To think mumsnet posters must have a lot of £££

[TwoBabas]

General observation from reading posts on here is that there seem to be an awful lot of posters claiming either themselves or their partners are eating salaries of 100k plus.

Now am I being very naive or are people over exaggerating their financial situations. What type of job would put you in that range? Doctor? Headteacher? Lawyer?

Most people I know are skrimping by and don't have a lot to piss in.

But then perhaps I'm living amongst the not so wealthy sector.

Are people telling the truth do you think?

No help with childcare either which can be more than a second mortgage in London etc.

What type of job would put you in that range? Doctor? Headteacher? Lawyer?

My DH is an engineer and earns 100k + The whole company had a 20% pay cut about 5 years ago when the industry stalled and they're only now starting to get small pay increases.

They will also be an outdoorsy family and the children will be doing Oxbridge entrance interviews.

This.

Our joint income is below 100k

Doctors, lawyers, accountants, risk and compliance experts, tax partners.

I know people (men and women) doing each of those jobs, and do one myself. All earn in excess of £100k, all in London.

I don't have a husband, but when I had a DP, he was on about £60k. That I earned double what he did at the time caused no end of issues. Now I've left him, I've actually got a better job.

I'm always baffled that people think those who earn £100k would be doing something else; I love whiling away spare minutes on MN 🤣🤣🤣

@Sadie43 " I can’t believe there are so many successful people who are also so thick."

I've always thought such a view was more of a delusion of the masses? In contrast, being in relatively higher income circles puts paid (literally?) to the notion that socioeconomic status is correlated with personal competency.

Moreso in Britain where education/lifetime attainment is 99% bought or inherited. Many private school/Oxbridge graduates are genuinely not that bright.

I apologise if this sounds arrogant, but I truly believe they've never had to develop critical thinking skills simply because everyone is so awed by their accents and purple prose vocab. What's actually coming out of their mouth is secondary. (In case it's not yet obvious, I'm not from the UK originally, hence my accent apathy. I come from a meritocracy, so I do appreciate that my perspective is a bit different, but I hope you can see my overall point.)

Husband is on 70k a year tax free, plus over 10k from rental property. Currently located in the Middle East, no bills, free high standard health care insurance, kids schools also paid for etc

Saying all this we are in around 30k debt from renovating a house and do pay partial rent of around £850 for a huge villa, company pays the rest.

My dad used to earn 100K before he gave up his job and started his own business. I think he left about 10 years ago.

My DP earns 40K and I'm a SAHM so 100 just seems unimaginable for us. When I was working I earned 28K which I thought at the time was pretty good tbh

Honestly and I know this is going to sound like a MN stealth brag but my DH is on about £100k inc his bonus and I earn £47k and we used to earn such a small amount even when DC were born 12 years ago. I thought I’d feel so rich if I ever earned what we do and we really don’t (although I’m not complaining) our outgoings increased as our income did too.

I also used to wonder how people could have so much money and for us it’s just DH is just quite specialised and good at what he does and works at a good firm that recognises that. I just got better at asking for more money! I left school with no qualifications and just worked all my life and whilst I know £47k for some is a pittance it’s still a lot to me.

When I first joined Mumsnet I was earning 16k pro rata (around 9.5k) around 10 years ago. I’ve made canny career moves and now earn 100k (well, 97.7) and am die a raise in the next month. My new DH earns similar.
We live in a small flat and have too many kids to fit in it! I don’t feel rich but at the same time I’m aware that it could be a whole lot worse.
In short I’ve been at both ends in my mumsnet time and can see both as normal.

At a salary of £80k and with a nanny I was taking home less than £10 per hour. Private school in the SE is £25k per year so if you've gone down that route you may not feel wealthy

First of all, I’d say this is because questions are often about earning six figure salaries (like this one is) and, if posters have similar situations to me, that only applies to my husband and not me.

Secondly, your comment could come across as a little catty, as though women who “bag high earning men”, as you put it, don’t have much going for themselves beyond their husband and that’s what’s sad. I also added what my husband earned to this thread hence replying to you now as I found it a bit unfair as my husband also “bagged a high earning woman” to use your phrasing, just nowhere near as high as him.

Anyway, the point I wanted to make is that I’d say the sadder part is that what you observe on here is indicative of men’s higher earning potential because we live in a patriarchy, coupled with the fact that it’s women’s salaries that nearly always - and solely in a couple - pay the price of the motherhood penalty. And this is precisely because their husbands were already earning more than them so it perhaps made more financial sense for the mother to be the one to go part time or even give up work and not pay nursery fees etc.

(I don’t need to be told “But this shouldn’t be the case” nor told how others both went part time - that would be preaching to the converted and good for you if both of you have managed to go part time. We hope to do the same. But this is still sadly the exception rather than the norm.)

