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 .

teachers aren’t badly paid, I’m not sure where that narrative comes from obviously conditions are not always good.

I work in retail and do 35 hours. My wage is about £17000. DH is retired and has 2 small pensions and state pension and he gets about £9000. So nowhere near the national average.
We live in Yorkshire and have a reasonable lifestyle. No holidays abroad but we've never wanted that.

I'm 53, earn £14.5k pa, topped upwith tax credits and HB, work24 hours per week. I'm knackered and skint.
Never had a 'proper' career.

Me and DH are both on minimum wage (in retail) and aswell as low wages we also have shit work benefits such as we can't chose our days off or when we take our annual leave. DH has to work all weekends and can't get Christmas or summer holidays off as annual leave. So that's pretty shit when you have school age children as he doesn't get to see them much or spend days together as a family.

We also don't have a car which is almost unheard of on here, and we live rurally with rubbish public transport 😂
I am learning to drive but on our low wages I can only afford a maximum of two lessons a month at the moment, and that's without worrying about how I'm going to afford to buy a car/insurance/petrol etc

People often say on here that working minimum wage is a choice, that we can get better paid jobs etc but someone has to work the low paid jobs. And without a car we are limited on the jobs we can get, we couldn't afford to do higher education or retrain, we come from poor families who can't afford to help financially at all, we can't move areas as we have to look after elderly family members who have noone else. We are stuck in this situation and unless you have money to throw at the situation already it's very very hard to get out of it.
But we work hard, we love each other and we try and do the best for our children whom we adore; and we will try and encourage them to not end up stuck in the same situation that we are.

We’re on about 60k combined, 30k each. It’s fine. That’s similar to teacher/nurse wages really. We don’t struggle but also we make certain choices like smaller home and possibly sticking at one DC.

This site is generally quite middle class I find, so it’ll be skewed. Also nobody goes on one of those ‘how much do you earn’ threads to usually say <35k.

34k, Yorkshire, single parent renting privately. It’s not exactly great but I don’t feel ‘poor’, there are plenty worse off than us.

Your wage is far more common than those on £30k+ per year. This is household wages, not individual wages. 2 people, each on £30kpa would be in the top 40% of household incomes
https://www.statista.com/statistics/813364/average-gross-income-per-household-uk/

Thank you for this thread, it is very reassuring! My husband and I both earn below £30,000, combined a bit above £50.000, as a doctor and another public sector employee in the South. We live modestly and don't feel terribly poor compared to some families, but it would be nice to have a few more luxuries one day. We would feel a lot more comfortable without childcare costs, so hopefully things will improve at some point.

Hello! I'm not sure I count - I earn 13.75 per hour, so my income is under the average of 30k. But I'm really lucky that I own my house outright, so I don't have mortgage costs.

I do think MN is strange about money in general.

Single person on £45k. Getting by ok, but couldn't manage on much less. Full of admiration for those who manage on less in expensive areas, and slightly envious of those with a dual income (envious of the income mind, not so much having to live with a partner!)

Single income household here. It's tough!

How do you manage to earn less than £30k as a doctor??

I think the thing is certain mumsnet threads seem to attract all the mid-high earners and so it feels fake/if it's not fake it's INCREDIBLY DEPRESSING because so many say they earn 100k+. I think it's easier to say it's fake than believe it, because honestly, comparing yourself to others is never a good path to happiness.

The average wage is £30k. You need 4 people earning £20k for every one person who earns £100k - and I don't feel we get 4 times as many people posting min wage related posts compared with the hundreds of posts that say 'oh woe is my poor family relation who is a hospital consultant'.

I'm 39 and just got an increase up to £30k from £24k a couple of months ago. My career high was £34k around 8 years ago, then I slashed it in half to work in the charity sector and have gone up and down since then.

Finally - if you are going down the comparing route, never underestimate the way tax etc claw away at those bigger salaries. Your take-home difference isn't anywhere near the gross numbers. That's what within a couple of months of a pay rise it always feels like you want more again!

Also regional factors are huge - in both salaries and cost of living (specifically, housing). Without the context of what that salary can get in the region, it's all a bit useless really.

DH and I earn about £72k combined. I work part time (for health reasons) as an AHP and he chose a low pressure job (he's in tech) which means he is available to support our DCs with extra-curricular stuff as needed.
We know a lot of people who earn £100-150k plus, mostly people who have been in law and finance for many years. It's not unusual for families to have three kids in private school at £20k per child per year.
So for a lot of people we know we would be the poor relation when in reality we are absolutely not that at all.

£40K here but I'm not working atm, I'm staying at home until my DD turns 3

That'd be 1st one or two years without doing extra income bits (which is roughly the same as a band 5 nurse btw) or working part time.

@Headingforholidays did you see any other the wage slips shared by doctors during the recent strikes? It's a myth that it's a high paying career, until a person hits consultant level which takes many many years.

I've been amazed by recent posts on here where the OP is sad about their (or their kids') "low" wage and it turns out to be well over £50k!

On what planet is £72k a low income?

Mumsnet has a lot of people based in/around expensive parts of London where wages are much higher than average. When we lived there in our mid/late twenties 10 years ago everyone we knew was on 60k plus each.

I read into it that being a high earner, or spouse of a high earner, is a bit emporers new clothes. Seems all nice on the surface but actually it's incredibly lonely and vacuous, otherwise why be on here?

I’m band 5 NHS, DP is basically school hours term time only, we gross £45k a year, and net 3k per month. Sounds fine till 1/3 goes on the mortgage and council tax, then 1/3 on childcare (due to get a small top up from UC when I return to work post MAT leave).
Most households we know out earn us but only a couple really high earners in our circle.
know a couple of households completely on benefits too.

They are also paying for the entitled majority. 54.2% not paying in.

👋 we are earning 24k combined
Obviously we do get a small top up from UC but I would give anything to be closer to 30k
It seems impossible

🙋‍♀️