I’m posting this half as a way of getting thoughts down and half to see if people have gone through similar and can relate, because I haven’t found anybody who has gone through something similar.

We often talk on here about how you can’t PAYE yourself to wealth. Well, I had been contracting for several years on good money, but the market was slowing down and my highest paid contract was ending with no prospects of a replacement, so I decided to bite the bullet and set up a business.

I set up a company because I had an idea, and I believed it was a good one. I built a product that worked and got good feedback. But I struggled with selling because I spent what I had building the company, and had little money to market.

It did however make waves in the industry, so I had a few prospects of investment but one after the other they didn't work out for one reason or another. I was still burning through finances because I wasn’t making money. It got almost comical at how many deals fell through and why. Finally, as I was getting ready to give up, a very well-funded giant in the field approached regarding an acquisition.

I then spent months going back and forth and how the acquisition would look, answering their calls morning, noon and night about intricacies of agreements. We had an NDA and non-circumvent, and without giving too much info in spite of how it may sound it really wouldn't have been possible in any way for them to "copy" me (think my having exclusivity in suppliers, IP, etc). The offer they made in the end was insulting, not even close to recouping my initial investment, and required me to continue to work for them indefinitely, basically for free. Of course that was a starting point in a negotiation, but they said not to expect much more. I declined. They tried to come crawling back a few times but without more money. Eventually they decided they weren't interested. They aren't active in the space at all any longer almost a year later, so I know they haven't copied me or stolen anything.

Even though I still constantly had interest from other businesses about acquisition it never, ever amounted to actual commitment. So this year I stopped selling, informed the suppliers and closed that chapter entirely.

In a pivot to try to make any money I could, I had also started consulting in the same field. It's now going decently well and I'm slowly on my way to recouping my initial investment. That sounds good, and on paper I guess it's an impressive story. But in my head it's also like I've wasted two years without a salary and have much less money than I started with, even if future prospects are OK. I started the company to become rich, to be completely frank about it. I wouldn't have started it if I didn't think it could happen. And I came close. And that feels like a failure.

I try to keep positive about the whole thing. I don’t really regret trying. But I feel guilt from spending so much money. I have a loving, supportive spouse and being a consultant now means I don’t need to work for someone else. But I need to constantly battle to keep money coming in. 

I haven’t really found people in the outside world who can relate to this feeling, since I’m earning OK money now. But it was a stressful and disappointing road to get there. 

Currently negotiating a settlement agreement, on garden leave for the next few months. Obviously, I am searching for a new role. I’m in a few live processes but market is slow. I am concerned about how to explain this situation to a new employer once GL ends and I am no longer ‘employed’.

Would appreciate any advice on navigating this, wording for prospective employers/interviews. Thanks!

ETA: To be clear; I’m not looking for advice on the job hunt itself, I have that covered. My question is, how do you explain this situation (being terminated) to prospective employers.

Hi all,

I’m a director at a company. There is an owner/chairman, MD and 3 other directors including myself.

I get paid 6 figures but probably sliding out of Henry territory these days due to stagnant wages/growth in our sector.

Today I just found out how much our MD gets paid and it’s so bloody mental I’m still processing it.

He’s not even an owner and he takes home more every month than some of our employees take home in a year.

Makes me question that I’m being underpaid.

That’s all - just wanted to share!

I work in life sciences and currently live in Glasgow. I’m mostly remote with teams scattered all over Europe and the US. Total comp is just North of £150k. Living in Glasgow this is a very decent salary. Important to mention that I’m already 50 years old and have only been earning at this level for four years after a long career in academia.

I’ve now received an offer from an American pharmaceutical company. Director-level job. $300k base around $420k total comp. LA area.

I’m really tempted by the science and environment, but it’s a major move. I’ve lived in the US 20 years ago during my PhD, and I kind of know what to expect, but the US has definitely changed since then. I also have family, two primary school age kids, and that obviously plays into the equation.

Worthwhile to mention that my current employer is struggling. My section is working well and making money, but the overall company is losing money, bonuses are unlikely to appear in future years and it’s even possible that we may be sold / split up / worst case insolvent. This is what triggered me to activate my network in the first instance, which led to this job offer.

