Anyone else lost a bit of ambition now they’ve been taxed to the brink?

[Peasontoastt]

I used to be extremely ambitious and was really eager to reach some sort of financial security. As a consequence, I’m in what’s considered a highly paid career, I work hard and it took me many years to train.

Just as I paid off my student loan (which took many years), I then had a baby and returned to work to be stuck with the childcare dilemma. I struggled through that phase and have come out the other side but being taxed so much, no child benefit, still paying for nursery even though dd has ‘free’ hours now. It’s likely that savings are going to be bashed next, so what’s the point in even putting anything aside when there’s likely going to be a 4K cap on ISAs.

I used to feel so ambitious and of course I know money isn’t everything, not by a long shot. But having worked my way up the ladder and with huge responsibilities only to feel penalised financially for doing so…what is the point? Yes I have more financial security than someone claiming benefits but equally, I am not being flippant when I say a few years of resting and being at home and being frugal is starting to seem so much more attractive. Has anyone else started feeling this way? I feel taken the piss out of by every financial angle!

This does appear to be a goady post but I will give a genuine response anyway.
I felt this way when I had my baby. I think wanting to be at home raising your own child is natural. It had nothing to do with taxes. I went part time and lowered my out goings which was actually pretty easy. As well as saving on childcare I had more time to shop around and save money and I easily made use of free/very cheap facilities like the library, parks and playgroups. Many of which are funded by the tax payer.

Scary that these people get to vote.

Thank you for that lovely comment. For me it goes back to how we treat and speak to children, I was never praised at home or at school. It was a constant litany of my shortcomings from my parents and my teachers. I am so glad that we hopefully no longer treat children like this.

The actual figure is 17.8 million, but still a third of the population - About 17.8 million UK adults (aged 18+) paid no income tax in 2023–24 because their total earnings were below the personal allowance (£12,570)
https://questions-statements.parliament.uk/written-questions/detail/2024-01-10/HL1477/

Even after school there are ways to up skill and improve yourself. Do an online course, there are many free ones. MIT Open courseware. Read a book on python, learn to code. Actually MIT Open courseware has many free courses to upskill yourself. The jobcentre can refer you to training courses as well.

And the reason I say "just get a second job" (if you're physically healthy) is because of what this man did, growing up in a horrible part of Chicago and making something of himself. He had 4 jobs at one time to make ends meet.

https://youtube.com/shorts/Q5rjsv1f-y0

Do you have enough? Can you pay your rent/mortgage, buy good food, afford decent clothes, a newish reliable car to get where you want/need to go? A holiday once every 12-24 months? Do you have a work pension, and pay into NI for your state pension? Can you put any aside into savings for surprise expenses?

If you answer yes to these questions what exactly do you need more money for?? If you are earning enough for a decent quality of life, what exactly is the problem? If you were taking home another £2k a month what exactly would you do with it??

The level of wage inequality in the western world is toxic. The grind culture and desire for more more more, opulence isn’t going to make you happy. If you are earning enough to go into the 40% tax bracket think yourself lucky and pay your damn taxes, there are people doing vital ‘key worker’ jobs who can’t afford to live on their salaries, they work just as hard as you, possibly harder, and deserve a decent quality of life too. You are not being ‘penalised’ for being a high earner, you’re paying into the social fund that looks after the vulnerable.

Unless you’re lobbying for a change to living wage legislation to make all ‘unskilled’ roles get paid at least £35k a year I’m really not interested in anything you have to say.

You are presumably bright enough to work out that that’s not how society works. We need people of all levels to function.

Your husband earns £100k+ for Deloitte. They need administrators, the offices need cleaning, the buildings may need security, someone gets rid of their waste.

To answer your question about my own role - I’m an operations manager for a recruitment business. I report to one person, our CEO, who if I’m honest is largely on a golf course. I do work hard, but I work hard in a far less formal and time managed way than our employees. I do both school runs, go to the various appointments my disabled stepson needs, take the occasional day off without using A/L, etc.

