Is 42,000 a good salary?

[RDW1989]

I’m 28 and currently earn 42,000. This went up from 33000 the previous year as I had a big promotion. I feel like this is pretty good for my age, but everyone in my profession talks about how rubbish the money is, especially given how hard the work is and the log hours we often end up working (although often from home, evenings and weekends etc)

Salary goes up around £1000 a year until £49000, after that I’d need another promotion but due to planning to start a family soon I don’t see this happening for me for a long while!

How does this compare? Do you think this a reasonable salary?

P.s. I know it’s crude to talk about money, hence posting in an anonymous forum

I was earning that as a secondary Maths teacher with 25 years' experience, top of the upper pay scale and with management points. Of course it's a good salary for your age, qualifications and experience. Like others I'm surprised you haven't researched it more conventionally...
This is a useful tool for comparison:
www.ifs.org.uk/wheredoyoufitin/

I'd say it depends on how much of your life it takes up.

For a 9-5 where you lock up and go home, great. If you end up working nearly every evening and a chunk of every weekend not so good.

Yes it's a great salary. I'm university educated and work in a high paying sector but wasn't earning that at 28 (granted I'm now 40 so that was a bit of time ago). I'm not earning a considerable amount more than that now (especially as I work less hours) but coupled with my DHs salary and the fact we don't live in London, we feel very well off with a nice house and 2 kids both in nursery (which is around £800 a month). We save and go on a few holidays a year. It is all relative to your lifestyle and where you live.

It's pretty good but maybe low if you are in London with a professional job.

At 30 I was on £50k and that was 15 years ago

Sorry. Saw you aren't London and academia I. Which case I think it's pretty damn good but don't compare. Are you happy, comfortable?

Stealth boast.

People afford nicer houses by selling their “doer upper” for more than they spent on it.
Dh and I earned about £75k between us when we bought a £315k house but we had a deposit made of equity in our smaller flats and savings.
On your salaryman yoyr dh on similar OP you will be able to get a mortgage on a nice house if you have a deposit. You need to be thinking quite calculatedly about that while doing the work on your current house - what work will make you money on the sale. If it won’t don’t do it.

It's never just about the money. As others have said you might have peers in industry earning 6 figures but what are thier stress levels and hours?

If you don't dread going to works and you have a good employer that's worth £££. Especially if they will be flexible once children are on the scene.

OP I worked in academic HR and am surprised to hear what you are saying. Whilst I imagine it does vary to some degree depending on your discipline, I don't think the system for salary increases is as rigid as you suggest. Yes there is an incremental system and if you simply did your job and waited then you would of course only move up through the increments, but from my experience most people don't sit and wait.

Generally speaking I saw many people apply for promotions quite quickly. For example a new person started on grade 8 and within 2 years had applied and been successful obtaining the equivalent of a grade 10 post. Had they not applied and been successful then yes they would have been stuck going up and increment each year on grade 8 (until something else came along). I saw lots of people do this internally, as well as moving universities to do the same. Equally some people had successful grant applications which also gave them a promotion.

Your age tells me you have achieved a lot in a short time. It is not unheard of for young and successful academics to continue to do very well at a young age. I know someone who was very successful and was HOD (as well as holding many other prestigious titles) by the age of 38, their salary was well in excess of the £70k you suggest.

Keep at it and keep looking for new opportunities.

how do people buy houses:

• large deposit from parents
• large deposits saved up by living with parents assuming you havent moved away and got a job where you went to uni
• can have a larger mortgage due to having family to do childcare saving them £1 000 per month on nursery fees
• buying in very cheap areas to start off with and moving when have good equity
• taking a very long mortgage eg 26-30 years rather than standard 25 yrs
• having high incomes, taking on a big mortgage, overpaying and making cut backs in other areas.

for us, its a combination of the last three.

i dont have that big an income but my dh does

Have you seen the support threads for academics? Lots of insight and support there.

Thanks @mavericksnoopy. Have you seen women with children progress in this way? There are no female professors in my department, and the two at reader level have no children (and have no plans to have children). Those that have children seem to get stuck at lecturer level. I know strategically I should try and wait a few years, get promoted to at least senior lecturer and then start a family. But we don’t want to wait, and I’m also worried about leaving it too late unless it takes a long time/doesn’t happen, especially as we’d like to have more than one child ideally.

