What is a good salary?

Gavin83

lincroft1710 wrote: »

£100k+ pa.

I know this is fairly subjective but I'm not sure anyone could call a wage that 99.8% of the country will never earn merely 'good'.

theoretica wrote: »

Judging it on personal spending seems a bit strange - some people will never be on a good salary by those standards as their spending will just rise and rise.

I agree with this. Two people, person A earning £60k a year with a disposable income of £400pm, person B earning £30k a year with a disposable income of £700pm. I'd say A is earning the good salary in this example, although by other people's theory B is.

As I said though it's fairly subjective, there isn't really a right or wrong answer.

theoretica wrote: »

I think it is also important to think about full or part time work. Is someone working halftime for 12k on a better wage than someone working full time for 16k? Some of the salary comparison calculations only look at full time (or full time equivalent) figures and some look at earnings regardless of hours.

You'd have to consider it pro-rota. Someone working 20 hours a week earning £12k is effectively earning more than someone working 40 hours a week earning £16k. What's better depends on how much you value your time compared to money.

lincroft1710

Gavin83 wrote: »

I know this is fairly subjective but I'm not sure anyone could call a wage that 99.8% of the country will never earn merely 'good'.

How would you define a "very good" or "excellent" salary? To me £100K is only "good" as, for example, directors and chairmen of stock exchange quoted companies can earn way above this figure. Many senior staff in councils earn over £150K pa.

Gavin83

lincroft1710 wrote: »

How would you define a "very good" or "excellent" salary?

I'd suggest a salary that almost no one will ever earn, that would put you in the top 0.2% of earners would be excellent. I take your point on board that people can earn a lot more than this but the positions you've quoted sum up the exclusivity of these jobs. You'll only get a handful of senior staff who work for companies floated on the stock market. You say many senior staff in councils but it's only likely to be 2 or 3 people per council. I'd imagine most people earning north of £100k a year are self employed in some respect.

As I said though this is purely subjective so there is no right or wrong answer. You are perfectly entitled to your opinion on this.

Fireflyaway

Depends completely on your lifestyle and the market rate.
Lifestyle - do you have a mortgage and kids, where in the UK do you live etc. What sort of lifestyle do you want? If you live in London 30k isn't a fortune. Also depends are you the sole earner or are there 2 earners in the house? So for me I'd say 30k is OK. I'm not the main earner, I live in the South East and have one child. Reverse back 15 years pre house and child and 14k was sufficient.
Market rate - I've seen lower management jobs ( I'm currently looking) anywhere between 17k in retail to 33k in local government. Personally I wouldn't be happy leading a team for less than about 27k but some people would.
In general I'd say 50k plus is a good salary if you are only looking at income figures and not lifestyle or expenditure etc.

Planet_Switzerland

For me, I think a lot of it depends on how it compares to what you were earning beforehand.


When I finished uni I was working in a general admin role and had an interview for a graduate scheme which was paying twice as much as I was earning at the time, and it seemed a hell of a lot of money. I didn't get the job, but I did eventually reach that salary level via several pay rises and once I got there it didn't seem much money. Even now I earn a fair bit more I would say it's more an ok salary than a good one.


On the other hand, when I was 16 I went from earning something like £6 or £7 a week for a paper round to £45 a week for a part time job at a supermarket, that seemed a lot especially as I had no bills to pay at the time.

lincroft1710

Gavin83 wrote: »

I'd suggest a salary that almost no one will ever earn, that would put you in the top 0.2% of earners would be excellent. I take your point on board that people can earn a lot more than this but the positions you've quoted sum up the exclusivity of these jobs. You'll only get a handful of senior staff who work for companies floated on the stock market. You say many senior staff in councils but it's only likely to be 2 or 3 people per council. I'd imagine most people earning north of £100k a year are self employed in some respect.

As I said though this is purely subjective so there is no right or wrong answer. You are perfectly entitled to your opinion on this.

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/news/article-3621852/More-1m-people-say-earn-100k-year-nearly-50-000-make-1m-survey-finds.html

Reading this article suggests that at least 2.5% of the UK working population earn at least £100,000.

buglawton

Makes me wonder if MSE has ever run an incognito salary survey. Though without regional qualification it'd be pointless.

Anyways, I very much doubt anyone on £100k+ would have the time to read forums like this.

robatwork

http://www.netsalarycalculator.co.uk/ is what I look at when I want to compare take home to gross pay. Interestingly in many countries they don't have the concept of gross annual income like we do. If someone quotes pay here, you generally think of it in terms of gross annual. Other places give the more realistic take home nett(o).

Sobering that you have to earn £50k gross to get over the 3k mark in your bin.