What paths to High Paid careers

[MedSchoolRat]

DD is academic, ambitious, competitive & materialistic. She wants a list of options to well paid careers besides medicine.

I work in a Medical School & I worry she'll get too stressed out on the course. She agrees that she needs to consider other jobs, to make a good choice, excluding sports & performing arts too.

There are A Lot of well-paid lawyers on MN. I work with very well paid Professors. There's a list here but it doesn't even include the University Proffs, so I wondered who else was left out. Anyone else want to describe paths they have seen how people got into high paid jobs (> £75k/annum)? TIA.

Sorry but what the fuck is wrong with wanting to have a highly paid job? "Passion" doesn't have to be the only driver to succeed.

And given that OPs daughter wants to make her own money, I'd assume being driven into the arms of a rich man isn't one of her goals.

For some, the security of a highly paid career is all they want and is no less "noble" than a "passion" career!

Does it really make a failure because I've never had a career passion? Gosh.

I don't think anyone's a failure for not having a passion. I just feel it's probably easier to succeed in a very competitive area if you give a shit about it. I can also imagine it's soul destroying to work long hours at something that bores you.

I'd wager that 80% of the world's population don't have a passion career!
I always wanted to be a singer/songwriter. Had the talent but not the drive.
So then I followed the money in another area. Pretty fucking pleased I did! Just because my job isn't my passion, doesn't mean I'm slaving away in a job I hate. I bloody love my job. But it's not a passion.

Project management
Commercial management
Procurement management
Finance systems super users - technical/functional experts (SAP/Oracle)

Look, if she's clever attractive & materialistic, just advise her to marry a rich man. I really don't want to have to teach someone who's just driven by getting a high paid job.

I really don't want someone with these attitudes teaching my daughters.

It seems to me like the skills you need for management are possibly, to a great extent, personality-based and hard wired (?) Not a clear cut academic route how to get to those jobs, is there?

Management (good) and entrepreneurs all have some natural qualities. Then they need skills and experience depending on the area to really pull it off.

With business, a bit of luck too often.

With management, sometimes a bit of who you know (but not always)

Management consultancy (at one of the big global firms) pays very well but you need to be very clever, very driven and prepared to work very long hours.

If you're working 80+ hours a week though, you earn a lot but you don't get much chance to spend it

OP I had this idea at your daughter's age and stupidly allowed myself to be talked out of it

Now I'm a bitter 30 something with health problems who doesn't earn much and regret so many of my choices.

Management strategy and banking would be my suggestions, based on friends who earn more. Thing is, even if she's bored for the first few years, if she socks away enough money when she's Young she can change to something more frivolous later. Hell, I know a woman who spent fifteen years in the city doing financial management and now she lives in the country doing very little work.

I was sceptical about the "follow your passion" thing from the start and didn't have one, so I followed a very fruitless path of "this looks interesting". I think your daughter has the right idea. Do remind her she doesn't have to be stuck with one choice for life, but she can only exercise other options later if she's got some money to facilitate change.

'Something like Speech and Language therapy, occupational therapy, clinical or educational psychologist.' Erm, no. There are therapists who make good wages in private work but they are very few and far between IMO.

She could go into sales and use that as a springboard to directorships or her own business. If she is good at sales and works hard, she will wield a lot of clout. Most people who go into sales in big companies seem to have a good time doing it as well. Sorry no idea about routes in, the only ones I've known did degrees from name universities but one of the pluses of sales is that's not the only way in AFAIK.

Accountancy to Finance Directorships is another route into business. University again, or higher level apprenticeships post-A level (very competitive I believe.

The most financially ambitious people I have known went into actuarial law, patent law and accountancy. I agree with you that actuarial and patent law are quite solitary professions I think.

Multi shirker I am really upset by your remark. Why the hell can't ambition include wanting to be rich, if someone is prepared to work for it? Having money means having independence, autonomy, choices, potentially the power to do a lot of good for a lot of people. You'd have to be a pretty poor teacher to actually advise someone against wanting those things. Speaking as someone who gets insomnia if I earn over 28K as I don't feel I am worth that much, it's not a lot of fun. Good for her and I hope she makes a billion.

