Getting vilified as a high earner

[MagicMondays]

DH and I are both high earners. We do highly skilled and quite niche professional jobs which involved most of our 20s spent grafting, living apart, anti social hours etc when our friends were all having more fun! Both jobs still demand long hours and have a lot of responsibility. We have two DC and it's a struggle to sort childcare that works and make sure one of us is around for them. Our mortgage is huge (cos London) on a run of the mill Victorian terrace.
We obviously get no allowances - no personal allowances on income tax, no 30 hours childcare, no child benefit etc. Our tax bill is huge.
No issue with any of that. High earners should pay a disproportionate amount into the system to support others/redistribute wealth etc.

What I can't get my head around is how much people in the UK seem to dislike people like me. I see it on these boards all the time. People demanding I pay more tax, people complaining high earners are not as deserving as nurses, teachers etc, my own family making unfavourable comparisons with others.
We don't live a flash lifestyle at all - ordinary clothes, old car, not really interested in grand holidays, posh restaurants etc. You wouldn't know other than from knowing the jobs we do that we must have a good income.

I'm just a bit tired of this idea that people like me are arseholes in some way. I'm really not!

🎻

I'm a teacher, probably earn a lot less than you and I pretty gave up my twenties to the job, working evenings, weekends and holidays. Please don't think that whatever high-paying job you do is the only job where people work long hours.

Well, somebody doesn’t understand…. Your personal allowance is zero once your taxable income is greater than £125,140. This is presumably what the OP is referring to.

This.

I have sympathy for the OP. I think she is suffering from a class war which is constantly stoked by the Tories, and which most of the posters on this thread have bought right into. Yes, some people earn loadsa money, but it doesn't/shouldn't make them arseholes. I think there should be some 'Rules for Rich People' and would like to suggest some, to help challenge this growing war. Please add your own suggestions, and these aren't in a thought out order of priority - this is a stream of consciousness sort of thing.

1. Cultivate a wide range of friends, keep in touch with your childhood friends etc.
2. Be thoughtful about, and sensitive to, the financial problems of others. Don't expect less high earning friends to jump enthusiastically into expensive social events (or tactfully subsidise these for them, probably without telling them - eg 'Ooo do you want to come to the opera, we have a couple of [in reality £100] £25 tickets and a bunch of us are going if you're interested'
3. Think about Scrooge post ghost, and give liberally to causes you support.
4. If you are a CEO, FFS be aware of the wages of your lowest paid workers and make sure the CEO to worker payment ratio is a decent one.
5. Maybe follow a couple of the pages on Facebook (apologies, there may be similar on here) - things like 'Food-Surviving on 50p a day' to see how some people work their hearts out and still struggle.

There are a lot of decent rich people out there, honestly! Don't let the bastards running the country convince you that everyone is like them......

@2thumbs

but the allowance tapers from £100k so OP hasn’t gone from a £12k allowance to zero unless she’s had a salary increase from, say, 100k to 126k in which case it’s still a £10k net salary increase.

But with 10% inflation on top it's strained our finances

This right here op - comments like this one of yours, when you have a household income of over £250k gross - this is why some people will think you're an arsehole.

I mean seriously, from someone who claims to have come from a poor background, how can you be quite so dense? And don't give that 'six figure incomes aren't all that much is Lonnndonnn' bollocks. You're earning an absolute fortune by anyone's standards - and that's great for you. But don't try and pretend that CoL or inflation has 'strained' your finances. You don't know what strained means compared the vast majority of the rest of the UK, as well you know. You have an abundance of options at your fingertips many could only dream of. Read the room.

So in summary - if you don't want people to think you're an arsehole, don't act (or post) like one.

My view on people with wealth is usually not generalised nor is it based on their wealth but their personality. If I think someone is a rich t I'd think they were a t regardless, but I wouldn't call them a poor t* if they had that personality but not a lot of cash,

@ACynicalDad you have it. Bank balances change. Personalities do not

Well, I earn less than the average UK income and I get nowt off the state either. If we had children I'd qualify for some universal credit, but as a childfree household we get zero help. I'm the sole earner and I have to cover my mortgage and all bills on that. I've worked full time non-stop ever since graduating 30 years ago. I'll swap you, OP.

Feel exactly the same and have to bite my tongue often. We don’t have kids (trying) and feel like I’m always having to defend myself for having a good job and decent disposable income. We didn’t get a penny of the cost of living payments, no government help etc. but all our outgoings have increased. Pay a stinking amount of tax every year plus extra student loans. Purposefully waited a while to start trying for kids so we would be comfortable and not struggling to make ends meet. We live in a normal house, share a normal ish car, aren’t super flashy, shop in Asda etc. I guess our one extravagance is holidays which seems to cause lots of whispering. Constantly looked at by friends with several kids like I should feel guilty for having more, like I’m foolish for spending our money on travel or like I’m ridiculous for being annoyed that our outgoings are increasing.

