Those of you earning six figures, what advice would you give to a 33-year old woman earning around £43k?

[YourFancyBeaker]

I’m genuinely curious about what made the biggest difference in increasing your income/career trajectory. Was it changing industries, moving jobs more often, specialising, negotiation, networking, management/leadership, taking bigger risks, location, confidence or something else entirely?

I know £43k is already a decent salary in many ways and I’m grateful for that. But I’m also very aware there’s a huge difference between earning a solid middle-income salary and building serious long-term wealth/security.

Would love to hear honest insights from people who’ve actually made the jump

Work for yourself

Exactly this. One of my friends works in the charity sector and it as well paid as finance.

Leave charity sector and go to private to double your income immediately

Very similar background to me! I also have languages MA and then rather oddly went straight into dot-com industry off the back of a temping role that wanted someone to write the website copy in 3 languages. 25 years later I earn >200k including bonus with pension on top. And of course I wish for a happier home life and a husband who maybe could also get a job but CBA because....why would he when he can just got play on his mountain bike all day and then go "oh yeah, I forgot about parents evening, I knew you wouldn't forget though"..🙄
So my advice is be very sure of how you will be dividing income and tasks as a family.

This, Mn loves to tell you that university, degrees and qualifications are all overrated but I can’t tell you in how many ways having solid qualifications got me through doors nothing else would. I would say our entire circle are all high earners £150k + and we are all very qualified.

I would get filtered straight out of any online application without a Masters at my level.

I love this thread, so much good advice. OP I would also add that the more senior you get the LESS hard you need to work IME.

Once you’re in the six figure realm you're paid for your experience, to deliver and to make several big decisions per year plus your technical skill or leadership capabilities or whatever. You’re not paid for hours worked or presenteeism or anything else really.

so the higher you go the easier it gets, in an odd way. I earn a good six figure salary and I don’t work long hours, I don’t work that hard, I’m just very good at what I do.

ETA I have no qualifications , just experience

Sheer dumb luck. Joining the right company in the right industry (tech) at the right time. Riding the dot com wave, acquired by a much more resilient and larger company during the crash after a conversation with an old college prof who now worked for them, picking the right technologies to work on and build expertise on, not because I though they would be really hot but because I though they were interesting - turns out the market did too. Now gone full circle and working on tech that I did my PhD on 30-odd years ago when it was deeply unfashionable but is now super hot (and likely to crash). I work from home (mostly - a few international trips a year) and don’t have any management responsibilities.

As others have said get into financial services and technical project management if you can

dont be that dick PM though and try and ride over the technical teams thinking they know best how to deliver the project. Spend time and ask ‘stupid’ questions of the technical teams

i’ve always told them if they cant explain it to me they don’t understand it themselves. That’s how you start to understand what needs to happen to deliver the project. It seems you already have that knowledge in your area. You just need to expand it

That's exactly how I got into it... Translating websites! Hopefully I'll earn as much as you in another 10 years then! :). Are you a department lead?

I'm a single parent but I have a partner and we'll probably move in together at the beginning of next year. He's on a much lower wage and talked about being a SAHD if we have more kids, but yes I'm going to make that clear that also means taking on much more of the domestic responsibility, not just more time to pursue his hobbies... I'd have no patience for that. I do worry about it as pretty much every man I know leaves majority mental work load to their wives no matter how much either of them work or earn...

Yeah. Mostly I don't mind just sometimes I'm a bit like FFS this isn't somehow easy money I'm earning. Yes I lead a global team and work in the front office of a very large pension fund.

Not me but my husband:
Always has the end goal in sight.
Always talks about the next role he wants with manager, what he needs to do, asks for help with the gap plan, and gets to 2 years and starts pushing for the prep to move.
Obviously this only works if you can stay in house. First step is end goal, and where do you need to move to, to start, as your sector is wrong (I know you know).
Speak it, live it, believe it.

