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Which graduates are most likely to make 50k+ in their careers?

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username1472093

£50k is good money outside the south east, however it is incredibly difficult to find jobs that pay that much if you arent in London.

Also while £50k is a good salary up north, you will still struggle to afford things which would have been considered the basics of middle class life a few decades ago, and were available to people who made the equivalent of that salary (eg sending your kids to independent school, 2 cars, etc). So no, you arent going to be poor, but you will be less well-off than a similar professional 20 years ago.

Well of course, the value of the pound constantly decreases.
There are actually some jobs that pay more 'up north' than in london. General dentists being one that I'm familiar with.

Reply 461

M1011

Original post by alevelzzz

50K is a lot of money outside of the south east, so yes, it is a high salary.

Apparently you missed the point.

Reply 462

Wisefire

Original post by poohat

Realistically you will never buy a house in London unless someone in your family gives you a substantial sum of money or you are earning over £100k, it just isnt going to happen. Most people these days buy in their 30s and have gifts of tens of thousands of pounds from their parents to make it possible.

Well, I've searched properties (a lot), and most things I'd be OK with are in the region of £600-700k. My current property is valued at £300k (conservatively). I can easily save £100k on an £80k job within 4.5 years maximum. That combination would be more than enough for a mortgage for such a property, right? Besides, I'm not as socioeconomically disadvantaged as I think you're assuming. If I come across as truly skint on TSR, I'm not. I'm just eager for money lol. I've got 'contacts' (sort of), so I'm not as pessimistic about things as I once was...

Posted from TSR Mobile

Reply 463

poohat

Original post by tengentoppa

The sky's the limit with the top law firms really. I know a 25 year old who's working at an American law firm who's earning in excess of 100K. I think that's about the norm for the top US firms in London.

And at Slaughter and May once you join the partnership after about 10 years your salary jumps to 700K.

No wonder it's so competitive.

$100k would be low for a 1st year at a top American law firm - starting salaries in BigLaw are around $150k (or did you mean pounds?). However law is a bloodbath these days and is even more insanely competitive than it was 10 years ago, and your earning potential drops drastically once you leave the top few firms. Most law grads arent going to get anywhere close to those numbers, although even a regional solicitor still gets a decent middle class salary.

(edited 9 years ago)

Reply 464

tengentoppa

Original post by poohat

I meant pounds. I was talking about the NQ salary for those at American Law Firms in London.

But yeah, the market is saturated and getting a TC is hard, let alone getting one at an American firm with thousands of applications for a handful of places.

Good work if you can get it though.

Reply 465

poohat

Original post by Wisefire

1) Its not the value of your current property that matters, its your equity (ie how much of it is mortgage, vs how much is yours).

2) Saving £100k in 4-5 years is very ambitious unless you are living frugally. £80k is £44k a year after tax+student loans+7% (say) pension savings. If you are living alone in London you will probably pay around £1200/month for a 1 bed flat unless you want to live in a ghetto, then add on council tax and bills and thats £17k/year for accommodation costs. If you arent living like a student you will spend a fair amount on things like food/going out/clothes (and if you are in a professional job these wont be as optional as you may think), so thats maybe £800 a month or so, and then throw in another £1500/year for your oyster card. So assuming you buy nothing else and never go on holiday or similar, you might be able to save £10k a year.

3) Even ignoring all the above, an £80k salary will only get someone a £360k mortgage using a standard 4.5x salary multiple, so even if you had £100k in savings you still wouldnt be able to buy anything particularly nice (the average London house price is around £500k, and nice places are closer to £1m). It may not be a slum, but it would still be worse than what a typical nurse or school teacher would have been able to afford 20-30 years ago

Obviously if you are living in a £300k property that someone else has bought you (or similar) then you will save a huge amount on rent and have great equity, but in this case the reason why you will be financially comfortable isnt because you have an £80k salary, its because someone gave you money for a house (or you bought before the house price boom). The point is that someone who is starting out from scratch without family money and earning £80k a year wouldnt be anywehre near as comfortable as you might think.

(edited 9 years ago)

Reply 466

TurboCretin

Original post by Wisefire

OK. I'm probably going to do this, but out of interest (obviously not at this stage yet), how exactly do you go about this process? So would you ask/inform the university administrative people or professors, and then? Could you sort of briefly outline what exactly you did to set it up? It's the setting up part of life in general that confuses me (how exactly you set up a business always has, for example lol).

It obviously depends on the nature of the enterprise, but in my case I was setting up a 'commercial awareness programme' to act as a kind of forum for law students to talk about business developments and improve their application/interview answers in light of that. Consequently, the operation was fairly simple - all we needed was a room at the university which could hold enough students to do the sessions, and a bit of funding to pay for subscriptions to business news.

