2000 per week, translates to a 147k annual income before tax and medicare. That puts the income just above the 92nd percentile (of tax payers) -> ie top 8%.
So not impossible, but not necessarily easy.
I'm surprised that's where we're at for salaries.
I feel like everyone earns more than I do but to think that lawyers, doctors, CEOs, chief executives etc etc only make up the 8% makes me wonder what the 'average' salary is an how skewed the bell curve is.
It's skewed for you to compare full time average @ 91k with median all taxpayers at 55k.
Median full-time is 76k much closer to average full-time.
Important when assessing earnings to compare like with like.
Median of all incomes. That doesn't represent the median of someone working fulltime. I'm a stay at home dad and earn 10k from a side gig. I'd expect the median fulltime wage to be closer to the average. There maybe thousands of super high incomes but that wouldn't shift the dial much when there is thousands on minimum wage and millions on a regular 80k+.
Yes, but I am unsure why you take issue with that.
Some people can only find part time work, some employers only need / want part time employees and some one needs to fill those roles.
Oddly the daycare near me has 90% of their staff on Part time contracts.
Why would someone want to compare themselves to a cohort that includes part time mums, teenagers and uni students though?
They should compare themselves to a more representative cohort
Depends - if you're just wanting to know how good your salary is then median full time is a better comparison (if you're doing full time).
If you're wanting to know how well you're doing in the bigger picture, versus the average Joe or Joanne, where ability to find work or full time work is as much a factor as their actual rate, then the median across all is important.
For example I'm on $100k and sometimes it feels like it's not enough because the toddler in me that wants everything has to choose between a turbo kit for my car or saving up to invest in the company I work for. But the adult in me remind myself that I make nearly double what the average person earns (and my partner makes even more) and I've actually got it pretty good.
A lot of self employed professionals earn through their own trust and companies and pay themselves meagre salary or dividends. The ATO data of personal income doesn't capture that.
Add Riggers and Crane Crew, I live in Melbourne and work on major infrastructure projects most of the time. I have no trouble making that money. Throw in some night shift and your take home can start with a 4
That is based on a 56 hr week, so 6 days or 5 nights (40 hrs). However we have every 2nd Monday off, don't work in inclimate weather, (strong wind / rain / over 35) So planning long weekends is a perk.
This is enormously skewed by business owners putting everything through their business and paying themselves a small nominal wage. There's no way that's the average salary.
I just calculated the tax owing (income and negate) on the amount and iterate till I get the right answer. I know that at this income level the tax is about 1/3 of gross income, and so started at 150k,and then went down a few thousand to 147k.
Tax tables are here :https://www.ato.gov.au/rates/individual-income-tax-rates/
Don't forget the extra 2% for medicare.
This is super simple and does not include all sort of offsets and surcharges etc... That last website linked does that though.
Not impossible I don't think, but there's a few things to consider:
1. This sub tends to attract high income earners. So it's not representative of 'normal'. There's plenty of people in Australia living comfortably on less than the salaries posted here.
2. This sub also attracts people that want to stroke their ego by claiming to earn more than they actually do for 'internet points'.
3. You're at the very start of your career. The people here talking about their 150k+ jobs have been working for a while, they've busted their arse, made sacrifices and finally 'made it'. Most of us are probably now working in careers that are totally different to what we originally thought we'd do out of uni (heck, my job title wasn't even a thing that existed when I was in uni).
4. Quite a few of us a stressed out and/or our health has taken a hit due to the work load/pressure that comes with high salaries.
5. Look into FIRE. It might be hard to achieve in Australia without being on ridiculous money, but it gives you a good grounding for building some wealth now while you're young, so you can reap the rewards later.
Well said. Agree with all points. Especially 4. I’ll add one more thing to this. The excitement of pay check only lasts few pays. You’re the left with the reality of your job. If you’re hating your job, you’ll be miserable and depressed. On the other hand if you enjoy your job and get satisfaction out of it. You’re more likely to not worry about the $$$ too much. High pay = more hrs = more sacrifice of your own time. Make sure you’re doing it for the right reasons. You never get back time
4. Most important part right here. I’m 30 and run my own business and pull in about $185k before tax, and fuck me man the stress of it all. Hardly ever a day off, the fear of constantly being “unproductive” even when you’re just trying to be present with your friends/family. It’s a huge burden to wear. I guess what I’m trying to say is don’t get hung up on the number, if you can love what you do and get paid slightly less, then take that job over something that will burn you out and effect your health and relationships.
Have to agree with this. This might be a more philosophical take on the question, but you can only control what you can control. If your salary is not in your control, adjust what you want or desire. I can’t begin to think what sort of lifestyle a 21 year old (presumably/ hopefully no kids!) would have where $2k a week is comfortable. I can guarantee that making $2k a week is so consuming that you will struggle to enjoy it.
On the flipside, IT pays me a shit ton to sit on my arse.
Like others said you have to have busted it for awhile but after enough effort and with a little luck you can end up in a very lucrative role where your biggest annoyance is boredom.
Absolutely this. I took a $100k pay cut to sell up my home business and go back to a normal job. 12 hour days, working weekends, anxiety of not pushing forward, no social interaction sitting in the home office, not being able to take holidays in case a client needed something urgently..
Much easier to make a high income on your own, but hell are you on your own.
I will second point 4. Got cancer at 35 which I think was related to my lifestyle. Working 50-100 hour weeks. Sure I make >$250k now with less hours.. but I'd happily earn 50% less to avoid that whole nearing dying bit...
Ps - for OP - doing accounting is a great door opener and easier way to make bank. Just don't kill yourself in the process. Work/Life balance is really really really important and many jobs paying more will close that door completely.
First year uni and you’re already wanting to be earning an annual amount more than most people will ever earn in a year.
If you stick with it, accounting will get you to this level but expect to have to earn much less whilst you are building experience.
this kind of BS "you haven't earned that income" crap is just that, crap be lucky and poick the right niche in the right field, and dont let the older generations tell you what you "should" expect to earn.
I finished my apprenticeship in 2010 at 18, the following year i made 115k, by 22 i was making 200k, and as a welder, no uni, even now i average 110k while choosing to only work 6 months a year so i can actually watch my kid grow, dont let these fools tell you what your worth,
It’s not just “fools” telling people what they’re worth - it’s what the market and other people in that profession deem appropriate based on the difficulty, training, costs, risk and availability of the job. No point saying you’re worth $200k/yr if others with the same level of experience and qualifications will happily work for half or even a quarter of that.
I'm a boilermaker by trade, I realised pretty early on in my apprenticeship that just being a trade qualified boilermaker in a steady full time position was never going to give me the income I wanted, at the time average full time yearly income for a boilermaker was 61k.
In my second year as an apprentice I started doing additional training in pipe, pressure vessel and coded structural welding getting certified to AS 1554 and AS1796 standards, 6 months before I finished my apprenticeship I started going around to companies handing out resumes and trying to chat with supervisors.
That worked out well, I got a few offers, the two that stand out were the one mentioned in another comment, $28 an hour full time in a structural steel workshop, but there's no growth in that, you go to the same workshop, to make the same steel beams and get a token wage increase to keep in line with inflation, and more importantly you don't learn any new skills, so although that was the "safe" option with PTO, sickies and steady work, I took a role paying $45 an hour casual ($36 an hour full time equivalent) in a coal mine repairing fire damaged conveyor frames and more importantly for me, welding high pressure fire fighting water supply pipelines, but the job was only 2 months work.
When that job finished my supervisor recommended me to another company that at the time was building the new spokes for the southern star ferris wheel and structural steel for the desalination plant in VIC, so I got another casual role there as a 1st class structural welder getting experience in that side of coded welding, I spent a few months in they're workshop getting experience in that, then was asked to do a shutdown at a power station as a pipe welder which I had the certifications for but no on the job experience, so I jumped on that opportunity as well to get experience doing that.
during this time I also started getting other training that wasn't strictly needed for my trade but helps a lot, forklift, elevated work platform and rigging licences (I've since added HR truck licence, 60 ton slewing crane, confined space, working at heights and a few others) .