It doesn't really matter what she does. It's where she does it that is important.
If she wants a salary of £75k she's not going to get it at a firm with £70k of turnover. She needs a BIG corporation. One that will do the Graduate Trainee thing where they rotate you round departments until you find the one that suits. So do the traditional good subject / good University / good classification route. She needs to suck all the training and contacts she can out of this situation and then set up on her own.

Good sales people are rarer than hen's teeth and so get paid a lot.

If you are only looking at your own salary then you can only earn 80 hours-ish in a week. If you are managing 100 people then it suddenly becomes 8000 hours' worth of money. Managing is the way to go. Doesn't matter what you are managing, just harness the power of multiplication.

I think we all know the highest paid careers for graduates and it is not speech therapy! If you can do City law, top firm accountancy or management consultancy, investment banking or whatever they call it these days or actuarial work or private medicine in London you don't do too badly.

I always say to our five pick work you enjoy doing, ideally ensure it's high paid and hopefully something that is also a profession and requires difficult professional qualifications for status and extra money and ideally something where ultimately you could work for yourself those are good key factors. Obviously you get there in most of those cases by going to the best university you can and starting at the graduate employers who are the top 5 - 10 in their sector as it's easier to work your way down than up.

dh's high earning friends went into finance (accounting, banking, and IT for banks or hedge funds). Oh, an there's an actuary as well.

my high earning friends are all medics. they don't earn banker salaries but have all been on 72K upwards from the age of 35.

however I think in terms of balance between reasonable (not megabucks but comfortable) salary, interesting work, and work/life balance the people I envy most are the engineers.

Science or finance sensible choices. The traditionally male subjects are now much more accessible.

I did science and was on £30k age 24 and £50k age 27.

I'm not encouraging any of my lot to go to London. I don't see the point in wasting your life working daft hours just to earn a big salary.
I think you get a better quality of life living and working elsewhere, even if you earn far less.

It needs to be there choice,. I've never regretted moving from the NE to London for work.

London is not the be all and end all. My dh's job pays very well - and doesn't really vary from location to location. He'll earn around the same money in the east Midlands as he would in terms south east.

'I don't see the point in wasting your life working daft hours just to earn a big salary.'

I think the point of working in a big city, preferably a capital or world city like New York or Shanghai, is the sheer excitement of being there when you are young. I certainly never made much money when i was working in London for a decade, but I absolutely loved being there because it was so much fun, and mourned it for two years after I left. I'd agree though that these days you'd suggest they looked into working somewhere like Berlin as that would be exciting and cheaper.

There are academics in science earning well north of 120k in the UK. However they are few and far between. There are some seriously wealthy scientists who got there through their patents but I doubt your daughter will be one of them.

A numerate degree will give her options - engineering consultancy or the City would be safe bets.

Depends how important the security and integrity aspects of a job are to her. Lots of investment type stuff pays very well, but friends who work in that sector have exit strategies in place because they don't feel that their jobs are that meaningful in the grand scheme of things!

I am currently at £40K but it's taken me 15 years of graft to get here. My career is one which takes a huge amount of experience so is quite time-consuming to build. However once you get to a certain stage the salary bands increase quite substantially with every move up the ladder - my next 'jump' will be into the £60K territory, then after that I am probably looking at £90K plus.

I have had to make a few sideways moves to get ahead. There has also been lots of 'getting my time in' in different roles and departments because it's useful to have a grounding in these areas later on in the career journey. People in my field who have the practical experience tend to have the edge on those who fast-tracked through on graduate programmes. If I'd started on a graduate scheme, I would probably have been paid significantly more than I was as a non-graduate. However that gap has narrowed to about £10K ahead of where I am now and this will close in the next year or so - the practical experience through sideways moves is also likely to mean that I can go further/be more senior than if I didn't have this.

Working for yourself is the best way to make money to be honest.

I looked at that list
I CBA to look at the raw data set but there are some very odd numbers there
NONE of the physios I know earn as little as the average on that sheet

and some of the highest paying trades do not have their own "box" so are not on the list ( which is cool for those in the know )

International Civil Servant type job at one of the big international organisations. Undemanding work, large salary and no tax. What's not to like? Live in locations like London, Paris, New York, Vienna, Brussels.