The salary question?

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sigma said:
I tried to find the average wage in Vietnam, the numbers I found were nowhere near £300k... what do you do?
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There are almost 100 million people living in Vietnam. Of course the average wage is very low, currently in Saigon average factory wage is about $500 per month. Middle class Vietnamese (manager) wage is $2000 to $3000 per month. As a comparison, when i started 15 years ago the average factory wage was about $30 per month. Progress is happening. There is still huge disparity between the city and countryside.

However, in all of Asia there are significant numbers of people, families with huge income and wealth, far more i suspect than Europe. hence all the Chinese / foreign students with properties in London etc.

I suspect a lot of the true wealth here is never officially reported or recorded.
 
martin363 said:
There are almost 100 million people living in Vietnam. Of course the average wage is very low, currently in Saigon average factory wage is about $500 per month. Middle class Vietnamese (manager) wage is $2000 to $3000 per month. As a comparison, when i started 15 years ago the average factory wage was about $30 per month. Progress is happening. There is still huge disparity between the city and countryside.

However, in all of Asia there are significant numbers of people, families with huge income and wealth, far more i suspect than Europe. hence all the Chinese / foreign students with properties in London etc.

I suspect a lot of the true wealth here is never officially reported or recorded.
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I’m not sure what your point is. There are 16 year old football players over here who can be paid £11k a week.

What do you do for £300k?
 
sigma said:
I’m not sure what your point is. There are 16 year old football players over here who can be paid £11k a week.

What do you do for £300k?
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I said I would have to earn the equivalent of 294k if I lived in the UK, not that I actually earn 294k. Tax is different here. I part own a company manufacturing and exporting food globally from Vietnam.
 
The point I was making about my salary and the house that I bought is that, while I don't struggle, there are people around me who seriously dwarf my position.

Wealth extends upwards a LOT more than people would automatically assume; I'm not saying that there aren't more people at the lower end, but the number of high earners is staggering too.

I know I'm doing ok, and recognise my fortunes, but i frequently find myself looking at people's assets, particularly homes, and thinking 'what on earth do you do, so that you can afford that?'. I know a lot might be inherited and so on, but that can't account for it all, surely?

Ps the house I bought for 500k is a 3 bed semi - a nice one, admittedly, but still...not a mansion!
 
We live in an 'aspirational yet affordable' area with lots of nice houses compared to ours and I often wonder what jobs people do to afford them as there can't be that many jobs paying that well in and around Manchester.

Then you go on rightmove and realise most of them were last sold 20 years ago for way less than we paid for hours!
 
I do wonder if the current situation will make companies think a lot more about diversifying their workforce a lot more and more people demanding WFH be an option. This could then lead to big cities experiencing a housing glut as people realise they don't have to live in a shoebox in the middle of the city to work.
 
Skeptic said:
West Midlands: 30 hrs p/w (salaried), 7 ish (private) = between 75k-100k pa. Aged 33.
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Doctor/GP? Feel free to neither confirm nor deny. :)

Skeptic said:
I know I'm doing ok, and recognise my fortunes, but i frequently find myself looking at people's assets, particularly homes, and thinking 'what on earth do you do, so that you can afford that?'. I know a lot might be inherited and so on, but that can't account for it all, surely?
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Totally agree there, I'm the same. My income is pretty similar to yours it seems and I go through periods when I think to myself what on earth do you do for a living. Admittedly our income goes a long way in Stoke and we live in an extremely modest house to what we could potentially afford, but it's usually when I see some young guy in a brand new flash high performance car it peaks my curiosity.
 
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LiE said:
I think it’s a bit of a trap that people fall into. Imagine the position many people would be in if, as they earned more, they didn’t let their lifestyle creep.

What if you had a modest house and modest car while earning £100k pa? It opens up a lot options.
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Options will be getting a bigger house, nicer car or investing it to have even more in the future to buy those things. Lifestyle inevitably creeps up even often even without those big purchases, nicer holiday, faster broadband or what have you then there's kids/private school etc.

As a household I know we're extremely fortunate and in 1% and relatively low outgoings but as everyone says we still don't feel "rich". I think you just get used to what you have and you see what others above you have.
 
shadow_boxer said:
Options will be getting a bigger house, nicer car or investing it to have even more in the future to buy those things. Lifestyle inevitably creeps up even often even without those big purchases, nicer holiday, faster broadband or what have you then there's kids/private school etc.

As a household I know we're extremely fortunate and in 1% and relatively low outgoings but as everyone says we still don't feel "rich". I think you just get used to what you have and you see what others above you have.
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Options don’t have to be possessions. It can be setting yourself for an early retirement, starting a side business/passion, working less hours, helping your kids out in life. Lots of other things.
 
LiE said:
Options don’t have to be possessions. It can be setting yourself for an early retirement, starting a side business/passion, working less hours, helping your kids out in life. Lots of other things.
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Oh absolutely, I didn't mean for it to come across so materialistic like that. It's getting that balance isn't it which is so hard. Life ultimately is for living and enjoying so no point in living ultra frugal for the future that it irritates you or working so hard that you don't see the family whilst their young. I've gone part time this year for just that reason and whilst it's likely I'll be working until 60ish I want my wife to retire at 50 to 55.
 
Answering the original post, you should absolutely discuss your salary with your peers, especially before reviews.

Why? Collective bargaining.