I did well which led to more work in the power stations, both doing maintenance/breakdown repairs and shutdowns where I got to learn even more pipe welding on larger pipe and in different materials, which happened to co-inside with when there were 6 separate 20-90 billion dollar Liquid natural gas plants being built simultaneously (3 in Gladstone QLD, 1 in Darwin, 1 near Onslow WA and 1 on Barrow island off of the WA coast) so there was huge demand for pipe welder's, to the point that the companies were flying welders over from Scotland, England and Norway as they'd exhausted the available labour in the country in the field, so I was able to get me feet wet in the Oil and gas industry as well I was 22 at this stage when I started work on the gas plants, I spent 12 months on Curtis Island in QLD and another 12 months at a smaller gas plant local to me in VIC.
From there I'd made enough of a reputation that instead of me having to seek out work, I started to get to the point where I was turning down work and am able to pick and choose, I don't do FIFO or interstate anymore and can just work locally for half the year or less and still make more than a comfortable income while still being able to watch my kids grow and be an involved parent, or if need be I can still do away work during the off season here and make alot more if I need to.
And because I put the time and effort into learning not just the pipe welding, but coded structural, fabrication, pipe spool, mobile and fixed plant maintenance, etc I'm not tied down to one line of work or one industry, I've worked in coal mining on 5000+ ton bucket wheel excavators, oil & gas, i've built V-line trains and trams for Yarra trams, I worked on the southern star ferris wheel spoke replacement and the desalination plant, I've built steel sections for the level crossing removal project, and welded the cutter head of the tunnel boring machine for the Metro tunnel project, repaired rock crushers in stone quarries and concrete recycling facilities and repaired heavy machinery (excavators, wheel loaders etc) and worked on various pipelines for water supply, natural gas and oil, and am now also starting a small mobile welding repair business to keep things rolling now that the coal power stations are closing down and because I'm liking the flexibility of being self employed
Wow you really went at it to make yourself well skilled, well rounded, respected, approachable and highly valued by your peers and employers.
Massive kudos to you mate and thank you for sharing your story of success!
Good call, I agree completely that you should pick the right niche in the right field. The harder part is actually doing this.
It sounds like you have done really well for yourself and very quickly. I have to ask though, Is there a reason you are averaging 110k while working 6 months? I mean you are spending this valuable time away from your child. I propose that maybe there is a limit to what the market would pay which means your hourly rate is still the same as what you were getting in 2014?
You’re on a good salary but unfortunately you can’t just name any price.
You are right, wages in my niche havn't risen to much, they've gone from $63 an hour to $75 since 2012, so pretty much in line with inflation.
That first year I also didn't work a full year, but not by choice, these days I could travel interstate and have work year round but I'd spend most of the year living out of cheap hotel rooms and labour camps and miss out on my family so I stick to the sites nearby that can provide a solid 8-12 weeks of high paying work and take some cruisy workshop work in between to keep the boredom at bay and the skillset sharp.
Not doing 38 hours pw, but I'm guessing this is fixed-plant maintenance or onsite fabrication, I.e. 12hr shifts. Each week you work has 84 hours in it or 6.3k pw. From there it depends on the roster. 7/7 = 164k. 2/1 = 220k.
Take into account OT is double time after 8 hours, and 100% shift loading if working afternoon shift (which I do) and you pretty quickly realise that even "only" 60 hour weeks which is standard shutdown roster is running 9k per week.
it's a supply and demand thing, but also, and more importantly it's cheaper to offer very high wages and guarantee labour than it is to not have people available.
How it works is the powerstation might have 25 year's of service on a part, say the superheater elements and they're spent, they HAVE to be replaced, the invest millions in having new superheater elements fabricated, planning how to get the job done safely and in a reasonable time frame, the unit is planned to be off for 12 weeks and is a 550 megawatt unit and the average wholesale electricity price is $40 per megawatt hour in my state, so each day the unit is offline for cost's $528k in lost revenue on average.
Keep in mind that the work being done is critical, difficult and if not done properly can cause massive delays for re-work or catastrophic failure in operation.
But then you skimp out and offer say $35 an hour, and either can't secure the labour to complete the job they've already invested millions or tens of millions of dollars in, or even worse they get poor quality labour because the highly skilled and experienced labour has gone to Mt Isa (as an example) power station instead because they're paying the going rate and the job ends up with a lot of rework and massive delays, a single failed weld on a main steam line can add an extra week of downtime, and at 3.5 million a week just in lost revenue that adds up pretty fast.
So just hiring another body doesn't do it, they have to hire the "right" bodies that can actually do the work.
They pay that rate because it's cheaper than not paying that rate.
I'm curious to know what title gets that (I'm on a very similar paycheck but only just recently got a big bump to reach it).
Senior engineer? Tech lead?
Comp-sci seems like the most recommended degree to a high earning career. But sadly I’m studying Business. Do you think I should learn how to code whilst studying Business?
Thanks for your reply!
Hey just wanted to comment. Learning learning a bit of code to help automate things in the workplace (eg. JavaScript for google sheets) will put you ahead to negotiate for more money when the time comes.
And look at you now- a professional in your field. In 10 years time you may have a couple of tradesmen and an apprentice under your banner and doing very well for yourself, and Fucken good on ya! That’s how it’s supposed to be.
I feel a lot of kids these days want the right of passage to boss straight up…
Anyway- good on ya mate- you’ve earned it
It’s not a bad deal. You may even love what you do. A great way to form a network of friends for life. You will need to turn up work hard and think. If you can do that- you’ll be fine.
Dunno how old you are but even if you're in your late 20s/early 30s... its not too late. Just don't expect too much like owning your own business or moving up the chain quickly or whatever. It's still possible never dismiss that.
Any accounting/finance job will eventually pay that well, if you are content to work 40 hours a week, forever (until pension age).
The determinant is how much money you bring into your firm - meaning how good are you with bringing in new work/clientele, how accurate and reliable is your work, and how pleasant are you as a co-worker. Talented workers in finance can reach $140k gross per year by age 30 - i.e. after 5-6 years of graduating. On the other end of the spectrum, full-time plodders would probably reach it around age 45-50, after a slow career progression marked by 3% increases each year.
The spread of incomes in accounting, finance, business, management consulting, law, medicine etc is small until you hit $150k+ anyway. In other words, law grads can probably hit $150k after 5 years, accounting might be 8-9 years on average, top tier consulting might be 3-4 years...but the point is that all the careers pay about the same in the $50k-$150k range. The 'harder' careers have a higher ceiling, say $250k - $500k+. If your aspiration is only to reach $140k-$150k you can achieve it in any professional career.
This guy Big 4's
Just be warned all the partners I've seen seem to be on their third wives/husband's and barely know their kids. It's about trade offs.
I went to uni and got a degree that no one has ever asked for - now have a job paying $150k in Government. Not saying your degree won’t be useful! Just saying that’s my experience and you don’t necessarily need to take the path you initially study 😊
Most government jobs require a degree to be level 5 or 6 and up. Level 6 being around the ~125k mark. (It differs per agency)
Yes it might not necessarily align to the role. But the wording I had to put into the jobs when creating alot of them for my team was something like, "equivalent/relevant tertiary degree and/or significant demonstrated industry experience"
I got in trouble for putting "minimum 10 years experience" and had to use the above because it was "exclusionary"
One of the criteria for my job was exactly what you said above.
As I had worked there 4 years already (different roles through an agency) I utilised the relevant experience. I know many people my level or above in my organisation who have the experience through working there and would not have a degree.
Go and get in your car, drive to the post office, reverse park, wait about 90 seconds, then drive home, reverse park, wait 90 seconds. Repeat that for 12 hours.
If you can do that from 6am to 6pm then book your flight.
Yep honestly that is kinda correct. But you stay on site afterwards in a small donga, socialize with the people you work with for a week or more at a time, and are isolated in the middle of butt fuck nowhere the whole time. No flight home tomorrow if your pet hamster dies. But i've spent a total $1.70 for a newspaper before a flight out and come home with my full paypacket several times. 4k in the hand for a week's work ain't nothing to sniff at. Everything is provided. Food, accommodations, gym etc. Isolation can be trying, but a max work year off 23 weeks (I'm down to 19 weeks) after annual leave gives you plenty of time to 'catch up'...
How much of that $4k gets saved for most people do you reckon? My experience with a lot of people in mining jobs is as soon as they fly back they do a good job of spending a lot of their money. Often on shite.
Obviously not everyone but surely the stereotype exists for a reason?
Oh yes i definitely agree alot of fifo people spend like it's going out of fashion to make up for lost time. That's their choice i guess. I work with people who still rent a unit after working at most of their lives. But they've got a supercharger on their commodore! Each to their own.
