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Let your next career move come to you.

Good salary? Rof poll

1. Good salary inside london?

2. Excellent salary inside London?

Lets forget the regions exist for a moment.

Me:

1. £90k

2. £140k

Any arguments?  There’s a bbc thing asking would you take a £40k job that was bad for the planet...  I mean who the hell takes a £40k job anyway, amirite?

£500k seems a tad toppy.  But you’re a barrister aren’t you? I forget that you guys have much better salaries than solicitors and bankers and the like.

*baits the resipsa trap carefully*

unless you've got cash already, you need to budget £75-100k for mortgage

plus £50-100k for children

£50k for savings

so £250k after tax is if anything a bit tight

I don’t pay mortgages, I prefer to let other people do that for me.  Got no kids, No point saving anything ukside as it’ll just complicate repatriation tax issues of trust monies.  I like my numbers but I can see where £250k makes sense.  And is at least reasonably attainable for anyone halfway competent.

depends on your circs innit

if I moved to London now on £90k I'd be losing half in tax and paying, what, £15k a year in accommodation and maybe £3k on transport? Then the fancy city clothes I would need to fit in with yon bigwigs and the many emotional support cakes.

I don't think I would feel that well off (although comparatively obviously I would be)

there are more important riches than money

A reasonably skilled craftsman should be earning £40k these days.

In the absence of kids and the like £100k buys you a really pretty reasonable lifestyle in London these days.

Well I know someone who is earning £80k and he thinks he’s doing pretty well.  I know he could do better, he probably does too, but he prefers to slack a bit.  I still think that £90k is enough to buy a perfectly reasonable lifestyle for a chap.  You can get a decent made to measure suit for just over a grand.  A few fitted shirts at £160 each ish will last forever, there’s not a huge wardrobe need for blokes at least.

Linda - actually I was just sort of thinking with my fingers as I typed it, genuinely couldn’t remember but things got clouded in my GLS days because I was still getting financial parachute-support from elsewhere so maybe I was earning less in 2004 or so, but I don’t know, it was a long time ago. 

Buzz - ah ok, yeah I don’t talk about my career pre law.  Which is why it looks weird on my linked in because I go from leaving school to being a 30 year old graduate working for the GLS.  I suspect prison tbh.

Btw there’s nothing secret squirrel about this, it’s just an episode of my life that I would rather forget. 

Applications are hereby invited for the position of Taseree.  No previous experience required. Applicants will be expected to demonstrate electrical conductivity, be self starters, possibly self heart restarters, and willing to work collaboratively with Taserer colleagues.

Salary £40,000.

Good to see Heff taking up my traditional role of whipping boy on these threads.

I think these days we have to accept that, in London, it's just not normal to only have one spouse working but the cost of a 'nice upper middle class life' in London is incredibly high and I think for an 'excellent' it's not unreasonable to work back from there.  Four a family of four without family money you are probably looking at:

8k a month mortgage (that's about a 1.6million quid mortgage right?).  With a 'reasonable' amount of equity in the house (taking account of how much equity is eaten by stamp duty on each move now) that has you living in a two million quid house.  That's a four bed house in a 'nice' part of zone 2...  Which doesn't seem an unreasonable expectation for someone on an 'excellent' salary.   So 96k a year after tax.

30k a year school fees.

10k a year for a car.  

25k a year for holidays (a weeks skiing, two weeks long haul in a reasonably upmarket place for 4).

30k a year for bills/transport/petrol and food and basic clothes (including mentally spenny kiddy activities)

A grand a month per adult for sh1ts and giggles (drinks and meals out, mountain bikes, yoga, PT sessions, GYM, whatever floats your boat (this is actually pretty light compared to what a lot of people spend..) -24k a year.

(say) 50k a year to save/invest for retirement.   

30k a year (including tax and pension contributions where relevant) for cleaner/ au pair/child care (both partners work remember...)

Gives you 295k a year after tax so (give or take) 550k before tax.

That puts an 'excellent' salary at (say) 400k (i.e. the 'lions share' of that cost with the other half picking up the balance).

 

 

That puts an 'excellent' salary at (say) 400k (i.e. the 'lions share' of that cost with the other half picking up the balance).

 

Why is the other half assumed to be making less?

Even as a kid with family money I didn't get two weeks somewhere long haul.  Every few years we might do that but generally we'd drive to the south of France and stay with friends there.  In fact even on the long haul trips we tended to go to places where we knew people we could stay with.

Even now as a reasonably well paid single man I only have one overseas holiday a year which is generally somewhere in northern Europe.

£500k is fairly imaginary as a salary. I mean total comp or earnings from your business widens the net a little - but there are the square root of fvck all people with a £500k salary. I’m not sure there are even many FTSE 250 firms paying that for the CEO are there? (though I suppose the bonus cap stuff will have pushed up the salary of bankers)

Given Legal Aliens link I wonder how many people have a 500k salary. A base at that level would mean you would have to be a CFO/COO /CEO of a company well inside the FTSE 200.

or a senior equity partner in a top 10 law firm, or a commercial silk in a very good chancery/commercial /set . Bar Council figures revealed there are only 325 barristers who grossed over 500k last year. So all in all 500k gigs are very rare

I spend about £12k a year on holidays and that is just paying for me. If I had to pay for a whole family and travelling in school I'd have to start going to some pretty sh*t places. No wonder half my colleagues just go to Centerparcs or Northern France.

Those wondering why the other half earns less? It is relatively unusual to have two partners who earn the same and I am not sure it counts as an 'excellent' salary if only pays for half of our 'excellent' life style. 2/3rds seems reasonable with the other half earning a more normal professional salary. 

London is fvcking expensive... 

And yeah, almost nobody makes that sort of money working in a job in London. Which makes you wonder where all the money sloshing around London is coming from (as if we didn't know). 

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