The first thing I did was go to talk to the President of my university's law society about the idea. It was made easier in my case because I had been on the society's committee before and he knew me, but my preferred course of action wouldn't have been different if he didn't. I knew that getting an existing and well-established society to take my project under its wing would be easier than trying to set up a whole new society, and would mean I'd immediately have about a thousand student members of the society to advertise to, established relationships with sponsors to draw on etc.

Once he agreed to my idea I wrote up essentially a pitch document for him to incorporate into the society's sponsorship booklet. He then presented the commercial awareness programme to law firms as a sponsorship opportunity alongside all the other things the law society was already doing. We got a lot of interest and secured two Magic Circle firms to sponsor the programme.

I then put together a document to send out to the society's members as a kind of e-pamphlet, introducing the programme, naming its sponsors and telling them how to apply (either as attendees or to take up positions delivering the sessions). We did our room bookings through the law society, which obviously had an established relationship with the law school.

If piggybacking on the law society (or another big society) hadn't worked, then I would have had to go to the Union to establish my own commercial awareness society. I then would have had to set up a kiosk at the Freshers Fair, get people to sign up for free (which lots would, I think) and take down their emails to establish my own mailing list to bug people to apply. I'd have spoken to the law school about doing room bookings myself and emailed law firms to set up sponsorship meetings in London over the summer holidays. It would have worked, but would have been more onerous and probably less effective.

(edited 9 years ago)

Reply 467

Makaveli_The_Don

im 22 and on will be on 60k a year when i finish my masters

Reply 468

LakAnne

Original post by andbegin

Don't think like that, or you'll never make it. Im a dentist myself but plenty of my friends who didn't get amazing a level grades or go to top unis/study good degrees are doing well now, much better than some of those who went to those unis.
Nowadays, especially in the UK, you can make money doing anything.

ahhhh,

thank you but i thought the UK was worst for social mobility and everybody is a wage earner. Only in third or second world countries can big social mobility be achieved without the need of a degree. This is speaking from experience since my dad who lives in Africa owns two very beautful mansions with swimming pools and jacuzzi. At least when life fails me here, I know I can always go and coz up with my dada. :colondollar:

Reply 469

LakAnne

Original post by Makaveli_The_Don

im 22 and on will be on 60k a year when i finish my masters

what master's is that? I want that master's too but am probably too stupid

Reply 470

LakAnne

Speaking of easier degrees that you also have the potential to earn big like nursing. A friend of a friends earns more than a thousand a week doing agency related work which means they are self employed and pay virtually no tax.

Reply 471

jay2013

Original post by LakAnne

Hmm no if they're self-employed then instead of the tax being taken from their wages they have to pay tax themselves! :smile:

Reply 472

LakAnne

Original post by jay2013

Hmm no if they're self-employed then instead of the tax being taken from their wages they have to pay tax themselves! :smile:

oh, I see. Apparently only £250 a year. Which is nothing if you earn a grand a week.

Reply 473

Reue

Original post by Makaveli_The_Don

im 22 and on will be on 60k a year when i finish my masters

I love the absoloute certainty

Reply 474

jay2013

Original post by LakAnne

oh, I see. Apparently only £250 a year. Which is nothing if you earn a grand a week.

So they're earning £50,000 a year and only paying £250 a year in tax? Good luck to them when HMRC comes knocking! :biggrin:

Reply 475

Makaveli_The_Don

Original post by Reue

I love the absoloute certainty

Yh I'm on 30 now and do f all lol

Reply 476

ldsbabe

Original post by LeBron96

Honestly I don't understand why people on this act like £50k is not a good salary :laugh:

. My Mother managed to raise my 3 siblings and I (single-handedly) successfully on a salary less than half of that. I admit, it wasn't really comfortable but it was enough imo.

I do realise that many people who post things like this get slated on here for having "no ambition" and are considered failures etc, but I currently hold an offer for Mech Eng at a top 5 uni (hopefully I get in) and I reckon I have a fair shot of achieving a salary above £50k. To me, that's a lot of money for a 30 year old. The national average salary is around about £26k...

Basically what I'm saying is, it all depends on your experience/outlook on life. If you're like me then yeah £50k is satisfactory (although I hope to make more), however if you've been brought up with money etc, you will have less appreciation, so of course, £50k will be "just average".

Honey, the thing you must realise about TSR is that it is full of extremely sheltered 18 year olds that still believe they are going to earn £100k after graduation.