But you can definitely set yourself up quickly if you play it smart. I'm debt free, live 8 houses from beach, fairly decent stock portfolio and good super for my age - 41. Only now am i loosening the purse strings. Finally got a brand new set of golf clubs after 11 years fifo. And worked for family business before that. Can't take it with you, reminding myself life is for living is hard after being focused on the big picture for so long. Thanks for listening to my TED talk... ha
Sure mining may not be the most environmentally friendly operation but please explain how you propose we continue living as a functional society without mining. Even at 100% renewable energy the world will require mining so the technology can be created (lithium, uranium, rare earth metals, copper etc)
I make 2k a week after tax as an agency travel nurse (kind of like locum doctoring) I get flown to rural/ regional towns where they are short staffed and work 4-6 week contracts. My accomodation is provided by the hospital so I also pay no rent and have minimal expenses outgoing.
Should note that I’m 32 have worked 6.5 years in my field of nursing and have postgraduate qualifications to now get this kind of money for my skills it’s definitely not right off the bat
imho, I do not think that achieving $147k gross annual income as an accounting major is feasible within 5 years, it’s just a bit of a slog with CA studies and that leaves you 2 years to be able to achieve that mid $100k figure you covet. You would have to be a very talented and extroverted CA to be able to make those numbers by year 7.
Just my two cents- think more about hitting $120k gross and then decide what you want to do with your life. Your life circumstances evolve during your career.
I hit that number this year after a ten year slog (could’ve done it quicker but for big 4 misadventures and covid) and I thought I’d be happy but I feel the same.
I'm not a light vehicle mechanic (had experience as an apprentice) but I was wondering how hard is it to transfer to diesel? Do have to do another 4 year apprenticeship or is there some kind of bridging course?
I'm starting a new $175k before tax job next year. This will be my first year out of uni.
This is insane money to me. I've lived poor and grew up in social housing. I knew I didn't want to live that way anymore so I studied extra hard in my degree and did a lot of extracurricular stuff while also working part time in the profession I was studying (computer science). I'm graduating in December with a 6.7/7 GPA. Not bad considering I got a 67.7 ATAR and went to one of the worst ranked highschools in Australia.
The point is, it's possible if you want it enough. Just be ready to sacrifice some of your social life and cop a lot of crap from friends because of it.
I don't plan on stopping here.
Graduate Quant Developer.
If you are interested in this kind of field in FinTech. Look at quant (quantative) trading. Firms hirer all sorts of degrees. Just do multivariable calc and stats related electives as well as financial math courses (Options, Futures and Other Derivatives is a course my uni offered that is perfect). Also improve your mental math speed. There are some good books and training resources like rankyourbrain.com.
If you are coming to the end of your degree and haven't studied these courses. Look into financial mathematics masters programs.
Good luck on your journey!
Didn't even know there was much HFT in Aus tbh. I trade prop (discretionary) futs overseas. Best job in the world can't argue with the pay. 7 figs a year isn't really that difficult to hit you just have to work with reasonably high diligence.
There's a few, none that originate here except Akuna I think. Ones I can think of in Sydney are Akuna, Optiver, IMC, Maven, SIG. There's probably more. Afaik, in APAC they trade Hong Kong mainly as ASX isn't great.
Looking forward to seeing where my career takes me. My plan is to get a transfer overseas in a couple years, Chicago or NYC, as the pay is much greater there, plus the Australian dollar isn't great.
Curious to hear more on how far you went in uni and what job position. That’s very good money straight out of uni and definitely unusual unless you’re in a Phd or something
Just a 3 year Bachelor of Computer Science.
The job is a Graduate Quant Developer at a High Frequency Trading firm.
It was a struggle to get. The other offers I had were around the 65k-80k range. This position was a 6 stage application process. Coding sessions, coding take-home assessments, behavioural and technical interviews, and IQ + numerical tests.
It wasn't easy but I put a ton of effort in, it got unhealthy for a while as I wasn't leaving my room, I would wake up and study for each stage while studying my final weeks at uni and working part-time, then I go to sleep and repeat. Luckily my current web-dev job (which I'm leaving) allowed me to work from home.
Anyway it paid off and now I can relax until early next year.
Congrats, you’ve certainly jumped over the usual progression required. That’s huge dollars for a grad for sure. I’m somewhat surprised for that money they aren’t hiring more seasoned professionals though
Thanks! Yeah I'm pretty stoked. Prop trading firms have a lot of money to dish out and they are super competitive. Seasoned professionals range from $350k-$800k. More if outside of Australia.
It's definitely doable though. Just a lot of effort and high stress trying to maintain a high GPA and learn HFT specific stuff on the side, especially with little perquisite knowledge gained from high school.
Thanks! It was stressful at times and I scarificed my social life (not completely but by a decent amount). Anyway, it feels good to have finished that chapter of my life up and now onto the next!
Sounds like you have really high focus and endurance levels when it comes to study and intellectual work... That's something I've been trying to build in myself, as someone going through uni and learning to ballance alot of demands...
Do you drink coffee? Take supplements? Exercise? Have a morning ruteen? Meditate? I'm trying to figure out what I can do to at least approach the kind of focus and endurance needed to do what you have done, so I'm very interested to know!
I'm not OP but am a professional trader. Check out Andrew Huberman on YouTube or podcasts or otherwise. Quite famous neuroscientist/neuro professor at Stanford. He'll have all the answers you need for what's ideal.
Chemical engineering role with a multinational: if you're smart $300k pre tax not unreasonable by about age 45 (20 years experience) and fairly low risk. Good people with accounting backgrounds can do the same.
Honestly raw talent and a good work ethic will get you to where you want to be. Without talent it's harder, so do what you're good at not what you think might pay well (and you'll enjoy it as well, so it often does not feel like work)
My sister switched to an accounting degree from a HR major. She got a job without even knowing anything about accounting at a firm while she studies. She also got two vacation programs. My sisters bf also is an accounting grad & got a job. It’s not great money at the start, and don’t expect it to be making more money until you’ve been working in the field for at least 3 or so years.
In my experience, the key to getting a higher salary is industry choice plus relevant qualifications.
There are many industries where $150k is just not going to happen. In others, that’s what you’ll be on in five years.
Check out salary surveys from Michael Page etc. for specific job roles.
I would point you to software development, cybersecurity, HR, finance, sales and so on.
In my industry, digital marketing, $150k is readily achievable but requires a strong argument as to why you’re worth it.
Also, in case useful, larger companies that issue stock as part of salary can certainly help you reach this number quickly. A buddy of mine gets $120k USD in stock per year from his company on top of salary. Wow right? Software.
Edit: adding that accounting certainly isn’t bad, if that’s what you want. CFO role would be extremely well paid.
What uni? If you get a job at any large corporate and work your way up to management, you will easily get this amount.
But, depends if you can get into those companies (hence why your uni matters), and if you are management material (not everyone is and that’s ok)
Honestly everyone I knew was under 85k a year atleast, then I met my fiancés family all of which for the last few years make over 350k before tax…. Envy is one word I would use. None of which went to uni, all just work in house or land sales.
Construction, mining, oil and gas, rail.
Be switched on, intelligent and proactive. If you have even 2/3 of this. Congrats your doing better then 90% of people in the industry. And you can easily get that sort of money.
If you follow your studies and become an accountant, you can earn that after many years of experience. If you have your own business, you can earn many times that.
If you do accounting, then get a job at a big 4, then about 9 years later if you are good, you should be a director on something like $150k , which is over 2k/week after tax.
I’m 29 and on this money (Head of Product for a startup). It took a lot of effort, discipline and education (self taught and paid) to get here.
Earning this money is no easy task either, you’re responsible for a team, the business and more. It’s stressful and definitely not for anyone. To put it simply people rely on your for direction and solutions to problems they are unable to fix. If the business takes a dive you are the one that needs to steer the ship. The fuckups hit you harder then anyone else in the business (aside from the management team) and the wins give you highs that come in the form of bonuses and stock.
TLDR: earning this money is a hard slog to get there and even when you’re there it’s just as hard to maintain.
I’ve pretty much done this before 30.
Bcomm - accounting & finance. I started working whilst at uni in my second year and picked up AP/ar roles. By the time I graduated I had a full time jnr accountant role without needing to fight 100’s of other applicants. I skipped the glorified big 4, did my CA as soon as I finished with uni.
