If there’s one thing we don’t talk about enough in the UK, it’s salaries.
There’s often very little salary transparency between colleagues, so it can be difficult to work out whether you’re being paid well or not.
According to the ONS, the average median monthly salary as of January 2026 is £2,588, which works out as £30,696 per year, before tax. For those who are paid weekly, the average is currently £735 per week, which is £38,532 per annum, without deductions.
For the nation’s top earners, the median annual pay was as much as £4.58 million for the 2024/2025 financial year, but what actually counts as a ‘high salary’ these days?
Metro put the question to three money experts to see what they had to say…
Freddie Winter, from Gratitude Financial Planning, claims a ‘high-paid job’ these days needs to be over £100,000.
‘Historically, we have defaulted to £100,000 a year; however, if you want children, a good-sized family home and a couple of nice holidays a year, this just isn’t curing it anymore,’ he says.
‘I work with a lot of professionals in your typical high-earning careers earning over that threshold, and the overriding feeling is “it shouldn’t be this hard”.
‘People may be getting their tiny violins out at this point, but the fact is that in today’s economy, earning £100,000 annually is no longer enough to be considered a high-paid job.’
Freddie claims unaffordable property prices, inflation, and frozen income tax thresholds have all had a part to play in this, as well as the loss of childcare benefits for those earning over £100,000.
As such, many of his clients are struggling to get on the property ladder in London, despite earning more than most.
With this in mind, he’s proposed a new metric for working out what counts as a high salary, which he believes should be four times the average earnings for a country or region.
So, if we were to take the £38,532 average figure from earlier and multiply this by four, you’d have £154,128, which Freddie says is ‘a much more realistic figure for 2026’.
‘For London, with average earnings of £46,800, this would be £187,200, which doesn’t sound too far off either,’ he adds.
Chartered accountant and personal finance educator, Abigail Foster, has a slightly different take, placing a ‘high salary’ anywhere between £75,000 and £100,000.
‘Statistically, to be in the top 10% of earners, you need to earn roughly £75,000 to £80,000 a year. Cross £100,000, and you are firmly in the top few percent of UK earners.
‘So in pure data terms, earning £80,000 plus would make you highly paid nationally,’ she explains.
But as we already know income alone doesn’t tell the full story…
‘I talk a lot about HENRYs, High Earners Not Rich Yet. These are professionals on big salaries who still feel financially stretched because of housing costs, childcare, student loans and lifestyle inflation, particularly in London and the South East,’ she continues.
‘There is also a tax reality people often forget. For every £2 you earn over £100,000, you lose £1 of tax-free allowance. That creates an effective 60% marginal tax rate between £100,000 and £125,140. It catches people out all the time.’
Abigail adds: ‘On paper, around £75,000 to £100,000 puts you in a top earning bracket. But feeling wealthy depends far more on your costs, location, and whether you’re building assets, not just earning income.’
Finally, we spoke to financial specialist and self-made millionaire Vivian Tu, also known as the founder of Your Rich BFF.
Unlike the others, Vivian didn’t want to share an exact figure for the ‘high salary’ question, but did say that prior to the cost of living crisis, earning around £100,000 was the ‘gold standard’.
However, she no longer thinks this figure is representative of a 2026 reality.
Instead of a focus on a specific number, the expert says there’s something else we should be trying to achieve.
She tells Metro: ‘These days, I’d say a high salary varies based on where you live and frankly, isn’t necessarily a number, but rather how many of your “buckets” you can fill.
‘Does your income allow you to cover all of your basic necessities? Does your income provide you with a discretionary spending budget that helps you feel like you are thriving vs. just surviving? Does your income allow you to protect your future by saving for emergencies, paying down your debts, and maxing out all of your retirement investments?’
According to Vivian, if your salary enables you to do all of this, then you are successfully making money, and living a life you should be proud of.
Vivian’s new book, Well Endowed: The Secrets to Strategic Spending, is available now.
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