@GarlicGrace The UK tax system is extremely incoherent and in desperate need of reform after decades of "patching". @Woofoof didn't mean that you take home less the more you earn, but you take home relatively less, and in quite weird ways. For example, between £100,000-£125,000, your marginal tax rate, ie the tax you pay on every next pound you earn, is 60%. Once you get above £125k it's only 45%. That's a weird bump! And that's without factoring in the loss of childcare benefits at certain points which can mean that, for instance, someone who lives in London and has 3 kids would lose £20k a year in money in pocket terms if they went from earning £99,999 to earning £100,000. That's an incoherent system! And a lot of people in London earn about that much.

The way it stands, the weirdly lumpy system disincentivises people even on not massive incomes (around £50k) from taking on more work. That affects productivity; low productivity hurts our economy and makes us all worse off.

This article explains it better than I ever could.

The same article also says that actually my earlier post was wrong; I underestimated how many people earn over £100k. It's 6% of UK taxpayers, so more than one in 20 people with their own income.

That said, the UK is a low-wage economy relative to our global economic peers: we should all be shocked at how low wages are here, and demand more of those who govern us to create more flourishing economic conditions. Salaries aren't a zero-sum game. More productivity = a bigger economy = more money for all. Yes, those who are doing well (for full transparency, I count myself among them) should be conscious of how lucky we are. But we can and should aim for everyone to be better off.

I definitely can see your point and I have worked with people like you describe. It has seemed to me that education (and I mean private school here) and connections rather than genuine intelligence has got some of them so far. (And I’m not anti private school. My husband was privately educated and our little one probably will be too.)

I actually had in mind some of the posters I’ve encountered on here who claim to earn big bucks but display such limited views or wilful ignorance verging on bigotry about fairly easy-to-comprehend issues affecting society. I sometimes feel like I could engage in more intelligent conversation with my little one who seems more empathetic. I find it hard to believe that they hold senior positions which, in my experience at work at least, rely upon having some emotional intelligence and good interpersonal skills etc.

Love this! 😆

In some ways I had rather that people believe it’s all made up than realise the truth about income disparity across different industries and professions. 😕

There are a lot of people earning more than six figures in London and the South East. I know this because of where I live and what my husband does - before the accusations start, we got together at school and I do something socially useful if that’s alright with everyone! He is one man and there are thousands more men and women on similar salaries in his profession and in other comparable roles.

But it is an uncomfortable truth and I don’t blame someone on £30k in a small town for not wanting to believe it.

Doesn’t a £100k salary mean a take home of £65.5k? Or are we talking £100k after tax?

Before being a SAHM I was on £23k and thought that was pretty good 😂

It’s the comments on here that get me, ‘why not hire a housekeeper’ ‘just go stay in a spa hotel for the weekend’ ‘why don’t you just leave the kids with your husband and go on holiday for a week’ like normal people have money like that lying around

1 percent salaries people are little fishes compared to the wealth of Oligarchs and Billionaires in this country. So much time is wasted arguing or questioning higher earners. They are the ones propping up the welfare system. This group
have not £££ after tax. If they live in Central London where most well paid jobs are £100k is like pocket money after tax. If anything they have the worst deal so go after the ones that do not pay taxes by PAYE.

Those large salaries get eaten up quickly.

Our mortgage is about 30k a year now, after the recent rate rises (that's on a mortgage of 400k which is small for the south east). Wrap around and school holiday care is £15k. School fees (which are obviously a choice but only one we felt compelled to make after we were allocated a needs improvement school where I saw a TA handle a child roughly during the parent tour so god knows what they were like behind closed doors) another 20k. That's 65k out of taxed income before energy, food, transport, etc are considered.

I'm not from a family or area where there are lots of people on £100k+, but know of plenty in the periphery who do, I don't assume lying, though all too aware how common it is on here but it wouldn't be my first assumption. £100k is not the crazy high salary it was a couple decades ago though.

@eurochick

What a tone deaf comment .. don't you think small salaries get eaten up quickly too?

I have a new job in a small charity in London. Mine is a senior operations type post and I'm on £70k. There are two members of staff junior to me and 8 senior to me. Everyone more senior to me is on well over £100k. Primary school head teachers in some London Boroughs are on more than £100k, in London it's not that much money, but then rent on a fairly 3 bed house in a not particularly special area is c. £5000pm and a pint of beer is £7!

I actually think people earning less than half in other areas are probably better off.

That said there's immense poverty I some London Boroughs. Not everyone is on £100k, I've no idea how families on more normal salaries or minimum wage manage.

The problem eurochick is that's basically saying "high salaries are eaten up quickly... if you choose prioritise a 4 bedroom house in a very expensive area of the country, likely counted as commuter belt, and choose private education for children".

Anyone whose lifestyle has expanded to fit a higher salary is going to find that their salary is eaten up, because they've chosen a certain lifestyle.

I earn £80k (didn't go to uni) and husband earns a few grand less (did go to uni).