Academia is very flexible if you have children (e.g. working from home) but it also seems hard to progress with children. We would have both sets of grandparents living locally, however my mum already looks after my sisters two children on a daily basis so I’m not sure she’s be able to offer much support 🤔

Thanks @redmarkone. The first three don’t apply to me, but the last three do/can do. I guess hopefully by the time we do move we may have built up some equity although at the moment our mortgage hardly seems to go down at all. We took quite a bad deal I think, and it’s fixed until 2020 with a big penalty. I guess we can make overpayments though...

@dozer I haven’t seen those threads, what should I search for?

The second person I referred to is a woman, but not with children. I can think of several very senior women with children who were very well regarded and who were earning above the figures you talk about. By comparison to men, there were definitely more men. It was a STEM subject where less women decide or struggle to take that path. I do think that as women we do have to fight more and work harder than our male counterparts. It's not fair or right of course.

One of the very senior women with children that I'm thinking of actually said to a more junior woman with no children, that she should not have children until she had progressed her career and that she should move overseas to do that. It is what she did herself and as a consequence was an older mother. Rightly or wrongly it seems that these are things to consider. It's wrong that women should need to consider it but it's not just academia where it happens. It's a personal choice.

It's a very good salary but again it depends on your outgoings and the cost of living. I'm in a private health care role (registered profession) with 5 years experience and I'm on £39000. Same job in the NHS would pay about £25000. I'm 9-5, no overtime, 35 days holiday. My DH works 60 hours a week for a basic of £12k a year ( car sales so commission based) if he doesn't hit his target he takes home less than minimum wage when you work out the hours he works. Long hours and high stress.

Our combined salary gives us a really good standard of living, but we have cheap housing in comparison to some parts of the UK, have no DC to support yet and can save £1500 a month after bills.

Oh forgot to say that 39k is my basic, I can earn quarterly bonuses up to a maximum of almost 20k.

I always make sure we live within the minimum wage we earn in a month so save the rest.

@mavericksnoopy it’s really tough. Most of the men in the department seem to leave childcare to their wives, but most of the women seem to have more highly paid husbands and this plus the flexibility of academia means childcare seems to fall primarily to them.

Me and dh talked about it a lot last year, and I realised I’d be far more upset to ever have a family than to never make Professor. So I guess the only thing I can do is go ahead and start my family and hope that I’m the long run I can still make good progress in my career.

@shadesofglory wow, I could do with a 20k bonus!

Out of curiosity, you know what the top salary might be for your role?

*to never have a family

I'm 35. On 22k. Surviving. I'd love your salary!

Have you looked to see whether your university has any chikdcare provisions? The one I worked at had negotiated much lower childcare rates (eg for ft place approx 750/per month instead of 1200/month) and they did a salary sacrifice scheme.

Don't forget that you are facing what many families are. Our joint income was approx 51k when I worked full time 3 years ago and we had childcare costs and wanted to get on the housing ladder in the south east (we moved out a bit and commuted in).

It is tough and you shouldn't have to choose. I'm sure you'll find a way to make it work. Don't forget that childminders are cheaper and you could consider an au pair.

I believe all universities offer grants you can apply for, for women returning from mat leave to help with their research; although I'm sure that this could come down to discipline too and obviously you have to be successful! There is definitely support out there, you just have to find it.

Do you have a trusted HR person that you could talk to? I had many women come to talk to me about this exact problem and only ever provided information and support.

@RDW1989 the top salary depends on experience, type of degree (BSc, Foundation degree only, professional qualifications only) and the budget that the branch we work in has been given to hit in sales. Top basic salary anywhere is about 52k but then the quarterly bonus will also be higher and more of a challenge to hit.

Basically, it's a pretty easy and rewarding job in the grand scheme of things and I know and appreciate that I'm very well paid for it. However because its private sector I basically just get SMP if I want to have a baby, whereas my friends in the NHS might initially be lower paid but they receive much better and longer term maternity and sick pay.

In my experience (science) academia always pays better than industry