The only people who don't want you discussing salary are your employers for that very reason.

I've been in the same company for 7 years. Another chap started the same role a month after me. We've successfully negotiated an above inflation pay rise every single year, bar this year (for obvious reasons).

We talk every year before reviews and agree what the first person to have their review will ask for. On years where business has been good, that can be quite high. Whoever has the second review asks for more knowing we always both get the same. We usually get somewhere in between that, but it works so well; we've had some huge payrise over that time.

Nothing illegal in doing so, regardless of what some employers will try to tell you, and we both benefit a lot.

Anyone who doesn't take a similar approach is only harming themselves in such negotiations.
 
theone8181 said:
Interesting reading, as my wife is a pharmacist at a boots shop and says the same thing. She earns similar to me ~35k but works 10% less hours. I agree on the stressed front which is why she's trying to leave. This whole covid thing has annoyed her as pharmacists seem to get over looked as not classed as frontline workers.
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Oh yes, I forgot to mention the best perk of all, its a non-patient non-customer facing role!
 
Thing is though what if all those millionaires come at the cost of the poorest 50% of the population gets poorer? Is that still fair and right?

and just looking back on your post about your parents, if they are living in a mortgage feee house worth over £1.3m then they are rich. Okay they may well be way down on the scale for income but they could sell their £1.3m house and live in a reasonable £500k house and then they might feel wealthy?
 
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Hellsmk2 said:
Answering the original post, you should absolutely discuss your salary with your peers, especially before reviews.

Why? Collective bargaining.
[...]

Anyone who doesn't take a similar approach is only harming themselves in such negotiations.
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I'd certainly not be absolute about this, especially with regards to bonuses/variable comp - that can certainly be very context dependent. I do agree with you to some extent though.

For example on bonuses that are genuinely discretionary they might well come from a fixed pool allocated to your team/department. If you did rather well out of this and you let it slip to a colleague who hasn't done so well then you could be harming yourself if your manager then feels pressure to adjust the distribution... this can be a zero sum game... you're not necessarily going to help boost eachother.

Pay can be similar to some extent in terms of the company, they've not got limitless funds but it's also not so restricted as to have a fixed pool per team necessarily, it is often decided at a higher level (broadly) albeit with input from managers re: their team. Fact is at various times companies need to hire people and the market dictates the rates they need to hire - that measn [people can eand up earning differing amounts for the same job - this can be useful to have some conversaiton about with people you trust but it's a good idea to be carefuly about this... you don't want it to be obvious like some lower paid colleague running off to management/HR with this new found info that you personally are earning X and he only gets Y and it's so unfair etc..

Also there can be company wide HR rules in place which could be very hard to bypass or simply can't be bypassed except for some circumstances like obvious flight risk/making someone a counter offer... suppose there is one great dev/BA who has been with the company for 3 years now and is on say 50k, there is some new but experienced dev or BA who has been hired from some other company as a "senior" dev or "senior" BA, they're earning 80k... the guy earning 50k gets wind of this... kicks off a bit as he argues he's actually better than the new guy (perhaps partly true in some respects as the new guy (though experienced) is new to the company and the existing dev or BA is competent and knows his stuff. Perhaps the manager of that BA or Dev says "well look, fair enough, we've reviewed your performance and we're promoting you to "Senior BA" or Senior dev"... well he's happy-ish now except... he's not getting 80k... manager is restricted by HR rules that dictate that max pay rises internally are 20% say... so our newly promoted BA or Dev gets a boost to 60k and is at the lower range of his newly acquired job title.

Best way to avoid being screwed if you're concerned about it is to keep tabs on what the market is paying, in fact keeping your CV up to date and sending it out to recruiters etc.. is potential good practice here even if you're not looking... why not just make the effort to go for an interview or two each year anyway? You get some interview practice, you get some indication of what sort of demand there is for you out there and you potentially get an offer... on one of those occasions you might even get an offer that is good enough for you to change plans and actually move jobs even if you weren't intending to otherwise... on other occasions it's quite relaxing/easy going to smash out some interviews for a job you don't particularly care about because you're already happily employed (in fact this has that unintended consequence of sometimes generating those sorts of change your mind offers precisely because you don't care and they'd have to pay you to get you to move!).
 
shadow_boxer said:
Doctor/GP? Feel free to neither confirm nor deny. :)



Totally agree there, I'm the same. My income is pretty similar to yours it seems and I go through periods when I think to myself what on earth do you do for a living. Admittedly our income goes a long way in Stoke and we live in an extremely modest house to what we could potentially afford, but it's usually when I see some young guy in a brand new flash high performance car it peaks my curiosity.
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I'm in a medico-legal position, so not a million miles off!

I feel reassured by this thread, but also a little ignorant of the troubles of others. I suppose I can observe others struggling but don't really understand what it is like.

I'm an incredibly frugal person (except for my share dealings...) but this is by choice. I could have significant debt and drive a flash car, but would rather buy more time. I'm about to be a dad, for the first time, and would like to work fewer hours to not miss those early stages.

I know I'm fortunate to have that choice - believe me I do know! - but I think it's just worth saying that the headline figure doesn't necessarily reflect the standard of living. I don't roll around in piles of money like Scrooge McDuck, even though I'm a good earner.

I do think lifestyle inflation is a thing, and nobody is immune, but I just live what I would consider an "average" life.
 
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