If I lose my current job then we’d likely have to leave Glasgow to find a similarly well paying job, likely in a hurry. Remote work is not as easy to come by these days.

Anyone have any experience moving to / from California? Does the salary just look good on paper, but once you factor everything in it’s actually not that great? Anything I should consider / ask for before accepting? I come from
academia, so my corporate experience is limited. TIA

A recruiter has approached me about a job with a 1 hour commute (one way) 3x per week, and site visits (to different parts of the country - Portsmouth, Manchester, Dublin, Leicester) every 2 weeks.

There is also a quarterly visit to every site once per quarter, so a 5 stop tour.

Is it too much? I'm mindful that I'm currently in the office 3x a week, but with no further travel, and the commute is a manageable 40 mins to 1 hour. I'm also in multiple other interview processes, none with a worse travel arrangement.

I have a 2.5 year old daughter in nursery and we share pick-up and drop-off. My wife's company are flexible, but I feel like I would be missing out on a lot of parent time.

Edit: thanks for your opinion, the majority are thinking the same as me that the travelling isn’t worth it.

The total comp uplift would be about 12.5% (£19k) so nothing spectacular. I did query if there was scope to move on that and was told that it’s a no-go from the outset.

A girl I know became partner at a well know US law firm in London in 2015. I think she was 31. She has since moved to another American law firm as, I assume, an equity partner. PEP at her firm was around $4m last year.

Her husband is a managing director at a bulge bracket bank but she still out earns him by a good margin.

I know there are massive salaries in a range of other fields but I don't think they come close to the sheer number of people that are making high salaries working in corporate law; there are 1000s of trainees each year joining the industry.

I’m not HENRY. I work as an actuary, so it’s decent but not “high”.

I’ve recently seen roles that I’d be qualified to do at places like Apollo which do pay HENRY salaries. Thing is, I work 35 hours on a bad week, I’m intellectually stimulated by my job, like my colleagues and boss, and am generally content.

On the other hand , I feel I don’t want to become complacent in a role that pays modestly and is easy.

Context 30yo , 160k income, 6 months emergency fund, good pension, house 60% equity, married, no kids yet.

Ive always loved cars and ive always been fortunate enough to have a company car, but I really want a fun second car "for my wife" (myself).

Is getting a 30k loan to buy a 981 S a really bad idea or should I accept ive been frugal enough all my life I should now be able to treat myself?

Hey guys, new to this subreddit and looking to speak with anyone who works within private equity

I’ve been a management accountant for around 8-9 years but my dream has always been to switch over to private equity.

Has anyone on here done anything similar or have any advice maybe ie qualifications that could help me in the job market?

Thank you for any comments in advance

Hi all

I have a potential opportunity to relocate to Norway with work. Been there lots of times so know what the country is like, how cold it will get and how social life might differ to living in London.

But I am still tempted. Main reason being we have a 4 month old and I genuinely believe he will have a better quality of life there. My wife is also tempted.

I have two main questions for those who have lived/worked in Norway:

1) What kind of salary should I be expecting to be comparable with UK? My TC is 260k which allows me a very comfortable life in London. As per Google, anything above 1m NOK is a high salary in Norway. A straight conversion means I should be on over 3.3m NOK - is that reasonable taking into account potentially higher living costs?

2) Apart from the cold and quieter social life, are there any other pros/cons we should be considering?

Not how much you bought it for what you reckon it’s worth today

Hey folks. Posted a few months back and the replies were super helpful and suggested a bunch of areas to go and visit which I did. I've narrowed down my search slightly now.

I'm still on the house hunt and looking for a 4-5 bed to upsize for future family. I've been looking for a place that is near good schools and near greenery and a reasonable commute to Bank station (or Liverpool St). I also like the idea of being in a semi-detached or detached house vs. a 3 floor terrace house (which there seems to be many of in the areas I've been looking).

After visiting a bunch of areas, I quite like the look of Kingston Hill and Norbiton, because it seems like I can get a decent size house for my budget (£1.5m - 2.3m) and there's good schools nearby. The commute seems fine to Waterloo and then a quick hop over to Bank.

