tax threshold) are lower earners, higher rate are middle earners and additional rate are high earners.

Really, if you and a partner together were buying, both in 50k I am sure you could easily find something!

Between the OH and I - and in terms of base salary, we're roughly 50 / 50 - with bonuses and after tax, we're on a combined salary of about £130k, which, for where we live (not London), is a VERY high net income.

However, we have no kids, debt or mortgage, we mostly WfH and have one low-cost 10-year-old car which I own outright, so our outgoings are very low (we have a decent amount of fun money and invest a lot in savings!).

I would imagine £130k would be different if you had a large family, lived in London, had a high mortgage etc.

Also, a good income is very different to being a high net-worth individual (HNI) - we're very comfortable, but we're not exactly Russian oligarchs. I shan't be buying a super yacht any time soon.

Fair enough.

Our income is over £100k and i think that's high (not London). But know people earning £300k+ and they don't think that's high!

Yep, agree with that.

£120k+ a year would be my idea of “rich/high earner”. Obviously it’s a sliding scale.

The problem is that it’s never a neutral thing. The implication very quickly becomes you’re a higher (than average) earner so how dare you not be rolling in disposable income.

If you choose to live in a particular way, it doesn't mean you're magically not a high earner. If you've got massive outgoings, that's a choice.

Personally anything over 30k to me is a high earner, I think 40k plus is a decent higher wage.

Those who live in London on minimum wage probably think 50k is quite a lot but in mn world everyone in London is on 100k so only 250k puts you as a high earner… I find the perception insulting to the many people living in the city who earn lower salaries like all standard teachers, nurses, health care assistance etc who will not be on 50k.

Plus a couple earning 50k each will have more take home than an individual on 100k.

I’m in London and would consider 80k+ as high, and between 45-80 as decent. Most people I know earn between 35-50k but we’re all in creative jobs, I don’t hang out with lawyers and bankers. I also got a mortgage alone when I was on 45k with no financial help. not in zone 2 and for a one bed flat but it is possible. The people who earn 100k+ in London are a bubble and not representative of the city as a whole.

I live in rural Wales. Median salary here is ~£28k. I would class £70k+ as being a high earner here, although it clearly wouldn't be in London or the SE.

Live in the midlands and have a household income of nearly 100k gross. Comfortably well off in terms of absorbing the increase in cost of living without having to make any changes to lifestyle, but I wouldn’t count ourselves as high earners because

1. not close to affording private schooling which many friends/colleagues can (I’d say would need £200k + for this for 2 kids)
2. not able to afford multiple foreign holidays (probably could if we drastically reduced other spending)
3. have a relatively cheap house bought 11 years ago - to buy the same now would cost almost 2.5x as much so mortgage would naturally be 2.5x what ours is - most of our disposable income would be gone if we were paying £2k mortgage instead of the £850 we currently pay

so well off/comfortable is very different to high earner I would say.

The average is skewed down by part time workers though.