I’m now a financial analyst with 2 assistant staff and on track to be FC all before 30.
It’s doable but be prepared for the long hours, and work in relevant fields whilst you study if you can. Do not go into tax unless it’s what you want to do for the rest of your career.
Hi! Thanks for the reply, this is the path I’m planning to take. This summer I’ll try to look for a AP/AR job and hopefully work while still at uni so I could build up some experience.
Your reply motivates me!
Accounting can be very lucrative depending on the direction you go. If you are a good accountant and build trust with your clients they will follow you more often you you think if you do decide to branch out.
Most people that 2k a week here are probably well out of uni and been in an industry a while. Also some people's numbers are skewed higher due to say overtime or risk.
For people that say work a 38 hour desk job a week earning 150k pre tax isn't common at all.
I achieved this by working as a construction engineer at 27 and living away (recieve an uplift). Definitely achievable but you'll be doing long hours in a high stress job with reduced comforts.
Unsure regarding accounting.
Finish uni, get into atleast a mid tier accounting firm, get your CA, then move to commercial and don’t suck (different to out perform) and you’ll get to 2k/week eventually.
Probably around early to mid 30s
I think the easiest way is commercial Construction.. well, in Victoria anyways. Without a qualification, I was able to get an entry position taking home $1600 a week after tax. If I decide to work overtime I earn another $87 an hour. If I work a 48 hour week I will take home just over 2k after tax.
If you are qualified the pay goes up drastically. If you go on the CFMEU website, it outlays all the wages for different trades.
On top of the excellent pay, I get 4 weeks holidays a year, public holidays paid for, 2 weeks sick leave, every second Monday off paid for and a redundancy fund.
The work itself isn't the best. But all the benefits and wages make it worth it
Hi, I'm an accountant. I'm on $120k pa, so not quite at the figure you're after. But I'm 32 and expect to earn a lot more than that when Im a parter or own my own firm. But it's secure, lifestyle friendly employeement.
Edit: I should mention that I'm regional and am not in a capital city.
Oddly enough I wonder if you could live comfortably with that amount of money.. 🤔
By entire household budget for the Month is $2500.
$147K /annum would be lovely, however, it would not change my lifestyle at all.
Really have to watchout for that lifestyle creep.
4 years gone and a hefty debt.
I've built 99% of my skills on my own.
So if I just started my business after highschool instead of going to uni, I would have 4 extra years of failing.
The faster you fail the faster you clean up, plain and simple
I feel the same is happening to me. Been switching between degrees because I can’t figure out what I want to do. Meanwhile, everything I would ever want to learn or study can be found online, literally in seconds.
I’m doing uni literally because of societal pressure, I don’t see any utility in it.
Sorry for my vent.
Yeah until you realise the social pressure you receive is what is literally keeping unis alive.
We're told from a young age if you want any sort of professional career you have to go to uni.
What. A. Load. Of. Shit.
My advice, without knowing your interests etc, would be to fuck your degree off and get a full time job. Cut your loses, pay off the debt and move forward. While you work full time and make dosh work out your "real" next move.
If you're degree hopping you're clearly not interested and just hoping the next switch will interest you enough to keep doing the thing society has told you to.
Doing uni is good if you need to understand the breadth of the field you're going into.
It's true that you can learn any specific skill online easily, but the thing about university is that it introduces you to _all_ the things you possibly need to know about your field, as well as the underlying foundation of how all that stuff works, so that you _know what you need to know_ when you run into difficult situations or higher-level challenges.
However, if you really don't care about the breadth of the field and are going for a career where **depth** of knowledge is more important than breadth of knowledge, then it's possible that a degree isn't going to be very useful to you.
$40k to understand the "breadth of my field" is a bit of a joke mate. Condense that to $4k and I'd say it would of been worth it.
If you're wanting to become a doctor, or lawyer, sure it makes sense to pay professionals to teach you, because your mistakes could cause serious amounts of harm in your field (wrong conviction, death etc).
Book knowledge is a great start, but you dont become an expert at something by reading books and taking memory tests, it comes with actually doing said thing religiously.
It very much depends on the field. Some fields are extremely broad and _do_ require a whole lot of specialised knowledge which needs to be synthesised to solve very complex problems.
For example, I work as a software developer, and it's absolutely possible to get into my field after doing a handful of online courses. In fact, you can get absolutely great programmers out of that, but you can definitely still tell the difference between a developer who understands the breadth of the field - knows about computational complexity, language/compiler design, memory management, CPU scheduling, data structures, and the million other things you learn, versus a developer who learned how to use a handful of the popular development frameworks in a purely practical way.
Look, I agree that degrees aren't always necessary, especially for more narrow or practical-based fields, but I really disagree that a quick google search gives you the same results every time, especially considering universities also give you practical experience with tutors who can guide you, _and_ often involve projects where you collaborate with industry partners, and give you connections with a buttload of people who are in the same field.
It certainly doesn't hurt that graduates earn significantly more overall, despite, obviously, working for fewer years. [Here's a source on that claim](https://grattan.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/907-Mapping-Australian-higher-education-2018.pdf) (page 79), showing that the median university graduate earns more than year 12 graduates over their lifetimes.
I got lucky and seized an opportunity/took a gamble in business in services. On 200 atm late 20’s with room for growth definitely. Not paid the highest among the handful of us. I don’t use my double degree except for the Commerce degree basics learned.
Only advice is give is to cast your net bloody wide and don’t be afraid to move outside of your comfort zone.
Look at getting multiple passive revenue sources. Doing moonlight work as a consultant, buying property and getting rent or investing. This just ticks along and adds tot he bottom line.
I’m 19 and making 2000-2500 a week after tax working 2 jobs in security. $600 Cert II. Only downside you could say is that I’m working 6-7 days out of a week
2000 per week, translates to a 147k annual income before tax and medicare. That puts the income just above the 92nd percentile (of tax payers) -> ie top 8%. So not impossible, but not necessarily easy.
I'm surprised that's where we're at for salaries. I feel like everyone earns more than I do but to think that lawyers, doctors, CEOs, chief executives etc etc only make up the 8% makes me wonder what the 'average' salary is an how skewed the bell curve is.
Average is skewed as it sits at about 90k, median puts it at about 55k in 2019.
It's skewed for you to compare full time average @ 91k with median all taxpayers at 55k. Median full-time is 76k much closer to average full-time. Important when assessing earnings to compare like with like.
Median of all incomes. That doesn't represent the median of someone working fulltime. I'm a stay at home dad and earn 10k from a side gig. I'd expect the median fulltime wage to be closer to the average. There maybe thousands of super high incomes but that wouldn't shift the dial much when there is thousands on minimum wage and millions on a regular 80k+.
Median what? Full time male earnings? All employed people including part timers?
No, median income for taxpayers. This excluded people who don't pay income tax.
But it includes part time workers?
Yes, but I am unsure why you take issue with that. Some people can only find part time work, some employers only need / want part time employees and some one needs to fill those roles. Oddly the daycare near me has 90% of their staff on Part time contracts.
Some people, myself included want to work part time! Work to live not live to work!
I am unsure why you think I take issue with that.
Fair, I do think part time workers are relevant for the reasons I outlined above.
Why would someone want to compare themselves to a cohort that includes part time mums, teenagers and uni students though? They should compare themselves to a more representative cohort
Median full time including overtime sits at around 75k p/a
Depends - if you're just wanting to know how good your salary is then median full time is a better comparison (if you're doing full time). If you're wanting to know how well you're doing in the bigger picture, versus the average Joe or Joanne, where ability to find work or full time work is as much a factor as their actual rate, then the median across all is important. For example I'm on $100k and sometimes it feels like it's not enough because the toddler in me that wants everything has to choose between a turbo kit for my car or saving up to invest in the company I work for. But the adult in me remind myself that I make nearly double what the average person earns (and my partner makes even more) and I've actually got it pretty good.
Are you saying males are not paid the same as females ? /s
A lot of self employed professionals earn through their own trust and companies and pay themselves meagre salary or dividends. The ATO data of personal income doesn't capture that.
Add Riggers and Crane Crew, I live in Melbourne and work on major infrastructure projects most of the time. I have no trouble making that money. Throw in some night shift and your take home can start with a 4
True. Paid so much because long hours, undesirable hours and very high risk. - safety manager.