I do all of that on the understanding that if my boss needs something at 10pm, it happens. If something goes wrong at 8pm on a Friday, I log on. But as much as it is give/take, I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t more take. Perks of the job, I guess.

I’ve progressed to a point where work life balance and decent remuneration is possible. We need our admin staff, our trainees, our lower paid employees. Without them, no business. They work 40hrs a week for us, many of them parents who can’t just have 4 jobs.

We can’t all be CEOs, senior management, £100k+ Deloitte employees, because once we’ve “levelled out” of the lower paid roles someone else still needs to do it.

"Learn to code" 😆
That assumes someone has a PC, and the desire to learn it. Plus, it is not for everyone. I can not do it at all.
And doing a online course is not going to get you a job when you are up against coders who have years of experience in the industry already.
And it is not AI proof.

It also assumes that AI won’t be taking over coding in the near future. The employment royalty of the future will be people whose skills can’t be replicated by AI or automation. Ironically many of those in low paid roles.

Who do you think builds, maintains and improves chatgpt and other AI systems? People who can code.

At DS's workplace some legacy code was written in chatgpt. It did the job but was inefficient so it was revamped by an actual coder.

With DH they tried using it do some something but it spewed out complete garbage and needed to be manually done. AI is not infallible.

@MarvellousMonsters so if someone can't say yes to all those then it's OK to want more/be frustrated at paying taxes?

DH and both got top grades, went to uni, had student loans and work for nhs. We can pay our mortgage and bills, but the only person in our house who gets new clothes is DD1. DH and I rarely buy anything new, and if we do it is new socks or shoes because old ones have worn out. DD2 wears DD1's hand me downs. My car is 9 years old, DH's is 7 years old, we need2 as live rural and commute for work. My girls have never had a foreign holiday, we just cant afford it during school holidays and I feel strongly about not removing them from school for holidays.
Our back door need replacing as let in rain, but we can't afford that, every time we save enough another bill comes in, our council tax on a very average house is now 4k. My girls excellent school is going downhill due to reduced funding.

Am I permitted to be frustrated?

🤣

You don't need to justify yourself to her. However you have something people who make snide comments like that will never have.

It’s not accurate to equate high earners who reduce their working hours with low earners who claim Universal Credit.
When a high earner cuts their hours, they simply pay less tax because they earn less. They aren’t taking money from the state — they’re just contributing less of their own income in tax.
By contrast, someone who claims Universal Credit is receiving direct financial support funded by taxpayers.
So one group is withholding potential revenue by working less, while the other is actively drawing resources from the public purse. These are not morally or economically equivalent.

I was in a similar position to you but:
The tuition fees we both paid though huge were subsidised by the government. In a country that doesn't do that (eg America) you would be graduating with 100s of thousands with of debt rather than the 10s of thousands and still be paying it off
Your healthcare to have the baby was free. I actually have birth in a country with a different system and was quite shocked to get a bill for about 1400 (though i was reimbursed for most of it). My America friend laughed and said it's not unusual for childbirth to cost over 10,000 and it's not even all covered by insurance
Childcare expenses. Absolute nightmare, can't think of a silver lining there. Except hopefully they will soon be of to school which is free and then it's only paying for wrap around care. But it gets easier, you are in the worst bits now
Talking maternity leave - it's easy to take for granted but actually being able to take time out and then return to your job isn't something that just happened. There are even now people who complain about women that want to take time out to have a baby effectively being subsidised by their company for lifestyle choices. Or other colleagues having to pick up your slack. I know that's not fair (I also took maternity leave) - but if you let yourself get drawn to narratives about how others are talking advantage of you, be aware other people will be drawn to similar narratives about women that work and have kids. And if companies weren't legally required to offer maternity leave many wouldn't. Or would take you back at lower pay despite all your previous hard work. So, hooray for Labour rights.

It's easy to see all the negatives and take for granted the positives. That said, work /money isn't everything so if you feel you aren't spending enough time with your child/are exhausted from working and can afford to take more time out then why not do it? So long as you know you can get back into your career when you want without being penalised. But be aware "living frugally" at home with a small child isn't a piece of cake.

