If you earn 100k plus, what is your occupation?

[CJ2010]

I've posted this here as it is a bit U, but i am curious to know what jobs pay mega bucks.

I've just been looking on a jobs website at admin jobs, most are paying on average 20-25k (in London). With the cost of living as it it, that sort of money will not go far at all.

I've been a SAHM for a while now and have begun looking for work. I'm considering retraining, but only in something that pays well!

So members of the 100k club please spill the beans and let me know your secrets!

Arguably the moral high ground goes to the higher earners as we have more spare cash to help the poor and we pay more tax too. Notwithstanding socialist bibilical suggestions about camels in truth we can do more good. Therefore you could argue it behoves all women to seek the 100k+ mark so they can benefit others more. If some on the thread are goinig go suggest it's morally wrong to earn a lot they need to justify their position. Look at what Gates is doing with his money. The state rarely spends its money as well as the private sector in relation to charitable areas and anyway the rich pay a good proportion of their income to the state anyway.

In the UK more millionaires under 40 are female than men. I think women should realise it is possible to earn a lot and to work towards that.

I totally disagree that high paid means boring jobs. I think the opposite. People who say that are just jealous. The job as the leading surgeon or doing complex interesting business work which changes every day is always going to win hand over fist over the factory production line /call centre occupation. High paid interesting professions which are very well represented on this thread (and owning successful businesses) are much more interesting than the job of the chap who sweeps the floor in the factory.

DH is in IT for a bank and makes more than a 100k

Back when I was working full time I used to set up companies and made around 80k.

I don't think high earners have the moral high ground at all.
I myself do voluntary work which helps society and i'm very much considered to be poor.

My dh does an ordinary sort of job, but because he does it abroad in the arse end of nowhere he earns about 3x what he could be paid in UK to do the same thing.

I have just taken a job with Mining Australia.

So we are a banking and mining family, no moral high ground here.

Souls are expensive though so we have been able to purchase some actual high ground, with views and all.

ConstitutionalCrisis that made me LOL. :o

We're all born with certain attributes, aren't we? I am crap at financial matters, crap at working long hours, crap at organizing things, crap at caring about having a lot of money, crap at doing anything that would give me a high-paying job (unless I ever do knuckle down and write a book, and then what are the odds it would even do well?)...but I am very, very good at aiding children with special needs and behavioral issues. (When it's not my own son, anyway :o) So that is what I do. And it pays eff-all and it's thankless for the most part, but I love it.

And at some point in the next few years I want to switch careers and work in hospice. Everyone ( and I do mean pretty much every single person I've spoken to about it) thinks I am mad. But I very much want to make that my work for awhile, to ease the dying and give whatever comfort I can to their families. And I'm sure the pay will be absolute shite, but if I can make a difference to even one grieving family...well, you can keep your 100K. :o

Cheerful, not madness at all. I worked in a hospice for a couple of years, it was one of the most rewarding roles of my career. Death and dying are viewed very differently in a hospice compared to the 'outside' world, and it is a true honor to look after people and their families during that journey.

Good luck, and I am certain you'll be very suited to it.

In my experience very high earners are much more likely to avoid tax. Whereas Mrs.£100k pays 40%, Mrs.£300k pays corporation tax, like those lovely IT contractors, despite working for one firm. And really perhaps I'm talking about Bankers and people that have to answer to shareholders rather than looking after employees.

Oh thank you Midnight ! I'm not sure how to go about it; I think most places around here require you to be a certified nursing assistant first, so I'll probably start with that.

I've always felt most useful when comforting others, so I think it would be something I could do well. :)

Posie I doubt any contractors would get away with not paying Paye under arrangements you describe.
Also share awards to employees or directors are subject to Paye/nic in a lot of circumstances . And there are A LOT of rules on not manipulating share awards to
Employees.
Ok If you get Dividends , it's not Paye but you are still subject to income tax (at up to 35%) and that is not likely to make up a big part of most higher earners packages.

Mrs £300k won't pay corporation tax if she is in most of the higher paid jobs on this thread though including any sefl employed accountants, lawyers, acutaries, IT people which is virtually all the higher earners on the thread. If she owns her own business and sells it yes she can convert income to capital. If she is paid partly in shares in a company yes also then but few on the thread were in that category so a lot will be giving 52% of what they eaan (and I think at the margin where you lose all allowances and pension tax relief it's closer to 60 or 70% tax.

So a lot of that work is to enable those who are a bit idle to be artists and other low paid work and have their income topped up with housing benefit. We would get £18k housing benefit and a 4 bed place I worked out the other day if i chose not to do a stroke of work.

I know lots of people in the careers on the thread who have set up their own units and charities in Africa and elsewhere and do actively help many people. Money allows you do that in a way that lower paid work does not as you're just struggling for survival.

However I repeat as ever that money does not make people happy on its own and there are lots of miserable very low paid workers and many who are high paid. It does not easily correlate so if you're not bothered about earning £100k or 10x that that's fine of course. I do think it's important though that teenage girls are given the information which enables them to know that career X means trhey can help 1000 orphans in Africa whilst sending their children to prive achools adn career Y means they will find it hard to afford trainers for their teenagers and shopping in Lidl.

