It took me seconds to find lots of them.
NYS has a website that lists the pay of all public employees. I picked a random city school district (Albany) and it took lots of scrolling and hitting ‘show more results’ before I found salaries that were under six figures.
I then picked another district (way upstate) and the same thing.
Fair enough. In my area a teacher with a doctorate and 25 years experience maxes out at 65k. We also had a massive teacher strike a few years ago, so its obviously an issue here. I guess you really have to consider your desired region as well when making career decisions.
ETA: for the OP, I find that reddit/glass door are good places to find realistic starting salaries/expected hours/employee experiences for your particular area. Obviously don’t take everything you see as gospel but generally with enough snooping around you can get a good feel for the going rate/career path progression.
Yes, I did a 4 year degree! And for the record, I was you 6 years ago. All I wanted to do was ride but I didn’t have the means to own or the connections to ride full time. I knew I needed $$ in order to do so. I literally googled “top paying jobs in the US” and aerospace engineering was near the top (really hope it’s still up there!!). I figured I could pull it off and here I am. I just bought my first horse and it is tough to make time for him sometimes, but it’s all I ever wanted, so if that means going out to ride at 7 or 8 pm after working for 9 hrs, I’m happy to do it!!
If you’re thinking about business/finance, think about looking into wealth management. I work at a trust and estate firm, something I never thought I’d be interested in as a astrophysics major, but I’ve found I really like the business. The pay is pretty good, but you have to have some experience with trusts and estates to start moving up. However, once you do have experience, the pay is really good as it’s such a niche business. My goal is to work up to being a trust administrator, which typically starts in the 60k range, and by the time you have 10+ years of experience, you can be looking at 6-figures as an administrator. I can only guess at what the trustees make, but that requires about 20 years of experience minimum, I’d say.
At the moment, as a receptionist, I could probably afford lessons if I wanted, but I’m putting that money towards a personal trainer to get fit and lose some weight. My trainer is nice enough to let me hop on someone when I go home, and I help at some of her shows, so that gets me my horse fix for the time being. I keep telling myself that being horseless right now is only temporary. Eventually, I’ll be able to fulfill my goal of being the nice adult amateur lady at the barn with her one or two nice horses!
I suggest looking into flexible or remote positions for technology companies, rather than something that will require you to be at a desk or in an office every day. Some careers that come to mind: Digital marketing, app development, data analysis, data management, software development, technical support/client success, QA, sales, account manager, UX/UI developer, anything in IT - all can be done from home with a robust internet connection or on a flexible schedule and can lead to director/managerial positions that come with $100k+ salaries down the line (or commensurate, depending on your location).
One of my friends is a digital marketer - she’s got her own business helping people automate their sales/marketing pipeline, and most of her actual work is creating campaigns to bring in clients, and then interacting with those clients. She makes really good money, has employees, a horse, two kids, and lots of time to ride and care for her horse and kids. Now, her work really fits her personality. That sort of work does NOT fit my personality. So, even if a job has excellent earning potential, if it’s not a match for you, it’s not worth it. You will be miserable.
Some of these high paying tech companies are offering a full remote option for work - but down the line, they will adjust your salary based on the cost of living for your location. So don’t count on making San Francisco wages while living just outside of Omaha, Nebraska (or similar).
@ClassyJumper, Montgomery County, Maryland does pay a large number of it’s teachers over $100k.
@clanter, CPA & teacher may both start at $60k, but there’s no comparison going forward. The former can expect their salary to continue upwards. The latter faces slow or no growth, pressure from administrators & crappy parents, and with school shooting & now covid protocols, are expected to have the skill set of both a SWAT commander & an EMT. And get the privilege of spending large chunks of their salary to pay for their own supplies. I look around my very affluent county & it’s no wonder that they have trouble recruiting people who can actually teach Calculus & Stats, for example. Anyone good at them is going to be out working a job making 3x as much as they could teaching
I just retired after nearly 40 years in the Aerospace Engineering business. I have BS and MS degrees in Math and was just short of a minor in Physics. @TheDBYC is right, there was no way I was going to teach when I could make so much more in industry.
While companies will hire people with “just” a 4 year degree, a graduate degree is pretty much required for advancement. If you can, get hired in or do an internship with a place that will help finance your graduate degree. They still exist and given that FINALLY there is some movement to increase diversity in the workforce, it’s a good time.
If your goal is to make enough money to support your horse habit, that’s cool, but be aware that there will very likely come a time when you’re going to have choose between the two for some period of time. I would have not advanced as much as I did if I had not been willing to forego some nights and weekends for launch support and travel extensively. It’s definitely a balancing act.
Good Luck!
The only downside…you have to be a teacher.
No offense to the teachers out there - but that schedule is not worth it for everyone. And thank god - I actually wanted people to teach my kids who wanted to be teachers…not people who didn’t like to work 12 months a year.
You know you’ve lost the plot when you think teachers are making bank.
Dallas-area teachers start between 45k and 70k
Rent averages 1500 to 2000 a month.
So yeah, you get “summers off” and still get to pay rent and enjoy precious little opportunity to grow your career and income beyond that precious 70k.
Ok, I live in MA, which is well-paying state for a teacher, and the starting salary for a teacher with a BA is $45,000. I’m not a wicked high paying district, it is urban and low-income, but it is known for having a reasonable salary schedule, thanks to our active union.
NYS is the TOP paying state in the US. CA is next, then MA.
Most of the teachers making 100K have a Masters PLUS 60 additional credits, and have been in the system a LONG time. If you have an older faculty, you will pay out a lot in salary. That’s why a lot of district try to hire young teachers straight out of college, they are CHEAP.