Don’t do it. He’s flagging cocklodger before he’s even moved in. Men don’t have the remotest idea what’s involved in sahping.

Back to OP - all about the sector.

Women are actively punished for this kind of behaviour in most sectors.

Agreed.

At 32 I was on 43K, funnily enough. At 33 I was on $140K. I saw a job with the exact same skills in a different field and went for it (the salary was posted in the advert, but otherwise you can often research it). It worked out for me because as it turned out they were desparate for people with my skill set and qualifications, so the biggest element was luck.

It was a stress-free job without overtime but fairly rigid and a bit dull. I'm on 80K part-time at the moment and my quality of life is higher because the work is more interesting and varied.

The key for me was always making decisions about work and money as if I'm the breadwinner, whether I am at that moment or not (because you can always instantly become the breadwinner if your OH loses their job). My field is full of middle-class women who can afford to work for peanuts because their husband is on a high salary. Even if that is your situation (it's not mine at all) having the mindset that it isn't will help.

Yes we are. Sticking your head up for promotion gives major red flags as a woman. I have managed a lot of people like this. It’s very obvious and it’s hard to get behind them knowing they are looking to move 12 months in and planning the next steps of their career.

Networking, qualifications, lots of varied experience and delivering.

Do it by stealth instead.

I wasn't trying to be negative. In my experience changing jobs does the trick, brings its own risks of course, which is why men are more likley to do it I guess. But sexism is a huge factor, I have def lost out to men who 'had families to support and needed the promotion'. Yeah, like I'm working just for fun.

Project management is a lucrative career, you need to expose yourself to bigger projects with bigger budgets that you lead on. This means you’ll attract more senior level PM roles. Also it’s a good industry for contracting if you are happy to take the risk on short term contracts and being self employed. You’ll make £500-700 a day this way which is around £150k per year dependent on experience (subject to tax etc.) in reality you re short term contracts get extended over and over again if you are good and you can be in one organisation for a few years in my experience.

@SalmonOnFinnCrisp can you give us a small hint at what area please you are in

Big tech Ads Business... ( which wont out me as theres 000,000s of us 😅)

I found this categorisation on reddit.

Tier 1: FAANGMULA + tech unicorns (meta, Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Netflix, Uber, Lyft, Airbnb, Stripe, square, plaid, doordash, Zillow, Snapchat, Twitter, Spotify, etc)

Tier 2: Legacy companies with limited tech innovation, but are brand leaders: Visa, MasterCard, Amex, PayPal, Nike, legacy banks, Adobe, Intel, Salesforce, service now, Walmart, Wayfair, McKinsey/bcg digital

I'd also include companies like the trade desk in tier 2 they pay ££££. Also reddit and Pinterest.

All.these.compnaies have multiple jobs paying in the 100k + ball park.

I worked at one of the OG faang companies (for my sins) for a loooong time now at another one of the companies listed in tier 1.

It's not for faint of heart though...
I am always shocked by coworkers who live paycheck to paycheck. It's not really a stable industry any more and you can fall off the horse anytime.
Also baffled by people who are bizarre niche specialists in... i dont know... fintech b2b marketing in Tunisia and egypt and had a 150k job at my old employer and having been made redundant seem to think thats what they deserve as a minimum salary vs recognising they got lucky and no one will ever pay that again.

I m a generalist and my basic principle jas been "follow the money". So i always worked in commercial and / or program management in roles that have direct or indirect revenue influence.
Eg when they come round looking to sack swathes of people.. they think twice about my role as it would negatively impact Revenue

@SalmonOnFinnCrisp thank you 😘

Best advice I can give you.

If you aspire to earning ‘six figures’ - be it 100k or 999k, de-risk this socialist government, leave the UK and seek a more tax-friendly jurisdiction.

Your gross salary level is rather academic, if you are giving away increasing amounts in tax.

Oh and btw - many on MN will despise you anyway (sorry).