'i Make £120,000 But I Can’T Recall The Last Time We Went Out For Dinner’

[dothemaths]

I know of admin staff on £50k+ too !!!!

I also know of engineers on £35K

Just evidence that the country's f****d

[giesahoose]

the dog in the photo looks embarrassed to be there.

[winkie]

Going out to dinner is to go out to someone you knows home to eat, part of a round.....somehow your own cooked food and friends food is far superior than some of the overpriced offerings you get presented with in many establishments.....there are exceptions of course, they are worth their weight in gold.

[bambam]

Rather worrying that this chump is in financial services, it seems he doesn't understand anything about budgeting. Education for the kids has to be private, even thought there are perfectly good State schools, especially in London. Presumably he can't afford to go out for a meal because that means some Gourmet restaurant at £100 a head.

How does someone unable to handle money get such a job.

They don't live in London. They live in a rural part of Surrey. Point about state schools applies probably more so, but it's more likely that there are no decent meals to be had in the area anyway.

Whole story is BS, I imagine the Mrs. wanted to get the name of her training company mentioned in print, but the Torygraph didn't take the bait.

[AteMoose]

I don't think £35k for an engineer is a lot? What sort of engineer are you talking about? Civil, Mechanical? After the amount of training you have to go through to become an engineer I think £35k is quite low. I certainly earn more than that!

Software engineer, javascript (AngularJs is the top payer atm)?

http://www.theitjobboard.co.uk/index.php?SearchTerms=Angular%2A&RadiusUnit=2&JobTypeFilter_1=1&JobTypeFilter_2=2〈=en&Mode=AdvertSearch&Radius=0&

most jobs are 50k->75k + bonus

or contracting upto £900 a day

CSS, html javascript a little less but upto 60k...

Edited May 7, 2014 by AteMoose

[Bootsox]

I know plenty of engineers, mainly in the automotive industry, who don't earn 30k let alone 35k.

Chartered engineers or spanner monkeys?

[crash2006]

It is very simple do not spend its going to happen later than sooner, the UK economy is going to collapse, like a house of cards,its overheating in certain areas.

[pmf170170]

No wonder he is panicking, his contract is up at the end of the week.

From his Linked In profile:

Guy Jackson's Experience

Compliance Officer Nutmeg

Privately Held; 11-50 employees; Financial Services industry

October 2013 – Present (8 months) London SW8

Working as maternity cover and is the registered CF10 & CF 11 for Nutmeg until May 9, 2014.

Responsible for providing a practical, efficient and business friendly compliance solution to the Nutmeg board and to ensure that Nutmeg attains high standards of regulatory compliance.

Compliance accountabilities include, liaison with the FCA and other appropriate regulatory bodies; provide compliance and regulatory support to the Nutmeg board; operate and update the annual compliance plan to cover the activities of Nutmeg; compliance monitoring; risk mapping and assisting in the ICAAP process, regulatory reporting and notifications; review 5of the investment and suitability processes; AML monitoring and reporting; review and approval of all marketing documents and adverts; maintenance of the Code of Ethics and Conflict of Interest policies; Training and Competency monitoring and delivery of suitable training.

[Tattoo'd Lady]

Whole story is BS, I imagine the Mrs. wanted to get the name of her training company mentioned in print, but the Torygraph didn't take the bait.

From his LinkedIn profile - he works for Nutmeg

From the Telegraph article

"A survey by Nutmeg, an online savings and investment management service aimed at professionals, recently revealed that around 72 per cent of UK adults across the socio-economic spectrum have had to cut back every day expenditure due to the rising cost of their monthly bills"

So the company he works for had to publicise their survey and needed a face to put to the story ... they looked around the office and saw Guy who's always winging about his school fees and his mortgage and thought he'll do ... ...

[Hechnical Titch]

Chartered engineers or spanner monkeys?