And while the summers off is nice, you make up for it in the time you spend grading and on lesson plans during the school year. This year has been such a shit show I can’t even begin to describe it. My recommendation- if you think teachers are so lucky, then why aren’t you a teacher?
Anyways, this thread isn’t about teacher salaries. I have a friend that is a CPA for a big firm. She spends a lot of time traveling and staying in hotels near whatever company they are doing work for. She works a crap ton of hours but does make a lot of money. We are approaching 40.
I think a lot of those business/finance jobs will require a lot of time, and/or being near a city. You don’t make the same $$ working the same job in the country as you do in the city.
The women I know who have time to ride and make a lot of money to do what they want with their horses are nurses. The varying shift schedule allows you to ride on days you are off, and if you work full time you can definitely hit 100K. You won’t start there, but you can get there, depending on the area. Many of the women I know don’t work full-time, they work two or three days a week, but make more money than I do. And if you become a specialized nurse, you can make more.
You can start with just a BA. You need to get your master’s within 5-10 years depending on other factors. 5 years with a Masters is 65,000.
our little cheap school district starts a teacher with BA and zero experience at $55,000
will it was it is now $57,000
https://www.birdvilleschools.net/staff
never make a fortune unless you jump into administration… it common around here to pay a district superintendent a base pay of over $300,000 with compensation packages that add another one hundred to two hundred thousand per year.
Some one up thread suggest city management… our little city of 8,000 people pays the city manger a base of $280,000 (the assistant fire chief base is $120,000)… an the place is in auto pilot , same stuff all the time not much changed in the forty years we have lived here (also the city offices close at noon on Friday)
Management consulting or investment banking / private equity until mid-management level, then go corporate. 6 figures all the way through. First 5-7 years will be a grind (60-70 hrs) and no time for horses due to travel – which absolutely will resume in the consulting world although probably to a lesser extent vs pre-COVID.
Sets you up with skills that fast track you to management level positions in most corporate settings. It’s a slog in an extremely competitive and fast-paced environment but gets you to higher salaries and more control over your schedule quickly. Just be careful when exiting out that you choose a corporate culture that has a strong work/life balance.
Don’t be a teacher unless you have another source of income (trust fund, parent supported riding) unless you are entrepreneurial and can make amazing resources and sell them on Teachers Pay Teachers. For comparison, as an English teacher in Tucson, AZ, I make 52K with a MA +35 credits and 15 years experience. This year I got a summer teaching job for 5500, but that’s the first time I’ve gotten one. You do get summers, to a degree, and you can take the occasional Friday off for a horse show. Arizona salaries aren’t great though. I can barely afford the expenses, including the horse ($525 full board, not including grain).
While I’d make six figure in NYC or Fairfield County, Connecticut, the rents/house prices are outrageous. It wouldn’t be worth the trade off. If I worked in Greenwich, CT, let’s say, I’d probably have to live in Bridgeport or New Haven, which is a long, tedious, traffic-filled commute on Rte. 95 or the Merritt Parkway. If I taught in my hometown, Old Lyme, CT, I’d make about 75K if they took all of my experience (some districts only take up to 10 years of transferred experience). I could live upstate up Rte 395 on the way up to UCONN, but again, commute. I don’t think I could afford a house on the Connecticut shoreline. And condo living with dogs isn’t my cup o’ tea. (I probably could live in the city of New London, but it’s pretty sketchy.) Full board at Mystic Valley Hunt Club is $900/month. I don’t know if there are cheaper, less amenity filled barns, but I’m sure I couldn’t afford that unless I were married and my husband made a decent salary.
Anyhoo, don’t be a teacher. If you want to make good money with a four-year degree, get some kind of engineering degree. Or be an RN. If you work in hospitals, you generally work 3 12-hour shifts and make a decent hourly wage. You get shift differentials for evening, night, weekend, and holiday work, as well as really good overtime. If you choice to stick with 3 shifts, you have plenty of time to ride and go to shows. If I had to do it all over, I’d be an RN and maybe go on to get my NP or master’s in nursing.
None of the districts I looked at were in NYC or even past the center of NY in that direction (Albany was the closest) so no where near NYC.
I live in the same area as one of the districts I looked up and I do not make anywhere near six figures at my job, so six figures is very good pay for around here.
I don’t think the OP wants to be a teacher so I think we are all safe that even if they get paid well, not the direction the OP is going.
My point was simply to say that yes, teachers do make six figures and here are a bunch of examples.
I hear people say this a lot, and I’m sure some nurses make it work. But, just my experiences, nursing is a tough job to get in riding time around. You wouldn’t think so, having four days off every week, but I’ve had several boarders that are/were nurses. They’re so exhausted on their days off, and have so much to do (chores, errands, etc.) that they can’t do on work days (because depending on commute, a 12-hour shift could be a 14-hour day), they have no interest in going to ride. Especially if they’re on night shift. I have one boarder now, poor thing, she gets out here like once every couple of weeks.
Oh, if you don’t mind getting a master’s speech language pathology pays decently, a bit better than teachers in a school system or at a university. Hospital shift work is available, too. Another route I woulda/shoulda/coulda gone.
I think the OP wants to focus on jobs that have a high average salary, rather than ones that have a lower average salary, with some outliers making more ( and many making less).
It’s a fact of life that on average, doctors, lawyers, accountants, financial managers, etc make more than nurses, paralegals, teachers, at a similar level of success in the profession, however that is measured.
The trick will be finding the high powered job in a niche where a good work/life balance is eventually possible.
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