Earning £100k a year - Silly young people who think they can

I am a moderator of a very large student forum and I find it quite staggering how many people think they can earn more than £100k a year, most of these people are still in sixth form.

I am pretty sure most people on this site don't earn anything like that and people probably earn more than average on here.

With the average UK wage been around £22k including London how these kids just completly out of the real world?

 

Being optimistic?

I'll be rich some day!

I’ll also be a rock star at some point.

I doubt both will go together!

 

We would but what is the point? It would be nice to earn enough to have a decent pension, a small modern flat in a good location, a decent car, a few nice holidays but you don't need to earn £100k a year to do that.

 

If Colleen and all the talentless nobodies that appear on 'reality' TV and then have hundreds of thousands in bank accounts can do it so can anyone must be the view they have. I wonder how many of your forum members realise how much hard work, not to mention luck, it will take?

 

Exactly, a lot of them think they will end up with cosy jobs in the city, a lot of them will have a shock when they realise a degree from Oxbridge is only a quarter of what you need to do well in those jobs.

I am sure a few of them will end up earning that kind of money but most won't.

There is nothign wrong with ambition but these people seem to be looking down on the rest of the forum with it.

These people also tend to be some of the biggest rule breakers and get into a lot of trouble as a result

 

Maybe 17 is too young to expect them to have a real idea of what they are going to do in life and how much it will earn them.

Many of them probably look forward to going to uni very much and feel it will set them up for life. They all get told that people who go to uni on average earn X amount more than people who don't in their first year of work and so on...

My ex-girlfriend very much felt that uni would make it so much easier for her to get a good job and she would be set up for life with a degree cos its what everyone is looking for. On a more personal note she also felt that I am wasting my life not going to uni when I could go to nearly any I wanted.

If you are like my brother you could do 4 years at uni come out with a 1st and then decide you don't want a job in that career after spending 4 years on it and go do something completely different lol!

I feel the truth is more like everyone has degrees these days, even if they are crap ones and the thing that will set you apart form others is what you have actually done.

 

work very hard , get some marketable qualifications then i'm sure 100k's well within reach, although for that kind of money shylock is a reasonable boss

 

£40-50K maybe, but £100K John? You surely need more than hard work and some good qualifications working under someone else. Unless by fluke you happen to have the right skills at a time when those skills are at an extreme shortage.

 

Any these kids have had no experience of tax yet, so they will have a shock then the taxman takes £30,000 of that £100k

 

tenson

lawyer, doctor,accountant, broker, some sales jobs

 

Most doctors won't earn anything like that and you have to be a very good lawyer to get 100k.

Most the high saleries are in the city, i;e IB and broking but hardly any of these kids will make it that far.

 

AT

1. fyi most gp's earn more than that
2. of course
3. don't expect to make 100k driving combine harvesters

 

i remember when i was staring out and expected to be paid a huge amount in my chosen profession (at that time there were no applicable qualifications so i was REALLY hoping). you come down to earth with a big bump but soon readjust your worldview - it's called growing up.
john i doubt very few graduates can go straight from uni to a 100kpa job even a doctor or lawyer and you'd have to have eaten the blarney stone to be given a territory worth that much a year in a sales job straight off. of course eventually if you chose the right career path you could have 100kpa, a gastric ulcer and a myocardial infarction all of your own.
cheers


julian

 

I think it's fair to say taking the "professions" you have a lot of hoop jumping to do in the early years, then if you manage to survive you can expect to do very well. A few friends work at a well known London law firm and if they make partner they are guaranteed 300K per annum (current rate) and those near to retiring are on around £1M.

However, in my personal experience the way to make money is to work for yourself. Many people I know who run a reasonably successful business are on >£60K Net - ie. they pocket that, so if you extrapolate PAYE tax they're on around £80K.

 

julian/greg

you're both right

 

leaving aside revenue generators such as lawyers, brokers etc - plenty of salaried jobs (and even more contract roles) in IT pay that but certainly not for fresh grads - architects, portfolio managers et al in the City tend to be thirtyish before breaking the 100K barrier. exceptions in my experience are programmers with solid quant skills who can hit it much sooner.

 

I work for myself but to make £80K PA I would have to work 24 four hours a day and hire staff. There is just no way.

 

at

there's your answer.

seriously, good luck with your business.

(if we hear a little less from you we'll know that you are doing 80hr weeks and worrying about whether to hire some help. all being well you'll be able to retire at 50.......and probably biy top line naim kit regardless)

 

sorry to wander off topic a little but this has got me thinking.
it's possible to bust your balls and have a fat pay packet if you work every hour god sends, then retire at 50. however what's the point? any friends you have will be at work, you won;t have many hobbies or interests due to your lack of spare time and at 50 a lot of activities will be forever closed to you. if you're unlucky you'll have diabetes (from all the crap you've eaten thanks to snatching lunch breaks and eating petrol station sandwiches) and you'll in all likelihood be overweight and cruising towards your first (or second) heart attack closing off even more of life's rich variety. if you have somehow managed to find a significant other and have kids then they'll effectively be strangers with interests, habits and activities which don;t include you and will in all probability dread fat dad hanging around like a fifth wheel all day. holidays will be a succession of hotel rooms, taxis and restraunts with maybe an excruciating few hours in a swealtering market or a ride down a river to some old ruins. you sold the best years of your life so that you can exist with a large bank balance and rot in front of the tv. ok you might indulge in a bit of retail therapy but you've not lived.

ok so i didn't just wander off subject more ranted over the horizon but damn i really don;t want to end up like that.

 

You could even do all of that for a small pay packet in a dead-end job!

Blackmail works much better!