<p>A good salary to me 100,000 +, 150000+ sounds better though.</p>
<p>H is an engineer with a masters in management. He has been with the same company for 33 years and makes less than $100k. We don’t consider him a failure by any means, and we feel he makes a good salary … many in our surrounding area earn far less. Yeah, some earn more … but MORE earn less. </p>
<p>No one “needs” a big house, a fancy car, etc. The more you earn, the more you buy. It’s possible to be quite happy earning much less than $100k right out of school!!</p>
<p>I know it is possible to be happy. But 100K seems a little limiting, especially since I want to have three kids and private school and the works. I mean I have pretty much always got what I wanted, and never had to really consider money in the things I did, until college. And I want to give that opportunity to my children and more. And I wanted to give my wife the option of not working, so 100K is too low. I realize that I am a little neurotic in this regard, but I had planned out my life to death when I wanted to be a doctor and now that is out the door I really don’t know what to do.</p>
<p>I didn’t work for 20 years after I had kids. My kids went to private schools. We didn’t eat gruel. It’s quite possible to live well on $100k. Of course, it takes time to move up from starting salary to whatever you’ll make later in your career. My husband started out in 1976 at far, far less than $100k. In fact, I saw on old pay stub recently from 1981 … he & I both made $24,000 that year. During that time, we ordered our lives so that we could have a good life without borrowing. We did not overextend ourselves. </p>
<p>I certainly understand wanting more. Just realize that you may not, and you’ll still be fine. Some of our friends who make more at the same company had to make choices that we were not willing to make. If my H had been willing to move his family, to do jobs he hated, and/or to work 80 hours a week, things might be different. However, the choices he made not to do those things contributed to our non-monetary happiness. As I said, we are happy. Money doesn’t buy everything.</p>
<p>Dbate…pick a career where you will be happy. The finances will work themselves out. If you only go “where the money is”, you may find yourself miserable. Don’t do that. AND you have some very kind thoughts regarding wife, family and such…but I’d wait until you HAVE a wife to make those decisions. While many moms are thrilled to be stay at home moms, others would prefer to work (maybe part time, maybe full time). Your kids (when you have them) may decide they want to go to PUBLIC school (it won’t kill them…mine did!!). You and your wife may decide that two kiddos are good…or even one. You just don’t know yet. </p>
<p>And it is a gift to your kids to help THEM consider money issues before they get to college…in my opinion.</p>
<p>Dbate:</p>
<p>Its good to be ambitious, but I fear that (like many of the children where I live) you might have unrealistic expectations. But for reasons quite different from those of thumper1 et. al., I think that you should wait a couple of years before making any firm or nearly firm plans. The economy is in a state of extreme flux right now, and no one can identify good career paths with any certainty right now. So I would wait until some of the dust settles before trying to figure out what direction would be a good one for providing financial security or even a decent living.</p>
<p>It depends where you live. While household can live very comfortably on $150 k in Ohio, that would be minimum survival in NYC. However, the focus now is not income but job security. Anything connected to medicine (not only MD) is much more secure than any other job. Other people might have totally different opinion.</p>
<p>Thanks, I really appreciate all the advice!</p>
<p>I don’t want to have any children, and 100K is very minimal for me, 150k+ sounds much better. Why is this minimal for me? Well the life style I want, being able to explore the world, living in a nice and likely highrise condo ( ofcourse I would want one with a nice view), and always enjoying myself, possibly eating out a lot at healthy resturants ( and that will cost more money) if I please, there is just so much do to and see in the world and would be much difficult for one to try to do all while retired, starting young your likely to do/ see much more.</p>
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These days I doubt very many make that much. S’s friend just graduated from a state u. with honors in liberal arts. He’s working at a coffee shop and living in an apartment whose only piece of furniture is an air mattress.</p>
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It sounds much better to all of us. But that doesn’t mean we will get it. H and I would love to take exotic vacations…lots of them. But, we’ve decided that we want other things more. Everything costs something, and life is full of trade-offs.</p>
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<p>The more I learn about the real world, the more I realize how much it sucks.</p>
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I don’t understand this. Now that I’ve graduated I’ve done a lot of interesting stuff that I hadn’t even thought of before.</p>
<p>Dbate, you spend waaay too much time on the Internet worrying about something that is waaay too disant in the future. Enjoy your summer, hit the pool, go watch some movies with your buddies, pull a couple of pranks, help an elderly neighbor with yardwork… :)</p>
<p>No, Dbate! That’s just the thing… it does NOT suck! I have a great and wonderful life. STUFF (even stuff like vacations) will never satisfy. Loving relationships, a comfortable place to lay your head at night, a rewarding occupation…these things DO satisfy. Stuff is nice and enjoyable, but only if it’s the frosting, not if it’s the cake.</p>