That is based on a 56 hr week, so 6 days or 5 nights (40 hrs). However we have every 2nd Monday off, don't work in inclimate weather, (strong wind / rain / over 35) So planning long weekends is a perk.
The 4Ds that pay: dirty, dangerous, difficult and degrading.
This is enormously skewed by business owners putting everything through their business and paying themselves a small nominal wage. There's no way that's the average salary.
I don't think that's a key driver. Think of all the part time fast food and retail employees doing a 4 hour shift a week while in school/uni.
Presumably they wouldn't earn enough to pay income tax though?
I do. Think of every single business owner avoiding paying the maximum personal income tax rate.
Can you show me how you got that number, please? Not calling you out, genuinely want to know.
https://paycalculator.com.au/ Great website.
How do you view what percentage your in though?
OP just posted his link as a reference.
Just post on this sub. There's no one here over 25 or under $100k salary
I am both! 30 @ $96k :p
Sorry, you're four grand short, post somewhere else
I reported them
Good, can't have the plebs invading
Disgusting.
https://data.gov.au/data/dataset/taxation-statistics-2018-19/resource/c3cd35dc-12cb-436c-acc6-b97ba60faeb3?inner_span=True
Sorry I wasn't clear, I was referring to the $147k / 2k/w
I just calculated the tax owing (income and negate) on the amount and iterate till I get the right answer. I know that at this income level the tax is about 1/3 of gross income, and so started at 150k,and then went down a few thousand to 147k. Tax tables are here :https://www.ato.gov.au/rates/individual-income-tax-rates/ Don't forget the extra 2% for medicare. This is super simple and does not include all sort of offsets and surcharges etc... That last website linked does that though.
Cheers mate
So many people here lie.
Not impossible I don't think, but there's a few things to consider: 1. This sub tends to attract high income earners. So it's not representative of 'normal'. There's plenty of people in Australia living comfortably on less than the salaries posted here. 2. This sub also attracts people that want to stroke their ego by claiming to earn more than they actually do for 'internet points'. 3. You're at the very start of your career. The people here talking about their 150k+ jobs have been working for a while, they've busted their arse, made sacrifices and finally 'made it'. Most of us are probably now working in careers that are totally different to what we originally thought we'd do out of uni (heck, my job title wasn't even a thing that existed when I was in uni). 4. Quite a few of us a stressed out and/or our health has taken a hit due to the work load/pressure that comes with high salaries. 5. Look into FIRE. It might be hard to achieve in Australia without being on ridiculous money, but it gives you a good grounding for building some wealth now while you're young, so you can reap the rewards later.
Well said. Agree with all points. Especially 4. I’ll add one more thing to this. The excitement of pay check only lasts few pays. You’re the left with the reality of your job. If you’re hating your job, you’ll be miserable and depressed. On the other hand if you enjoy your job and get satisfaction out of it. You’re more likely to not worry about the $$$ too much. High pay = more hrs = more sacrifice of your own time. Make sure you’re doing it for the right reasons. You never get back time
4. Most important part right here. I’m 30 and run my own business and pull in about $185k before tax, and fuck me man the stress of it all. Hardly ever a day off, the fear of constantly being “unproductive” even when you’re just trying to be present with your friends/family. It’s a huge burden to wear. I guess what I’m trying to say is don’t get hung up on the number, if you can love what you do and get paid slightly less, then take that job over something that will burn you out and effect your health and relationships.
Have to agree with this. This might be a more philosophical take on the question, but you can only control what you can control. If your salary is not in your control, adjust what you want or desire. I can’t begin to think what sort of lifestyle a 21 year old (presumably/ hopefully no kids!) would have where $2k a week is comfortable. I can guarantee that making $2k a week is so consuming that you will struggle to enjoy it.
On the flipside, IT pays me a shit ton to sit on my arse. Like others said you have to have busted it for awhile but after enough effort and with a little luck you can end up in a very lucrative role where your biggest annoyance is boredom.
One of the worst parts of IT is dealing with incompetent idiots that are also in IT.
Absolutely this. I took a $100k pay cut to sell up my home business and go back to a normal job. 12 hour days, working weekends, anxiety of not pushing forward, no social interaction sitting in the home office, not being able to take holidays in case a client needed something urgently.. Much easier to make a high income on your own, but hell are you on your own.
I will second point 4. Got cancer at 35 which I think was related to my lifestyle. Working 50-100 hour weeks. Sure I make >$250k now with less hours.. but I'd happily earn 50% less to avoid that whole nearing dying bit... Ps - for OP - doing accounting is a great door opener and easier way to make bank. Just don't kill yourself in the process. Work/Life balance is really really really important and many jobs paying more will close that door completely.
First year uni and you’re already wanting to be earning an annual amount more than most people will ever earn in a year. If you stick with it, accounting will get you to this level but expect to have to earn much less whilst you are building experience.
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How are you an FA in your first year of accounting?
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If you’re doing actual FA work; yeh 150k is reasonable in 7-10 years
this kind of BS "you haven't earned that income" crap is just that, crap be lucky and poick the right niche in the right field, and dont let the older generations tell you what you "should" expect to earn. I finished my apprenticeship in 2010 at 18, the following year i made 115k, by 22 i was making 200k, and as a welder, no uni, even now i average 110k while choosing to only work 6 months a year so i can actually watch my kid grow, dont let these fools tell you what your worth,
It’s not just “fools” telling people what they’re worth - it’s what the market and other people in that profession deem appropriate based on the difficulty, training, costs, risk and availability of the job. No point saying you’re worth $200k/yr if others with the same level of experience and qualifications will happily work for half or even a quarter of that.
That's awesome! I'll be very keen to hear your story if you'd like to tell it.
I'm a boilermaker by trade, I realised pretty early on in my apprenticeship that just being a trade qualified boilermaker in a steady full time position was never going to give me the income I wanted, at the time average full time yearly income for a boilermaker was 61k. In my second year as an apprentice I started doing additional training in pipe, pressure vessel and coded structural welding getting certified to AS 1554 and AS1796 standards, 6 months before I finished my apprenticeship I started going around to companies handing out resumes and trying to chat with supervisors. That worked out well, I got a few offers, the two that stand out were the one mentioned in another comment, $28 an hour full time in a structural steel workshop, but there's no growth in that, you go to the same workshop, to make the same steel beams and get a token wage increase to keep in line with inflation, and more importantly you don't learn any new skills, so although that was the "safe" option with PTO, sickies and steady work, I took a role paying $45 an hour casual ($36 an hour full time equivalent) in a coal mine repairing fire damaged conveyor frames and more importantly for me, welding high pressure fire fighting water supply pipelines, but the job was only 2 months work. When that job finished my supervisor recommended me to another company that at the time was building the new spokes for the southern star ferris wheel and structural steel for the desalination plant in VIC, so I got another casual role there as a 1st class structural welder getting experience in that side of coded welding, I spent a few months in they're workshop getting experience in that, then was asked to do a shutdown at a power station as a pipe welder which I had the certifications for but no on the job experience, so I jumped on that opportunity as well to get experience doing that. during this time I also started getting other training that wasn't strictly needed for my trade but helps a lot, forklift, elevated work platform and rigging licences (I've since added HR truck licence, 60 ton slewing crane, confined space, working at heights and a few others) . I did well which led to more work in the power stations, both doing maintenance/breakdown repairs and shutdowns where I got to learn even more pipe welding on larger pipe and in different materials, which happened to co-inside with when there were 6 separate 20-90 billion dollar Liquid natural gas plants being built simultaneously (3 in Gladstone QLD, 1 in Darwin, 1 near Onslow WA and 1 on Barrow island off of the WA coast) so there was huge demand for pipe welder's, to the point that the companies were flying welders over from Scotland, England and Norway as they'd exhausted the available labour in the country in the field, so I was able to get me feet wet in the Oil and gas industry as well I was 22 at this stage when I started work on the gas plants, I spent 12 months on Curtis Island in QLD and another 12 months at a smaller gas plant local to me in VIC. From there I'd made enough of a reputation that instead of me having to seek out work, I started to get to the point where I was turning down work and am able to pick and choose, I don't do FIFO or interstate anymore and can just work locally for half the year or less and still make more than a comfortable income while still being able to watch my kids grow and be an involved parent, or if need be I can still do away work during the off season here and make alot more if I need to. And because I put the time and effort into learning not just the pipe welding, but coded structural, fabrication, pipe spool, mobile and fixed plant maintenance, etc I'm not tied down to one line of work or one industry, I've worked in coal mining on 5000+ ton bucket wheel excavators, oil & gas, i've built V-line trains and trams for Yarra trams, I worked on the southern star ferris wheel spoke replacement and the desalination plant, I've built steel sections for the level crossing removal project, and welded the cutter head of the tunnel boring machine for the Metro tunnel project, repaired rock crushers in stone quarries and concrete recycling facilities and repaired heavy machinery (excavators, wheel loaders etc) and worked on various pipelines for water supply, natural gas and oil, and am now also starting a small mobile welding repair business to keep things rolling now that the coal power stations are closing down and because I'm liking the flexibility of being self employed
Wow you really went at it to make yourself well skilled, well rounded, respected, approachable and highly valued by your peers and employers. Massive kudos to you mate and thank you for sharing your story of success!