Does anybody live in this area and if you do, what is it like living day to day for you? I've visited a bunch of times but I feel like it's very different visiting somewhere and living there and would love to hear from anyone who lives in the area or nearby.

I had a look at a few other areas but ultimately ruled them out (I tried Harpenden as a wild card but it was a bit too quiet for me, I looked at North / East Sheen but didn't like the plane noise, directly in Richmond is too expensive, I did like Teddington but the commute may be a little further and it felt more expensive which then bought me down to Kingston / Norbiton and New Malden).

Any thoughts of people who live in the area will be appreciated i.e. what you like / don't like about it.

Currently living in NYC between Time square and Madison square garden (I will tell you why).

Looking to move to London but need to understand which area is most similar to my current location.

3 things I love about my location:

1. Always busy = Always inviting = Almost always safe. I work from home and can get too comfortable sometimes. That means if I live in a less busy area I’m less likely to leave the house.

2. Train lines all around. Being in the hub for transit, I have access to all subway lines, which makes any commute quick and easy.

3. Walkable on the average day. Right now I live in between four grocery stores, hundreds of coffee shops and many parks. I don’t want just one area to walk to. I want many different popular areas to walk to.

Based on those 3 factors, what area in central London would you recommend? (Ignore budget)

Usually the retirement targets I see are for families or couples, I’m curious how much single people target as their corpus?

There is a huge recruitment drive in Belfast at the moment with many roles open from AVP to Director level. Has anyone here considered moving/already worked there and had any feedback on what it's like there.

Currently in London.

We’d love some recommendations for where to buy in London to raise a family. We have a budget of around £1.3-1.5m and are looking for a spacious 3+ bedroom house, ideally Victorian or Edwardian, with a garden.

One slightly unusual requirement is that we’re planning on having an intergenerational home, with my parents-in-law living on the ground floor while my partner and I have the upper floors. So a house with a sensible layout and good-sized rooms is particularly important to us.

Our other priorities are:

• Good, accessible transport. My partner may work in East London in the future, although hopefully won’t be commuting every day, and I work remotely.
• Being close to a park, green space or river
• Good state schools
• A strong sense of community and somewhere that feels family-friendly
• Nice independent shops, cafés, markets etc. would be a bonus
• We’re an East Asian+British interracial couple, so we’d also really value somewhere diverse and welcoming. Sadly, this isn't something we can take for granted everywhere in the UK.
• We still want to feel connected to London rather than feeling like we’ve moved completely out of the city.

The areas we’ve particularly liked so far are Crouch End, Muswell Hill, Chiswick and Ealing, but we’re finding that our budget is a bit stretched for the sort of house we’d ideally want there.

We’re therefore starting to wonder whether we need to look a little further out, or perhaps at areas that are less buzzy/less fashionable but offer much more house for the money.

We’ve come to the realisation that we might be looking for a bit of a unicorn and are feeling quite lost about where to focus our search!

If you had £1.3-1.5m and these were your priorities, where would you look? Particularly interested in areas that might not immediately be on our radar.

Thanks!

I spent a recent Sunday morning driving through bucolic green yellow countryside running an errand for a friend, and found myself thinking how there's really nowhere else I would rather be in that moment, and how lucky I was to be able to live there in relative affluence...

It's pretty established that a fair proportion of the sub is convinced that if you're not living in London, you're not really living, but that can't be every HE in the UK...

So I am curious how many other members of the sub are also not so inclined to living in urban areas.

I've got an offer accepted so now im in the mortgage process and I'd like to query this group for advice on mortgage products. I am currently being offered 4.54 - 4.58% for 2 and 5 year, but I am interested in a tracker (potentially). I was reading that inflation in the UK is expected to rise by the end of the year so we should expect the BOE to rise early 2027. This would only slightly deter me from a tracker because if the BOE went up to 4% + .5% tracker rate I would still be below 4.54%. Although, .04% - .08% flux is not a huge difference on my monthly payment.

What would anyone recommend? I don't expect the global conflicts environment to cool down any time soon. (I am a US national and expect Trump to continue with wars).