I agree, nail on the head. Completely different scenarios.

The net result of both is less money in the government’s coffers.

It’s true that both situations leave the government with less money to spend — but they do it in fundamentally different ways.

• When a high earner reduces hours, they don’t take money from the government; they simply choose to keep more of their own time and earn less. The government gets less tax revenue, but no money leaves the treasury.
• When someone claims Universal Credit, the state pays them directly from public funds — money actively goes outof the government’s coffers.

So while the net fiscal effect is that the government has less money overall, the mechanism and the moral dimension are very different: one is a private decision not to provide more taxable labour, the other is a direct draw on public resources. It’s a bit like comparing someone who chooses not to donate to charity, to someone who takes money out of the charity’s fund — they both leave the charity with less, but in completely different ways.

They’re both maximising their income at the expense of the Treasury by working fewer hours than they could. You can get into as many convoluted, angels dancing on the head of a pin attempts to differentiate between them as you like but when it comes down to it they’re both playing the same game.

In the example of the person who chooses to work less, they aren't maximising their income. Me choosing to work fewer hours means I earn less. Yes, I keep a greater percentage of my part time earning than I would of my full time earnings, so in net terms I earn more per hour the fewer hours I work, but i dont earn more in total. That is true for everyone due to the personal allowance.
In my case, I also work fewer hours due to my disability, I really struggle to work nore than 3 days a week due to pain and fatigue.

There shouldn't be a system where someone gets more total for doing less, but due to the benefits of being on UC such as free prescriptions, free school meals, free school trips, free optical and dental (under nhs) it does work out better for people to work less hours to stay under threshold, but this needs to change.

So there is a difference. Those working fewer hours to pay less tax are taking home more per hour, but not more in total. Those working fewer hours to stay on UC are taking home more in total with the benefits. I don't fault either group, it's the fault of a system which penalises hard work at all levels of income.

People need more because they want more. It's perfectly fine. If I had an extra £2k a month I'd probably save up and do a trip to NYC with the family. Or go somewhere in Europe.

Some people enjoy their careers and find it rewarding, if they want to "grind" and earn more. It's up to them. People who "grind" and work hard are the reason we have economic growth. I agree that there's some element of luck, but also lot of goddamn hard work. I don't get this thing of "key worker", it was made up in the pandemic. All jobs are essential. If your salary isn't enough get another job, work your way into a different career path. I have to admit, my view on care work has changed after reading this thread. But it's due to the fact that care whilst run by private companies, is actually funded by the government as as it's the main funding provider is has the ability to restrict and limit funding.

No-one is magically entitled to get £35k a year. No-one at all. You have to work for it. People readily survive on around £30k outside of London. A university graduate on £30k in Birmingham can readily survive in a house share.

get why it feels like the same game — people optimising their own finances in response to incentives — but the outcomes are still fundamentally different.
The high earner is choosing to give less of their income to the Treasury by working fewer hours, but they are still fully self-funding and not drawing any resources out of the public system.
The lower earner working fewer hours and claiming Universal Credit adds a cost to the Treasury — money has to be paid out of the public purse to support them.
So yes, you could say both are acting rationally to maximise their household income. But only one of them is a net recipient of public money, while the other simply pays less tax on their own earnings.
That’s not dancing on the head of a pin — it’s a meaningful distinction between reducing a contribution versus taking a subsidy.

I mean if a high earner also has career burnout due to their hours and stress and maybe wants to do something else. Totally up to them.

I don’t know why you are angry with me, if you don’t have ‘enough’ to say yes to the questions I posted, then you’re clearly not the people I’m talking about.

Not sure if anyone’s said this already as haven’t read all responses but the answer to this is to plough £60k per year into pension. Work towards living frugally, reaching financial independence and retiring from the high paid/high stress job asap.

once that’s achieved you can do whatever work you want, if that’s still highly paid so be it, but youre free from having to. Also very tax efficient.