I know a chartered engineer (with more letters after his name than in his firstname+longish surname) and a graduate bankster (with 1/4 of the letters of the engineer). Both graduated and started work in the same year.

After 8 years the engineer's salary is only just higher than the bankster's salary on graduating (~45k) - and the engineer feels lucky!

[okaycuckoo]

Haven't followed the HPC investigative journalist links into this guy's past.

I forwarded the link to a London (Wimbledon) corporate striver, and he said, "Like looking in the mirror". And he's on even more gross than I thought.

Frugal guy with two kids, wife-strife over private schooling. It is a real problem for high paid Londoners. Pity they spread it around.

[bambam]

From his LinkedIn profile - he works for Nutmeg

From the Telegraph article

"A survey by Nutmeg, an online savings and investment management service aimed at professionals, recently revealed that around 72 per cent of UK adults across the socio-economic spectrum have had to cut back every day expenditure due to the rising cost of their monthly bills"

So the company he works for had to publicise their survey and needed a face to put to the story ... they looked around the office and saw Guy who's always winging about his school fees and his mortgage and thought he'll do ... ...

Read more carefully:

"Appointed as the Compliance Officer and registered CF10 & CF11 with NewSmith Asset Management from May 12, 2014."

[Tonkers]

The truth is when he has to turn off the money tap and there is no inheritance he has brought up his kids to hate him for it.

Edited May 8, 2014 by Tonkers

[stuckmojo]

I find this guy very difficult to sympathise with. However, as things stand today, 120k in London are probably not even middle class. Anywhere outside London, You'd be ******ing rich on that money. That's how big the gap is. Bigger than between Hong Kong and its surroundings.

[Bootsox]

I know a chartered engineer (with more letters after his name than in his firstname+longish surname) and a graduate bankster (with 1/4 of the letters of the engineer). Both graduated and started work in the same year.

After 8 years the engineer's salary is only just higher than the bankster's salary on graduating (~45k) - and the engineer feels lucky!

Presume he is happy doing what he is doing...

Trouble is, for this country, engineers are not particularly well paid (or recognised). If your mate was to horse on a bit he might get somewhere in the region £55-60k but for this he will have a load of responsibility/stress.

The alternative is contract work, £300-400/day.

Or overseas, e.g. Canada, similar tax regime but 2-3 x UK salaries.

[spyguy]

Being feckless and having no idea about living within one's means is pretty much a pre-requisite for employment the financial services sector these days. Financial 'policy' is all about everyone taking on as much debt as they can possibly get.

But they earn that money . . .

Quick look at the Barclays results out today . . . and Barclays are one of the more profitable IBs.

What a BS crock of an industry.

[TheCountOfNowhere]

You're on fire today Count

Thanks. I like to give it a go everyday

[TheCountOfNowhere]

I don't think £35k for an engineer is a lot? What sort of engineer are you talking about?

Mostly Indian now.

Computer industry, I am talking people with degrees, highly skilled. The out sourcing and immigration has hammered down incomes.

[TheCountOfNowhere]

But they earn that money . . .

Quick look at the Barclays results out today . . . and Barclays are one of the more profitable IBs.

What a BS crock of an industry.

They skim money off the top of real wealth creation you mean.

Still, good news for them all today...barclays to get rid of 20,000 bankers. Lets how Mr. 120K isn't working for them...Still 20,0000 people looking for jobs means lower wages across the board...the talent pool just got bigger,

[TheCountOfNowhere]

Triple post...sorry.

[winkie]

I find this guy very difficult to sympathise with. However, as things stand today, 120k in London are probably not even middle class. Anywhere outside London, You'd be ******ing rich on that money. That's how big the gap is. Bigger than between Hong Kong and its surroundings.