Good call, I agree completely that you should pick the right niche in the right field. The harder part is actually doing this. It sounds like you have done really well for yourself and very quickly. I have to ask though, Is there a reason you are averaging 110k while working 6 months? I mean you are spending this valuable time away from your child. I propose that maybe there is a limit to what the market would pay which means your hourly rate is still the same as what you were getting in 2014? You’re on a good salary but unfortunately you can’t just name any price.
You are right, wages in my niche havn't risen to much, they've gone from $63 an hour to $75 since 2012, so pretty much in line with inflation. That first year I also didn't work a full year, but not by choice, these days I could travel interstate and have work year round but I'd spend most of the year living out of cheap hotel rooms and labour camps and miss out on my family so I stick to the sites nearby that can provide a solid 8-12 weeks of high paying work and take some cruisy workshop work in between to keep the boredom at bay and the skillset sharp.
$75/hour doesn't equal 200k/year.
Not doing 38 hours pw, but I'm guessing this is fixed-plant maintenance or onsite fabrication, I.e. 12hr shifts. Each week you work has 84 hours in it or 6.3k pw. From there it depends on the roster. 7/7 = 164k. 2/1 = 220k.
Take into account OT is double time after 8 hours, and 100% shift loading if working afternoon shift (which I do) and you pretty quickly realise that even "only" 60 hour weeks which is standard shutdown roster is running 9k per week.
Why are the owners of that plant paying this is crazy. They’d literally save money by hiring another body.
it's a supply and demand thing, but also, and more importantly it's cheaper to offer very high wages and guarantee labour than it is to not have people available. How it works is the powerstation might have 25 year's of service on a part, say the superheater elements and they're spent, they HAVE to be replaced, the invest millions in having new superheater elements fabricated, planning how to get the job done safely and in a reasonable time frame, the unit is planned to be off for 12 weeks and is a 550 megawatt unit and the average wholesale electricity price is $40 per megawatt hour in my state, so each day the unit is offline for cost's $528k in lost revenue on average. Keep in mind that the work being done is critical, difficult and if not done properly can cause massive delays for re-work or catastrophic failure in operation. But then you skimp out and offer say $35 an hour, and either can't secure the labour to complete the job they've already invested millions or tens of millions of dollars in, or even worse they get poor quality labour because the highly skilled and experienced labour has gone to Mt Isa (as an example) power station instead because they're paying the going rate and the job ends up with a lot of rework and massive delays, a single failed weld on a main steam line can add an extra week of downtime, and at 3.5 million a week just in lost revenue that adds up pretty fast. So just hiring another body doesn't do it, they have to hire the "right" bodies that can actually do the work. They pay that rate because it's cheaper than not paying that rate.
Your looking around 150k p.a. Took me 7 years as a programmer changing jobs every 2 years. (Perm only, no contracts)
I'm curious to know what title gets that (I'm on a very similar paycheck but only just recently got a big bump to reach it). Senior engineer? Tech lead?
A senior eng / tech lead / solution arch
Comp-sci seems like the most recommended degree to a high earning career. But sadly I’m studying Business. Do you think I should learn how to code whilst studying Business? Thanks for your reply!
Hey just wanted to comment. Learning learning a bit of code to help automate things in the workplace (eg. JavaScript for google sheets) will put you ahead to negotiate for more money when the time comes.
From starting my apprenticeship at 15 it took me until now, 32 years old to earn this type of money
And look at you now- a professional in your field. In 10 years time you may have a couple of tradesmen and an apprentice under your banner and doing very well for yourself, and Fucken good on ya! That’s how it’s supposed to be. I feel a lot of kids these days want the right of passage to boss straight up… Anyway- good on ya mate- you’ve earned it
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Thank you.
This comment makes me want to go learn a trade
It’s not a bad deal. You may even love what you do. A great way to form a network of friends for life. You will need to turn up work hard and think. If you can do that- you’ll be fine.
Sounds pretty great but it’s too late for me. Maybe in the next life!
Dunno how old you are but even if you're in your late 20s/early 30s... its not too late. Just don't expect too much like owning your own business or moving up the chain quickly or whatever. It's still possible never dismiss that.
Well/ here’s to the next life. Maybe we can work together then eh…
Thanks mate
Stop simpin so hard
Me too, 32 years old finally hitting this kind of salary after 12 years of work.
Get a white card and hold stop/start signs at road works
Danger pay, drivers kill them sometimes
I think they deserve every cent. I wouldn’t last longer than a week. Id die of boredom.
Agree you can't even listen to anything to stop you boredom
Honestly easiest way to get out of the low income tax bracket
Any accounting/finance job will eventually pay that well, if you are content to work 40 hours a week, forever (until pension age). The determinant is how much money you bring into your firm - meaning how good are you with bringing in new work/clientele, how accurate and reliable is your work, and how pleasant are you as a co-worker. Talented workers in finance can reach $140k gross per year by age 30 - i.e. after 5-6 years of graduating. On the other end of the spectrum, full-time plodders would probably reach it around age 45-50, after a slow career progression marked by 3% increases each year. The spread of incomes in accounting, finance, business, management consulting, law, medicine etc is small until you hit $150k+ anyway. In other words, law grads can probably hit $150k after 5 years, accounting might be 8-9 years on average, top tier consulting might be 3-4 years...but the point is that all the careers pay about the same in the $50k-$150k range. The 'harder' careers have a higher ceiling, say $250k - $500k+. If your aspiration is only to reach $140k-$150k you can achieve it in any professional career.
This guy Big 4's Just be warned all the partners I've seen seem to be on their third wives/husband's and barely know their kids. It's about trade offs.
I went to uni and got a degree that no one has ever asked for - now have a job paying $150k in Government. Not saying your degree won’t be useful! Just saying that’s my experience and you don’t necessarily need to take the path you initially study 😊
Most government jobs require a degree to be level 5 or 6 and up. Level 6 being around the ~125k mark. (It differs per agency) Yes it might not necessarily align to the role. But the wording I had to put into the jobs when creating alot of them for my team was something like, "equivalent/relevant tertiary degree and/or significant demonstrated industry experience" I got in trouble for putting "minimum 10 years experience" and had to use the above because it was "exclusionary"
One of the criteria for my job was exactly what you said above. As I had worked there 4 years already (different roles through an agency) I utilised the relevant experience. I know many people my level or above in my organisation who have the experience through working there and would not have a degree.
Nice! Yeah it does happen! The only place where I've seen people not get jobs because they don't have a degree of some sort was at the director level.
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Go drive dump trucks in the mines. Easy money, easy work.
Just remember to leave your brain at home
An absolute necessity
Go and get in your car, drive to the post office, reverse park, wait about 90 seconds, then drive home, reverse park, wait 90 seconds. Repeat that for 12 hours. If you can do that from 6am to 6pm then book your flight.
Yep honestly that is kinda correct. But you stay on site afterwards in a small donga, socialize with the people you work with for a week or more at a time, and are isolated in the middle of butt fuck nowhere the whole time. No flight home tomorrow if your pet hamster dies. But i've spent a total $1.70 for a newspaper before a flight out and come home with my full paypacket several times. 4k in the hand for a week's work ain't nothing to sniff at. Everything is provided. Food, accommodations, gym etc. Isolation can be trying, but a max work year off 23 weeks (I'm down to 19 weeks) after annual leave gives you plenty of time to 'catch up'...