<p>Right here, free of charge, I will share with you the secret of happiness…Be grateful for what you have.</p>
<p>I don’t know I have spent the great portion of the summer trying to plan. I love planning it is what I have always done and I am absolutely sure it is part of why I am going to Yale. When I started middle school I planned the clubs I was going to join, and the first couple of high school courses too. Then I planned my entire high school career and it went perfectly (except for Bs in a few math classes). I had planned my life up until death and until recently it seemed perfect, but then I thought about not being a doctor so my entire plans for the next 8 years are down the drain. </p>
<p>Which is really disconcerting, because I can not approach a situation in life if I haven’t planned and it bothers me to delay these decisions, because i feel as if I won’t make the optimal decisions along the way. I detest making errors and I don’t want to learn from mistakes. I plan so I don’t make major mistakes and therefore never have to learn from them, so it is REALLY bothering me to not have a plan for life.</p>
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<p>This is actually the first summer that I have had since middle school where I have nothing to do. Every other summer I was either working or working on research so I have turned to the internet during the interim where I am not hanging out with friends or working out. I do have a life outside of the computer and have even dropped a few pounds in the last two months.</p>
<p>“This is actually the first summer that I have had since middle school where I have nothing to do.”</p>
<p>This too, shall pass!</p>
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<p>Well that’s good, because the majority of college grads (probably the vast majority) will be earning much less than that right out of school, even if it’s an “elite” school. Average graduates of most colleges in most regions don’t make $100K even by mid-career. Unfortunately, in some parts of the country it can take more than that income to afford a mortgage. I’m not talking about a mortgage on a “big” house, either. Just an average median-priced house.</p>
<p>My simplistic answer to the OP’s question (“what is a good paying job?”) is, “a job that pays enough to afford a mortgage on an average house, and all the other trappings of middle class life, preferably on one income”. Depending on region, the amount can range from about $60K in the heartland to $130K or more on the coasts. It appears that four years of college alone are not enough to get most people there today. You’ll probably need a professional degree, or else a spouse (with both of you earning average pay or better, sticking together in a long and stable marriage, and avoiding pitfalls such as substance abuse or major uninsured health-care expenses.)</p>
<p>Dbate - It appears to me that you have been kind of sheltered through out your life, and through some hard work, good planning, and very good luck, many things have gone your way. As one matures, one finds out life doesn’t always work out the way we planned. Some people can’t handle it, and some people learn to roll with the punches and even view it as an adventure.</p>
<p>People that are successful are very good at handling unexpected in life, and can often turn adversity to advantage. I am also a planner, I like to know what to expect, but my firm pays me to handle unexpected. I always try to have plan B, plan C. I run a very tight ship at work. Everything we do is double checked and triple checked. But I still can’t avoid unexpected disaster. One day I got an email early in the morning to let me know one of our firm’s data center had a melt down, a junior person in that area accidentally reset some servers and all of our customer financial data were gone. It was outside of my department, and it was out of my control. We had very little time to recover it or it could mean a lot of losses to the firm. As the manager, everyone looked to me for directions. I didn’t have the luxury to be upset or to panic This is no different than if you were a doctor. No matter how well you plan out a surgery, something could always go wrong in the operating room. What differentiates between a good doctor and and a bad doctor is “grace under fire” - do you panic or do you come up with another solution.</p>
<p>In our personal life, many parents could tell you all the unexpected in raising our children. As soon as we thught we had our kids figured out, they change. Our kids get sick (sometimes very sick), our spouse leaves us, job loss, unexpected death. Our kids get an unexpected awards, our spouse surprises us with a trip/dinner, and our parent survives a cancer.</p>
<p>Life doesn’t suck. It is a roller coaster. You learn to ride it up, and when it’s coming down try to put both of your hands up to feel the wind in your face. In the next four years you will run into many unexpected, some good (great dorm room, good professors, internship, new friends) and some not so good (bad roommate, breakups, bad grades). How you handle those situations will define you as a person more than how you plan to avoid those situations.</p>
<p>Best of luck in the next four years. Take advantage of what Yale has to offer.</p>
<p>Dbate is very naive and has lived a very sheltered life. I hope he takes these few weeks to learn and explore outside his comfort zone before he relocates to Yale. It will be a different experience (New Haven has some of the same problems as larger inner cities) and he needs to get used to the unexpected. As oldfort said, life doesn’t always work your way. If you want something, you have to work hard for it.</p>