Escaping the City to practise ‘fun law’ might not be as easy as you think
A top corporate lawyer on a hefty £72,000 salary has gone public with her spending diary, and she’s saving a hell of a lot less than you might think.
The anonymous international dispute resolution lawyer has revealed that she saves just £600 a month out of her £3184.20 take home income, which amounts to £7,200 a year.
So just how flash is this 27-year-old lawyer’s lifestyle to be saving so little?
Well, quite flash, but not that flash.
According to the London-based solicitor’s spending log, that appeared on lifestyle website Refinery 29, she does enjoy some luxuries. She has a cleaner (£72 a month) and a gym membership (£99 a month), plus she admits to spending over £164 on clothes and nearly £100 on food and drink a week.
That said, it’s not all spend, spend, spend.
There are certainly some more humble snippets from her diary. On the third day of her week-long journal, she spent less than £20, the whole whack on travel, KFC and Itsu. On day five, she spent just £8.80.
Money is a touchy subject, and Facebook commenters have displayed mixed feelings towards our £72,000 a year rookie and what she spends her income on. One person described her expenditure as “silly”, commenting:
[C]an’t believe she only saves £600 per month out of £3k+ when she has no kids.
Another, however, came out in defence of the dispute resolution specialist, pointing out that City lawyers do “ridiculously long hours”. She even argues:
If you divide her salary by the number of hours she spends in the office, her hourly wage would [be] about London minimum wage.
Whatever your views, this lawyer’s story goes some way to rebutting the idea that corporate solicitors have the luxury of saving big and quitting early to do ‘fun law’ (like media and crime) instead.