The big issue is not that most people take more from the state than they put in, as that implies the moral failure rests with those people and not with an exploitative organisations and people that manufactured this situation. If, despite the fact more people take more from the state than they pay into it than vice versa, we are still one of the richest countries in the world, that begs the question how can that possibly be? Could it be that there is huge profit to be made from not paying people enough to live on and that this country is somehow benefiting from that, but in a grossly uneven and offensive way?

I don't think your an arse hole, I'd admire you. Unless you told me you were doing tax loopholes.

We all cut our own cloth, where I am, a combined salary of 80k makes us millionaires...... But my kids are teens so less output, but they have been in childcare growing up. To some I've damaged them......

"we are still one of the richest countries in the world"

I see this mantra trotted out all the time by British people. The stats show the UK has been falling behind relative to its peers for the past 15-20 years. In GDP per capita terms the UK is poorer than New Zealand, Canada, Australia, Germany, Belgium and many other countries. Furthermore there is a massive difference in GDP per capita between London / SE England and the rest of the UK. If you remove London / SE England the rest of the UK has a lower gdp per capita than Poland. It's the first and second generation immigrants in London (only 37% white English in last census) that sustain its economic growth and the UK's tax base.

It all depends on your definition of high earner. If you;ve just tipped into the top tax band, whilst earning significantly over the average, you are not a high earner. That's reserved for the 7 figure and above bracket.

This.

The idea that most people take more than put in is based on flawed thinking. It looks at people's wages and the tax they pay but that isn't actually what they are 'putting in' to the country's coffers. Because most people are not paid the true value of what they produce. They are paid a fraction of that value so that every manager, every person in that organisation that earns more than the lowest paid worker, every shareholder, is creaming some of that value off.

"Because most people are not paid the true value of what they produce. They are paid a fraction of that value so that every manager, every person in that organisation that earns more than the lowest paid worker, every shareholder, is creaming some of that value off."

This is absolute nonsense and the fact that a poster would even spout this sort of thing is a reflection of the poor level of education in British society generally and how ignorant people are indulged rather than corrected.

Low paid workers don't necessarily add more economic value than the amount they cost their employers. Often higher paid workers are adding more economic value and some of that economic value is subsidising the lower paid workers. That's particularly the case given national minimum wage. Shareholder capital funds the establishment of the business, cost of set up, infrastructure, etc. That capital requires a return.

I think this is a simpleish way to explain the tax thing

Because the personal allowance tapers after your net income hits 100k (once pensions contributions have been deducted) the marginal tax rate between 100k and 125k is 70%. That means of that extra 25k you have earned you actually end up with £6250 extra in your bank account.

Because you also lose your free childcare hours and tax free childcare if your net income is over 100k if you had two kids in childcare you could feasibly be worse off than before the pay rise.

The sensible thing to do is to try and increase pension contributions to keep net salary lower, although there presumably comes a point where this isn't possible which I guess is what has happened to the OP.

Still should be able to manage comfortably but I get the frustration with not seeing the benefit of what on paper is a massive pay rise.

I'm doing ok, but not from money and no safety net.
My favourite anecdote on this is prachetts Sam vines boot theory. Basically the richer you are the better and longer lasting boots you can afford whereas if poor, you get to buy the cheapest boots for a little less but more frequently.
The there's the opportunity cost, the richer tend to have more money to buy that really good coat for their child, on sale. The poorer, not so much.
Surely you can see how feeling lesser all the time upsets a person.

This is absolute nonsense and the fact that a poster would even spout this sort of thing is a reflection of the poor level of education in British society generally and how ignorant people are indulged rather than corrected.

No, though it may be a bitter pill to swallow and an inconvenient truth if you are a higher earner, it is simply the truth. You clearly don't understand what needs to be measured in order to calculate true value. But don't let my expertise in this area stand in the way of your ignorance.

I don’t know what serious firm allows their lawyers to work part time, nor any serious barristers working some really critical cases (child protection, etc)

"No, though it may be a bitter pill to swallow and an inconvenient truth if you are a higher earner, it is simply the truth. You clearly don't understand what needs to be measured in order to calculate true value. But don't let my expertise in this area stand in the way of your ignorance."

You can't justify the nonsense that you've written because it's nonsense. I don't know what you think your "expertise in this area is" but it's what I often see from middle aged middle class British women - believing that people should pay heed to the shite they speak because of their self-declared "expertise" even when there is neither logic nor evidence to support what they are saying.

You put more towards pension contributions, and you may also get company shares or stock options to reduce net salary. Keep doing that until either childcare is an insignificant expense compared to your wages, or the kids grow out of childcare.

I had a coworker in that salary range (also London) and he did put a lot towards pension, which incidentally went great for him as the plans our company offered performed really well - I'm talking 70% up or so in 5-ish years. I believe he also didn't marry for a long while despite having three kids not to lose any bens, which his wife collected as a single mum. I didn't want to intrude but I thought he was a bit over the top, considering the amount of money they had.

Poor you x

Actually if you put too much into your pension then you breach your annual contribution allowance.