A thread for lower earners to discuss!

[AlexBalex]

AIBU to make a thread for lower earners?

I feel like every thread I read on MN is full of middle to high earners or just posters where it's commonplace for a household to be earning really high amounts like £80k, £100k, £150k.

Now I fully understand the national average is approx. £30k. But does nobody on here and their partner take home minimum wage each resulting in a household income of about £45k?!

In real life I'm surrounded by plenty of 'low earners' but the representation on here seems to be massively skewed the other way.

Where are all the retail staff, hospitality staff, nurses, school teachers etc? Apologies, I don't know the salaries of these roles but they're understood to be below the national average right?

Just wondering if anyone with a not insanely high, lower than average household income (i.e. less than £60k) exists out there?!

Thoughts welcome, was just looking for a discussion really as fed up of reading about 'high earners' all the time .

Hi! 👋🏽

Don't believe all you read on line.

Yes!

Nurses and teachers earn more than £30,000 I would say, you just need 2 average earners to make a good income really.

My industry is a low earning one, even skilled, after doing 18 months of training, I am still only on £10.90 an hour!

My husband works in transport and he's in £50,000 which is a fab wage for us and where we live isn't particularly expensive so we are lucky. But I have friends who earn way less than that and seem to be rolling in it so who knows!

School teachers and nurses aren't that badly paid, once they have some experience.

If I were a nurse or teacher my main gripe would be the working conditions not the actual salary

Aaah, apologies. I wasn't sure on those salaries but thanks for clarifying.

Yes we're out there. I work in recruitment, earn 25k. Single household.

As above, don't believe everything you read on here. I could tell you I earn £150k and you would have no way of knowing otherwise as I'm some faceless nobody -it would be bullshit though as I actually earn £24k per annum which is reduced to approx £21k as I work term time.
DH earns significantly more which allows me to do a job I enjoy.

I am always reminded of what doctors say - if you ask someone how much they smoke or drink, you should probably add on about 50% (at least) to get the true figure in a lot of cases.
Similarly with salaries on MN, I think you can take a lot of them as being flexible with the truth.
I live in the North where average salaries are certainly nowhere near some of the figures we see on here. Before retirement we had a household income of about £80k, and lived a very comfortable lifestyle. Even in retirement I consider us very lucky to have a decent income from our pensions, but outgoings have always been lower than average- never bought into lifestyle creep.

I often think the people that don't speak up are more likely the ones who earn well. Because why the fuck do people need to brag otherwise.

Yep! I’m on 18k, will be going up to 30k next year and husband on about 13k. We live in a cheapish area so lucky to own our house (with mortgage) and get by ok.

Our household income is about £45000 I think (although dh does have a side business that brings in a few thousand extra a year) but by mumsnet standards we do seem to be deathly poor. In reality we live pretty comfortably- we were lucky enough to buy a small starter home in 2014 when prices were still low from the last crash and traded up a couple of years ago at a large profit to a big 3 bed semi in the nice part of town (live in East Anglia so prices are quite low). Our mortgage is less than half the national average rent which really helps! We have 1 dc in nursery with the 30 funded hours and our jobs work around this so no childcare costs so we can still afford a couple of English holidays a year and are generally pretty financially comfortable.

Single person here working full time self employed and and earning 18k.

I was thinking the same

Loved the thread earlier where a household of two NHS consultants was described as the poor relations. Loved it. Hello from the arts where Tate Gallery curators are lucky if they scrape 30k and chief executive posts are frequently below 50k.

I’m a teacher and after 5 years experience you’re on 47K (Scotland) which I think is a good salary. Trickier if you’re a single parent with childcare I would imagine.

I think most of the people I know would be in the 30-50K bracket. Lots of poverty as well in the schools I’ve worked at, very mixed catchments.

I was thinking the same, so many people seem to comment their DH earns 100k or more.. where are these people working? Mind you I am from the north.

Bear in mind only 15% of the population is in the higher rate tax bracket (about 50k plus pa). They are a noisy and entitled minority.

Wow, how are you able to get such a huge leap in such a short space of time?

Great idea 💡

Hahaha!

I work for my local authority and my DH is self employed in construction. combined we are generally comfortable but nowhere near the high earning figures that get mentioned on here.

Where you live factors in to what I would call disposable income though as my area housing (although rapidly increased over the last few years) is still below the national average so that helps.

I think any discussion of who earns what doesn't take into account how old the person is. As an example my daughter at age 25 was earning £22k. But that's because she works in a sector with low starting salaries. Now at age 31 she has just accepted a new one at £50k. It's ultimately about how long you've been in the job and how senior you are.

I never understand why people don't believe others earn a lot.

Most people I know have a household income of at least £100k. My friend is a Social Worker and earns £70k for example, her husbands salary is £45k. Head teachers earn more than £100k My friends daughter is on a graduate scheme and her starting salary was £50k at age 21.

I always feel like the poor relation. Our household income is £70k. But I don't think.other people are lying about what they earn.

We don't take home minimum wage, but we don't earn anywhere near 70k combined.

We live in a cheaper part of the country and earn well enough for us to have 2 cars, mortgage on a nice house in decent area and a UK holiday every year (and occasional foreign holidays every few years)

I am PT and haven't had a FT job since I was 21, but even if I went FT, our household income wouldn't be 70k.