I don't agree.....London in many ways is far cheaper than living outside, transport, CT, water for example.... food and eating out can be very much cheaper if you know where to go.....for a Londoner in their late 40s or 50s they should not have a mortgage at all.....so earning £120k with a fully paid for home and you would be rolling in it......any kids in private school are often shipped out to a boarding school in the sticks......meaning both can work long hours if they so wish.......people are not forced to buy and borrow bigger, they are not forced to put kids into private education.....choices.

[Bloo Loo]

I don't agree.....London in many ways is far cheaper than living outside, transport, CT, water for example.... food and eating out can be very much cheaper if you know where to go.....for a Londoner in their late 40s or 50s they should not have a mortgage at all.....so earning £120k with a fully paid for home and you would be rolling in it......any kids in private school are often shipped out to a boarding school in the sticks......meaning both can work long hours if they so wish.......people are not forced to buy and borrow bigger, they are not forced to put kids into private education.....choices.

dont be silly, if a couple has a few K spare every month, they spend it. It is fashionable to spend it on a bigger mortgage.

[winkie]

dont be silly, if a couple has a few K spare every month, they spend it. It is fashionable to spend it on a bigger mortgage.

Then they blame the world and the dog complaining they don't earn enough and can't make ends meet so have to go without eating out....diddums, such a hard life.

[buzzardo]

Much of Jackson’s £120,000 basic salary – which is at the upper end of the Squeezed Middle – goes on his sons’ school fees. The boys attend Lord Wandsworth College, the independent day and boarding school that counts rugby legend Jonny Wilkinson among its alumni.

Epic fail on all counts.

1. The private schools in Farnham are definitively second-rate compared with the state schools - there are top-ranked Academy schools from primary school through to the start of sixth form, and then decent options from there. That's why it's so frickin' expensive!!
2. At £120K p.a., he's right at the bottom of the earnings ranks for other parents who will be sending their kids there - so not only is he going to find parent's evenings pretty uncomfortable, he's also now marked out his kids for bullying by the rest of the little sh!ts who go there whose parents have told them money is everything.
3. He'd have been far better off spending that cash moving to the "right" bit of Farnham. Sure, he wouldn't have two acres in The Sands, or some other "posh but out of catchment area," ghetto, but having a decent quality of life, and perfectly normal and respectable (but not snooty) mates for all the family would have made up for that in a heartbeat.

Being a Farnhamite I know plenty of people this age group who send their kids to LW - mostly EA's, bankers, lawyers etc who don't want their kids to rub shoulders with the hoi-polloi; it's all about snobbery and bragging rights.

And, unfortunately for the kids themselves, you couldn't meet a more snooty, socially-incapable and hubristic bunch - growing up in the exact mould of their "Top 2%" parents, and behaving like a right bunch of c***s to boot. God help them if the jobs their parents are hoping they'll slip into, when they're old enough, have been outsourced to India (lawyers / accountants,) or made obsolete by the web (EA's etc) by the time they graduate. They're going to get utterly slaughtered by the kids from S Farnham, Weydon, and the local sixth form colleges - who are by and large as bright as buttons, well-balanced, and hard-working, and who haven't been brainwashed into believing they are the Chosen and the Entitled. And most of whom wouldn't be seen dead in LW, Charterhouse, Salesians etc - EVEN IF they got a full scholarship on academic or sporting grounds.

So, not content with such a litany of poor decisions (jeez - I hope his judgement at work is better, if he's in Compliance!!) he then decides to put his mug in the paper, bitching and whining, and making a laughing stock of his entire family in what is a pretty small and unforgiving little Hampshire town.

I had to go back and check it wasn't a made-up Wail story, because it simply didn't add up on so many levels.

Ho-hum.

B

[bambam]

The schools results aren't great - 47% A*-A at GCSE compares very poorly to others in the area (RGS Guildford, by contrast, gets 94%).

I expect most of the children aren't particularly bright, so it's difficult to compare with state results, but the fees are ridiculously high also, at £20k+ for a day place.

I can only assume they make their bread + butter from foreign students, it doesn't look terribly compelling otherwise.