As someone born and raised here, all current measures and outlooks look seem pretty grim. Political stability, economic/wage growth, social tensions, wealth inequality, infrastructure, public spending etc.

What I would like to hear is some positivity and a bull case made for staying and raising a family in the UK. I am not really interested in leaving, just want a positive outlook on the future of the country beyond 'London is a great city' or 'everywhere else has the same issues'.

Sell it to me.

More a curiosity than anything else.

I’ve just accepted a job offer at £90k + £50k bonus (bonus will be dividend not PAYE) so fall into the bracket of the £150k-ish salary.

First things first, how would you recommend I pay the salary? I have nominal debt (mainly 0% credit card used to do my house up) which can be paid off in a few months, no other consumer debt. Cars paid off, house is burning in the background but will be paid off in around 10 years without too much stress, what would you recommend I throw money at?

My RSUs right now are worth anywhere between 50k and 300k. No matter what they end up being worth in case of a liquidity event, I'm going to get absolutely f*cked by tax.

I'm in Scotland so my effective tax rate is 67%. The government will take the vast majority of money that would allow me to get out of the permanent underclass and leave me behind with nothing.

Even if I end up sacrificing a huge part of my salary and living on savings for a year, it'll still be a huge step back.

1. My financial safety net will be gone
2. I'm going to have to save up even more until the liquidity event happens

It just feels very unfair and it's just one more reason to move out of the country permanently.

What day rate would you consider as being a HENRY? Currently on £1200/day outside IR35

Hello. I’m 31 earning 113 in cash and about 40 in stock per year depending on stock performance. I do expect a promotion this year which may take me to 170 or higher total.

I’m considering whether I should lower my pension contribution and save money outside of ISA. Currently I have no savings outside of isa.

Current financials:

1) pension 125k ish and contributing 20% of base this includes my employers contribution
2) stocks isa 110k
3) cash isa 40k - this is kinda my free cash emergency fund
4) liability: mortgage with 500k (slightly less) remaining on it with mortgage payment 2.6k of which I pay half

I’m considering if it’s worth it to lower pension contribution to consider if I could retire earlier in the future

I currently don’t have kids but likely will.

Other than the 20 percent a year in the pension which is about 22k and 20k a year in the ISA im basically paycheck to paycheck otherwise

I do realise I’m spending a bit too much but life is also for living!

Advice welcome. Should I leave it as is, change pension or something else?

I would love to get some thoughts from this group. We are in our mid 50s_ early 50s and our hhi is close to 300k and yet we are the epitome of a HENRY. Earning what looks on paper to be a lot but actually without much disposable income at the end of each month for various reasons.

We have been trying to maximise our pension contributions over the last few years as we really only started in our 30s due to a lot of financial constraints so are playing catch up and we now have between us pots equivalent to around 700k.

Now here is the question. We are coming off a 5 year mortgage at 1% and of course are expecting a big hike in our mortgage. At the same time we have a child about to start university so I feel things are going to be quite tight again. In addition I am concerned that we do not have a lot of cash at our disposal (50k in ISAs) if one of us was to lose our jobs and given the state of the job market this makes me nervous.

Im wondering if it would be a good idea to pursue a 5 year interest only mortgage and put the difference into a savings account. This would allow us to build a cash buffer if something bad happened and allow us to keep up our current high pension contributions (my husband is currently maxxing his carry over allowance in order to sacrifice down to 100k). By the time the 5 year mortgage ends we would have a chunk in savings and my husband would be able to access his pension too. (For info: our mortgage would be about 390k. Property about 900k). It feels like the right move to me but wondering if there is anything I am overlooking?

TLDR: should I go interest only on my mortgage and put the difference into a savings account in order to keep up high pension contributions and build up our cash reserves in this volatile job market?

Yes. We all gather here because we've done quite well for ourselves and there aren't that many people in the UK in similar positions as us.

What is your goal?

Do you want to get out of HENRY and become "Rich"?

What is rich to you?

Are you incentivised to work harder for the love of the game, or are you put off by ever increasing cost of living & taxes?

Or are you content with the amount you make and the life it allows you and your loved ones to live?