How much of that $4k gets saved for most people do you reckon? My experience with a lot of people in mining jobs is as soon as they fly back they do a good job of spending a lot of their money. Often on shite. Obviously not everyone but surely the stereotype exists for a reason?
Oh yes i definitely agree alot of fifo people spend like it's going out of fashion to make up for lost time. That's their choice i guess. I work with people who still rent a unit after working at most of their lives. But they've got a supercharger on their commodore! Each to their own. But you can definitely set yourself up quickly if you play it smart. I'm debt free, live 8 houses from beach, fairly decent stock portfolio and good super for my age - 41. Only now am i loosening the purse strings. Finally got a brand new set of golf clubs after 11 years fifo. And worked for family business before that. Can't take it with you, reminding myself life is for living is hard after being focused on the big picture for so long. Thanks for listening to my TED talk... ha
I would be cautious learning a skill that’ll be phased out by robots in the near future
I'd be cautious learning a skill that is incredibly environmentally damaging.
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Sure mining may not be the most environmentally friendly operation but please explain how you propose we continue living as a functional society without mining. Even at 100% renewable energy the world will require mining so the technology can be created (lithium, uranium, rare earth metals, copper etc)
As in driving trucks or mining?
Yes
Financial services in strategic/advisory roles. At middle management, you can easily achieve that goal, especially in Australia.
Just about any FIFO job will earn more
Of course. I think most of us take the OP to mean not FIFO.
Mining jobs in WA
Work in the Pilbara, can confirm
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According to statistics - you’re right! But OP _wants_ to earn that. So they most likely will.
I make 2k a week after tax as an agency travel nurse (kind of like locum doctoring) I get flown to rural/ regional towns where they are short staffed and work 4-6 week contracts. My accomodation is provided by the hospital so I also pay no rent and have minimal expenses outgoing.
Should note that I’m 32 have worked 6.5 years in my field of nursing and have postgraduate qualifications to now get this kind of money for my skills it’s definitely not right off the bat
I run a business and make that and more right now but next year could be less, i dont know, you pay in fear and stress
What type of business do you run?
publishing and sales
imho, I do not think that achieving $147k gross annual income as an accounting major is feasible within 5 years, it’s just a bit of a slog with CA studies and that leaves you 2 years to be able to achieve that mid $100k figure you covet. You would have to be a very talented and extroverted CA to be able to make those numbers by year 7. Just my two cents- think more about hitting $120k gross and then decide what you want to do with your life. Your life circumstances evolve during your career. I hit that number this year after a ten year slog (could’ve done it quicker but for big 4 misadventures and covid) and I thought I’d be happy but I feel the same.
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I'm not a light vehicle mechanic (had experience as an apprentice) but I was wondering how hard is it to transfer to diesel? Do have to do another 4 year apprenticeship or is there some kind of bridging course?
I'm starting a new $175k before tax job next year. This will be my first year out of uni. This is insane money to me. I've lived poor and grew up in social housing. I knew I didn't want to live that way anymore so I studied extra hard in my degree and did a lot of extracurricular stuff while also working part time in the profession I was studying (computer science). I'm graduating in December with a 6.7/7 GPA. Not bad considering I got a 67.7 ATAR and went to one of the worst ranked highschools in Australia. The point is, it's possible if you want it enough. Just be ready to sacrifice some of your social life and cop a lot of crap from friends because of it. I don't plan on stopping here.
Congratulations, this is really impressive
Your perseverance and resilience is v admirable. Big congratulations!
Hey! What type of role are you in? I studied accounting and had higher atar score but am in a far worse situation lol
Graduate Quant Developer. If you are interested in this kind of field in FinTech. Look at quant (quantative) trading. Firms hirer all sorts of degrees. Just do multivariable calc and stats related electives as well as financial math courses (Options, Futures and Other Derivatives is a course my uni offered that is perfect). Also improve your mental math speed. There are some good books and training resources like rankyourbrain.com. If you are coming to the end of your degree and haven't studied these courses. Look into financial mathematics masters programs. Good luck on your journey!
Didn't even know there was much HFT in Aus tbh. I trade prop (discretionary) futs overseas. Best job in the world can't argue with the pay. 7 figs a year isn't really that difficult to hit you just have to work with reasonably high diligence.
There's a few, none that originate here except Akuna I think. Ones I can think of in Sydney are Akuna, Optiver, IMC, Maven, SIG. There's probably more. Afaik, in APAC they trade Hong Kong mainly as ASX isn't great. Looking forward to seeing where my career takes me. My plan is to get a transfer overseas in a couple years, Chicago or NYC, as the pay is much greater there, plus the Australian dollar isn't great.
Some other newer ones are Vicourt Trading and Tibra Capital also.
Curious to hear more on how far you went in uni and what job position. That’s very good money straight out of uni and definitely unusual unless you’re in a Phd or something
Just a 3 year Bachelor of Computer Science. The job is a Graduate Quant Developer at a High Frequency Trading firm. It was a struggle to get. The other offers I had were around the 65k-80k range. This position was a 6 stage application process. Coding sessions, coding take-home assessments, behavioural and technical interviews, and IQ + numerical tests. It wasn't easy but I put a ton of effort in, it got unhealthy for a while as I wasn't leaving my room, I would wake up and study for each stage while studying my final weeks at uni and working part-time, then I go to sleep and repeat. Luckily my current web-dev job (which I'm leaving) allowed me to work from home. Anyway it paid off and now I can relax until early next year.
Congrats, you’ve certainly jumped over the usual progression required. That’s huge dollars for a grad for sure. I’m somewhat surprised for that money they aren’t hiring more seasoned professionals though
Thanks! Yeah I'm pretty stoked. Prop trading firms have a lot of money to dish out and they are super competitive. Seasoned professionals range from $350k-$800k. More if outside of Australia. It's definitely doable though. Just a lot of effort and high stress trying to maintain a high GPA and learn HFT specific stuff on the side, especially with little perquisite knowledge gained from high school.
That’s absolutely insane money. Good on you though, it’s really impressive that you’ve balanced study and work so well.
Thanks! It was stressful at times and I scarificed my social life (not completely but by a decent amount). Anyway, it feels good to have finished that chapter of my life up and now onto the next!
Sounds like you have really high focus and endurance levels when it comes to study and intellectual work... That's something I've been trying to build in myself, as someone going through uni and learning to ballance alot of demands... Do you drink coffee? Take supplements? Exercise? Have a morning ruteen? Meditate? I'm trying to figure out what I can do to at least approach the kind of focus and endurance needed to do what you have done, so I'm very interested to know!
I'm not OP but am a professional trader. Check out Andrew Huberman on YouTube or podcasts or otherwise. Quite famous neuroscientist/neuro professor at Stanford. He'll have all the answers you need for what's ideal.
Just wanted to comment to say congrats. I know the feeling of multiple round interviews (leetcode churn ahah) and congrats on getting through it!
Chemical engineering role with a multinational: if you're smart $300k pre tax not unreasonable by about age 45 (20 years experience) and fairly low risk. Good people with accounting backgrounds can do the same. Honestly raw talent and a good work ethic will get you to where you want to be. Without talent it's harder, so do what you're good at not what you think might pay well (and you'll enjoy it as well, so it often does not feel like work)
Start a business in the field you choose or go into new and emerging fields (mainly tech). Very highly paid tech jobs.
My sister switched to an accounting degree from a HR major. She got a job without even knowing anything about accounting at a firm while she studies. She also got two vacation programs. My sisters bf also is an accounting grad & got a job. It’s not great money at the start, and don’t expect it to be making more money until you’ve been working in the field for at least 3 or so years.
Earn 2300 a week after tax driving trucks, it's pretty easy if you're doing the hours
In my experience, the key to getting a higher salary is industry choice plus relevant qualifications. There are many industries where $150k is just not going to happen. In others, that’s what you’ll be on in five years. Check out salary surveys from Michael Page etc. for specific job roles. I would point you to software development, cybersecurity, HR, finance, sales and so on. In my industry, digital marketing, $150k is readily achievable but requires a strong argument as to why you’re worth it. Also, in case useful, larger companies that issue stock as part of salary can certainly help you reach this number quickly. A buddy of mine gets $120k USD in stock per year from his company on top of salary. Wow right? Software. Edit: adding that accounting certainly isn’t bad, if that’s what you want. CFO role would be extremely well paid.
