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?

It’s all relative. To me it’s disposable income, not how much you earn. You could be on six figures and have a huge mortgage and flash cars, holidays, jewellery, surgery….. I suppose six figures is enough actually- scratch that. But say someone earns £30k- if they’re mortgage /rent free and £30k is just for household bills/utilities then they’re much better off than someone with a mortgage.

If I work a 37 hour week my salary is £80k, I’m in Wales, I think that’s probably quite high. We don’t live in a huge house by any means, but the next road houses are around £600k-1million and they are huge/swimming pools etc. It’s a nice area, we back onto a forest. If we moved to London, we would no doubt struggle and probably be looking at a very modest 2 bed.

DH wants to retire at 55 (I’ll be 49). (We both detest our jobs. ) We will have to be careful if we both retire early. We would probably just change jobs and do something we actually enjoy- that doesn’t pay that much. So could be nearer on ££40/50k between us, possibly less. I think it would be enough as long as one job covers all bills/cars etc and the other job is for leisure. We could probably get by with one car too.

I live in the north east of England and I earn 50k. I would consider 60k plus to be "high".

Wow. To me a high earner is someone on higher rate tax.

Medics like GPs earn about £100k but boy do they earn it! I think of that as very high.

I only know a couple of people over £100k other than medics, and they are lawyers.

What are these jobs that earn £250k + ????

I said in the OP. Second sentence.

£100k + on your own. I live in London. DH and I earn about £110k between us but I think it would have to be each to be considered high earners.

80k and above means a salary in the top 5% so that is a high earner.

@Tsort It’s a bit depressing to think I’d be living the high life anywhere else!

So move then?

I'd agree with PPs that my perception of a high earner is probably linked to tax brackets. Can't say I spend much time thinking about it though

Anyone who earns over 1.5x my wage.

Years ago I lived in poverty. Even earning £30k seemed like a lot of money to me. Now I don't know how single people or breadwinners can cope on that amount.

Tech, financial services (banking/hedge funds), City law, consulting.

North West £250k though £150k up maybe need to worry less about money depending on private school fees and mortgage.

Yes, because then we’d be getting a mortgage on £100K, not £50K. And not particularly easily, either. You’d be restricted to pretty small flats.

Central London is expensive.

Also high rate 40% tax bands haven't changed much for years for now pretty much everyone pays high rate. Unless people mean the 100k plus rate.

This is a good calculator based on the household numbers. It shows how your income is, relative to others in similar circumstances:
ifs.org.uk/tools_and_resources/where_do_you_fit_in

I think £50k anywhere outside London is high income, but that is just an opinion. All sorts of factors impact this, such as number of dependents, outgoings and lifestyle.

We live nw England. Dh works away near London full time, I work locally part time. Our combined income is around 70k. We have low mortgage payments, almost half what rent would be on a house the same size and no nursery fees anymore. We are fortunate enough to not have to worry about money too much but we do have to budget for holidays, Christmas etc.

Locally we are quite a high earning household.

Figure that pops in my head is 60k. NE England.

See? 🤷🏻‍♀️

£100k plus, rural East Mids.

We have a joint household income of around £70k now and struggle due to high childcare costs but will be much more comfortable once school starts. But in my village there are a lot of very high earners and we feature down the bottom.

We live in a tiny thatched cottage in a very sought after area though. We could buy a big 5 bed 5 miles away for the same amount and £50k would feel high.

I am part time now but my FTE salary is £55ish and I was always broke then, now it’s £42ish and it feels exactly the same.

I think a good 27 million are standard rate tax payers compared to 6 million higher rate so im not sure everyone pays higher rate.

But i do agree more are being sucked into it.

I don’t think £50k puts you in to the high earner category. I’d say £250k + in the SE and maybe £100/150k in other areas.

Agreed.

I'd say in the SE in general, anything under £150k is not a high earner, it's comfortable but no more.

It's heavily regional though.
£50k out in the boonies somewhere is probably a very nice life and rightly considered a high earner.

Then I wouldn’t be earning my salary, so no.

Over £100k - High earner
£70k and over - ‘Good’ salary
£50k - £69k - Doing well salary
£40k - £49k - Getting there salary
£34k - £39k - FGS when am I going to earn £40k!
£33k and under - Ok if you’re young but if over 35 a bit shit.

This is if you work in central London.

100k is high

I love this! 😂😂😂

I'd say a household income of 100k+ is high (so I guess that is 50k each) but as an individual 50k is achievable in many industries so as an individual more like 65k+?

For context - I'm in zone 5.