PosieParker - if you are a CEO you don't "look after" employees; you provide them with an opportunity to add value to the company you run, for which you pay them a wage that enables them to pay the bills.

It's also absolutely crucial to understand that senior people in companies add a lot more value than junior people, however much junior people may appear to add. Added value is not a function of hours worked and, sadly, some people work very long hours without adding much value and therefore don't earn much.

I don't think I've avoided a penny of tax in my life. I am a firm believer in paying your dues to benefit society as a whole. Just because I'm a high earner doesn't mean everyone in my family is or is likely to be in the future - why would I want to cheat the NHS, which has looked after me and my family so well, or the primary school where my sister teaches out of a few pounds? It doesn't make moral or practical sense to me. We at far better building institutions that we may want to use at some time in the future.

Whether the govt of the day spends my tax dollars wisely is another matter entirely, however.

I'm a low paid worker and don't get any sort of housing benefit.

Cheerful I'll PM you when DS has a nap this afternoon, hopefully with some helpful info.

Thanks Midnight! I was actually going to start a thread asking for info, but I didn't know if the qualifications, etc, would be different here in America so I wasn't sure how to begin. :) I'd love to hear about your experience!

Why so many people telling is what their DH earns?! How odd to not speak of your own achievements!

My DH out earns me by multiples but this is about what job I do, not him. And I'm far prouder of myself! Haha

cheerful I worked in palliative care for a long time, mainly care of the elderly. Yep the pay was crap but midnight is right it is an honor to care for people and their families at this time.

High earners don't have the moral high ground at all, but then I don't think most people think they do, You may give to charity which is a great help to hospices etc but without the people working with those familys the money you give would be pointless.

Luckily dp has always been a higher earner, although only earns around half of the money we are talking about here, and that's in a good year unfortunately the last few years haven't been that good!

coraltoes because we're all far too busy mumsnetting to get off our butts and earn big money?

xenia if you come on a thread which asks what you do for a living and decline to say but give details of your income then I don't really think you can be too surprised when someone suggests what your job is. Especially when ordinarily you post at great lengths on the same.

I agree outing by name is inappropriate but you are visible on MN and everything I "know" of you has been gleaned from the 2 years I have been hanging around mostly AIBU. It is enough to be able to ID you in real life and if that is a concern to you perhaps you should take precautions.

I don't think you can simplify things by saying that high earners or low earners have the moral high ground. IME both high earners and low earners are equally capable and likely to avoid income tax - eg the builder who wants to be paid CIH, or the non-doms sheltering earnings in tax havens.

And low earners and high earners alike contribute to charities etc.

Depends on the person rather than the income, surely?

(a) I never post at great lengths about what I do. Indeed I try not to mention what type of career it is. I think I;'ve said I have written 30 books but it's not true that there is thread after thread of me saying what my work is.

(b) I don't think I said what I earned above either.

(c) There is no need for people to give the details

Anyway it's an interesting thread and important that women learn what other women can earn.

Reading this thread, I feel as if I must have been very naive when I was young. I just didn't really think about how important money was when I was 16, and I thought the kids at 16 who wanted to become actuaries or chartered accountants or management consultants, etc were a little strange. I remember the people at university who said that there was no way they would become scientists but came out with the "my elder sister's a chartered accountant on 80K already so that's what I'll do".

I'm an academic scientist, and I'm very fortunate to do what I do, but I don't earn a fraction of what people on this thread earn.

I think there must be a different mindset.

I thought I'd post just to add a bit of an alternative career. Dh and I can both earn that and we're freelance photographers (editorial and advertising). Being freelance, we're obviously not consistent, some years are good, others not so. Looking at the diary for this year so far, I'll be under 100k this year, Dh will be well over. It has been a very long hard slog to get to this point though, in an extremely competitve industry, that has no guarantee at the end of it.

Bennifer, for me, the mindset was framed by my father becoming very sick when I was a teenager, and, at the same time, getting into financial trouble that almost resulted in us losing our house. He recovered, as did his finances, but seeing my parents worry about money made me focus on earning my own so they didn't have to worry about me in their old age, and so that I could look after them financially if needed.

I probably could have earned even more in a different field, but I managed to find a career through careful research that I reckoned I would be good at, and enjoy but that would also allow me to earn well. And then focussed all my efforts on that. Actually, if I'm honest, I intended to use this as a route into something else where there were no roles at the time (I graduated mid recession) so sort of fell into this particular role, and then realised it was one i was better suited to the originally planned role. But the industry of marketing and creative services is one I planned to get into.

The mindset of using my position to do some good, by using my skills to benefit NGOs, refugees and the most marginalised people in society (one of my current projects is working with former prostitutes and their children who are infected with HIV) is one that came about because my father is from one of the poorest nations in the world. When you see that poverty and think, there but by the grace of God or accident of birth, it motivates you to do something. My parents also follow the same mantra. So we don't just give money, we give our time and expertise as well.