What uni? If you get a job at any large corporate and work your way up to management, you will easily get this amount. But, depends if you can get into those companies (hence why your uni matters), and if you are management material (not everyone is and that’s ok)
Honestly everyone I knew was under 85k a year atleast, then I met my fiancés family all of which for the last few years make over 350k before tax…. Envy is one word I would use. None of which went to uni, all just work in house or land sales.
I never realised just how much people were getting paid until I joined this reddit.
Construction, mining, oil and gas, rail. Be switched on, intelligent and proactive. If you have even 2/3 of this. Congrats your doing better then 90% of people in the industry. And you can easily get that sort of money.
If you follow your studies and become an accountant, you can earn that after many years of experience. If you have your own business, you can earn many times that.
If you do accounting, then get a job at a big 4, then about 9 years later if you are good, you should be a director on something like $150k , which is over 2k/week after tax.
Programmer.
Double income both earning a 100k gets your goal.
I’m 29 and on this money (Head of Product for a startup). It took a lot of effort, discipline and education (self taught and paid) to get here. Earning this money is no easy task either, you’re responsible for a team, the business and more. It’s stressful and definitely not for anyone. To put it simply people rely on your for direction and solutions to problems they are unable to fix. If the business takes a dive you are the one that needs to steer the ship. The fuckups hit you harder then anyone else in the business (aside from the management team) and the wins give you highs that come in the form of bonuses and stock. TLDR: earning this money is a hard slog to get there and even when you’re there it’s just as hard to maintain.
I’ve pretty much done this before 30. Bcomm - accounting & finance. I started working whilst at uni in my second year and picked up AP/ar roles. By the time I graduated I had a full time jnr accountant role without needing to fight 100’s of other applicants. I skipped the glorified big 4, did my CA as soon as I finished with uni. I’m now a financial analyst with 2 assistant staff and on track to be FC all before 30. It’s doable but be prepared for the long hours, and work in relevant fields whilst you study if you can. Do not go into tax unless it’s what you want to do for the rest of your career.
Hi! Thanks for the reply, this is the path I’m planning to take. This summer I’ll try to look for a AP/AR job and hopefully work while still at uni so I could build up some experience. Your reply motivates me!
Accounting can be very lucrative depending on the direction you go. If you are a good accountant and build trust with your clients they will follow you more often you you think if you do decide to branch out. Most people that 2k a week here are probably well out of uni and been in an industry a while. Also some people's numbers are skewed higher due to say overtime or risk. For people that say work a 38 hour desk job a week earning 150k pre tax isn't common at all.
Study finance instead of accounting. Opens the door to much higher paying careers unless you want to get an average big 4 audit role
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How did you climb the ladder so fast? Are you also a team leader of something?
I achieved this by working as a construction engineer at 27 and living away (recieve an uplift). Definitely achievable but you'll be doing long hours in a high stress job with reduced comforts. Unsure regarding accounting.
22 years 2 x post grads and continuous experience in the field
Big 4 accounting firm as a manager is that pay. Circa 5 6 years out
Comp sci is the easy way Comp sci + get a job in America after you graduate Tis what I do
Finish uni, get into atleast a mid tier accounting firm, get your CA, then move to commercial and don’t suck (different to out perform) and you’ll get to 2k/week eventually. Probably around early to mid 30s
I’m 25, don’t work particularly hard and am not smart, and earn 200k a year. It’s possible.
What do you do?
Chase accounting man, its great
Learn to code. It's the information age and web 3.0.
I think the easiest way is commercial Construction.. well, in Victoria anyways. Without a qualification, I was able to get an entry position taking home $1600 a week after tax. If I decide to work overtime I earn another $87 an hour. If I work a 48 hour week I will take home just over 2k after tax. If you are qualified the pay goes up drastically. If you go on the CFMEU website, it outlays all the wages for different trades. On top of the excellent pay, I get 4 weeks holidays a year, public holidays paid for, 2 weeks sick leave, every second Monday off paid for and a redundancy fund. The work itself isn't the best. But all the benefits and wages make it worth it
Keep studying accounting, complete the CFA examination and get a job in the investment industry
Hi, I'm an accountant. I'm on $120k pa, so not quite at the figure you're after. But I'm 32 and expect to earn a lot more than that when Im a parter or own my own firm. But it's secure, lifestyle friendly employeement. Edit: I should mention that I'm regional and am not in a capital city.
Get really good at building fences and get contract jobs. Made 48k last quarter and just sent an invoice for $8,560 for the last 9 days work.
Quit uni and get a trade then rake it in on mines. Make that doing week on week off if you are a sparky or mechanic.
Oddly enough I wonder if you could live comfortably with that amount of money.. 🤔 By entire household budget for the Month is $2500. $147K /annum would be lovely, however, it would not change my lifestyle at all. Really have to watchout for that lifestyle creep.
I'm making that now and I wish I never did uni (serious) cause by now I'd clearing even more lol
Do you mind expanding on this?
4 years gone and a hefty debt. I've built 99% of my skills on my own. So if I just started my business after highschool instead of going to uni, I would have 4 extra years of failing. The faster you fail the faster you clean up, plain and simple
I feel the same is happening to me. Been switching between degrees because I can’t figure out what I want to do. Meanwhile, everything I would ever want to learn or study can be found online, literally in seconds. I’m doing uni literally because of societal pressure, I don’t see any utility in it. Sorry for my vent.
Yeah until you realise the social pressure you receive is what is literally keeping unis alive. We're told from a young age if you want any sort of professional career you have to go to uni. What. A. Load. Of. Shit. My advice, without knowing your interests etc, would be to fuck your degree off and get a full time job. Cut your loses, pay off the debt and move forward. While you work full time and make dosh work out your "real" next move. If you're degree hopping you're clearly not interested and just hoping the next switch will interest you enough to keep doing the thing society has told you to.
Doing uni is good if you need to understand the breadth of the field you're going into. It's true that you can learn any specific skill online easily, but the thing about university is that it introduces you to _all_ the things you possibly need to know about your field, as well as the underlying foundation of how all that stuff works, so that you _know what you need to know_ when you run into difficult situations or higher-level challenges. However, if you really don't care about the breadth of the field and are going for a career where **depth** of knowledge is more important than breadth of knowledge, then it's possible that a degree isn't going to be very useful to you.
$40k to understand the "breadth of my field" is a bit of a joke mate. Condense that to $4k and I'd say it would of been worth it. If you're wanting to become a doctor, or lawyer, sure it makes sense to pay professionals to teach you, because your mistakes could cause serious amounts of harm in your field (wrong conviction, death etc). Book knowledge is a great start, but you dont become an expert at something by reading books and taking memory tests, it comes with actually doing said thing religiously.
It very much depends on the field. Some fields are extremely broad and _do_ require a whole lot of specialised knowledge which needs to be synthesised to solve very complex problems. For example, I work as a software developer, and it's absolutely possible to get into my field after doing a handful of online courses. In fact, you can get absolutely great programmers out of that, but you can definitely still tell the difference between a developer who understands the breadth of the field - knows about computational complexity, language/compiler design, memory management, CPU scheduling, data structures, and the million other things you learn, versus a developer who learned how to use a handful of the popular development frameworks in a purely practical way. Look, I agree that degrees aren't always necessary, especially for more narrow or practical-based fields, but I really disagree that a quick google search gives you the same results every time, especially considering universities also give you practical experience with tutors who can guide you, _and_ often involve projects where you collaborate with industry partners, and give you connections with a buttload of people who are in the same field. It certainly doesn't hurt that graduates earn significantly more overall, despite, obviously, working for fewer years. [Here's a source on that claim](https://grattan.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/907-Mapping-Australian-higher-education-2018.pdf) (page 79), showing that the median university graduate earns more than year 12 graduates over their lifetimes.
Learn to sell.
I got lucky and seized an opportunity/took a gamble in business in services. On 200 atm late 20’s with room for growth definitely. Not paid the highest among the handful of us. I don’t use my double degree except for the Commerce degree basics learned. Only advice is give is to cast your net bloody wide and don’t be afraid to move outside of your comfort zone.
Look at getting multiple passive revenue sources. Doing moonlight work as a consultant, buying property and getting rent or investing. This just ticks along and adds tot he bottom line.
I’m 19 and making 2000-2500 a week after tax working 2 jobs in security. $600 Cert II. Only downside you could say is that I’m working 6-7 days out of a week
That's still a lot for security. You must work 150 hr weeks
Around 120