Can you be rich as an engineer?

[Anonymous]

Engineer here. Lots of good discussion, and the point I always make is that you have to consider the time/year variable when comparing salaries. You can't just look at what someone may earn at 45. If an engineer is making $60k at 22 and $85k at 25, when the future MD and JD are still in school borrowing $60k a year, that's a roughly $140k per year delta DURING THE MOST IMPORTANT YEARS of your total earning cycle (i.e., the early years).

Understand the time value of money, and you can end up like me. Decent engineering job, 40 years old. 40 hours a week, every Friday off, $150k, not in a particularly high COL area, house paid off, net worth of $2.5M.

So with $2M invested, figure you can count on 7% a year on average, that's $140k for doing nothing, and that's mostly tax-free, and that goes up every year.

My wife makes about $80k working part time.

Combine everything, and we're looking at over $250k per year, and we have no bills.

Meanwhile, my internist whom I play squash with is still paying off his med school loans, is nowhere near paying off the mortgage, and hasn't had a chance to accumulate much in the way of investments. He'll never be able to catch up. (And NPs and PAs are infringing on his, and all doctors' incomes, a little bit more every day.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Engineer here. Lots of good discussion, and the point I always make is that you have to consider the time/year variable when comparing salaries. You can't just look at what someone may earn at 45. If an engineer is making $60k at 22 and $85k at 25, when the future MD and JD are still in school borrowing $60k a year, that's a roughly $140k per year delta DURING THE MOST IMPORTANT YEARS of your total earning cycle (i.e., the early years).

Understand the time value of money, and you can end up like me. Decent engineering job, 40 years old. 40 hours a week, every Friday off, $150k, not in a particularly high COL area, house paid off, net worth of $2.5M.

So with $2M invested, figure you can count on 7% a year on average, that's $140k for doing nothing, and that's mostly tax-free, and that goes up every year.

My wife makes about $80k working part time.

Combine everything, and we're looking at over $250k per year, and we have no bills.

Meanwhile, my internist whom I play squash with is still paying off his med school loans, is nowhere near paying off the mortgage, and hasn't had a chance to accumulate much in the way of investments. He'll never be able to catch up. (And NPs and PAs are infringing on his, and all doctors' incomes, a little bit more every day.)

This is such an engineer's answer... and I love it!

- Math major who manages 200 engineers.

P.S. You had me at hello.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Most lawyers don't actually make that much money.
Lawyers at biglaw firms make a lot of money, that's true. But the vast majority of lawyers make the same as regular mortals.
Stop using biglaw salaries as if they were representative of the lawyer general population.
I know engineers at big tech companies that are making more than 500k. They are not in managerial positions.
This would be the fair biglaw comparison, not a lowly paid engineer at 150k.

Would you say the median engineer makes more than the median lawyer? I doubt that.

NP. Yeah, I actually would say that, and I'd be pretty confident that it's true. There are a lot of low-paid lawyers out there. Public defenders, prosecutors, lawyers working for tiny firms, doing some title work here and there, representing DWIs and divorces (and not for rich people) and custody battles.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Engineer here. Lots of good discussion, and the point I always make is that you have to consider the time/year variable when comparing salaries. You can't just look at what someone may earn at 45. If an engineer is making $60k at 22 and $85k at 25, when the future MD and JD are still in school borrowing $60k a year, that's a roughly $140k per year delta DURING THE MOST IMPORTANT YEARS of your total earning cycle (i.e., the early years).

Understand the time value of money, and you can end up like me. Decent engineering job, 40 years old. 40 hours a week, every Friday off, $150k, not in a particularly high COL area, house paid off, net worth of $2.5M.

So with $2M invested, figure you can count on 7% a year on average, that's $140k for doing nothing, and that's mostly tax-free, and that goes up every year.

My wife makes about $80k working part time.

Combine everything, and we're looking at over $250k per year, and we have no bills.

Meanwhile, my internist whom I play squash with is still paying off his med school loans, is nowhere near paying off the mortgage, and hasn't had a chance to accumulate much in the way of investments. He'll never be able to catch up. (And NPs and PAs are infringing on his, and all doctors' incomes, a little bit more every day.)

This is such an engineer's answer... and I love it!

- Math major who manages 200 engineers.

P.S. You had me at hello.

I meant to say $350k before. It's a little sketchy counting investment growth as "income," and I don't mean to be misleading that way, but it is part of the overall package.

[Anonymous]

Yes and maybe. It's a subjective question. What do you consider wealthy? Some of it is pure luck and knowing when to maximize your opportunities. I have family members that became rich as an engineer. His path is thru working for pre ipo companies. that's a lot of risks compared to the traditional path of slow and steady and knowing time value of money. there's no traditional 401k and he worked insane hours. it was all dependent on stocks options. knowing how and when to exercise them. the key for him was getting in with friends from engineering school. know when to cash out and move on to the next venture. so yes it's possible. anything is possible.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Engineer here. Lots of good discussion, and the point I always make is that you have to consider the time/year variable when comparing salaries. You can't just look at what someone may earn at 45. If an engineer is making $60k at 22 and $85k at 25, when the future MD and JD are still in school borrowing $60k a year, that's a roughly $140k per year delta DURING THE MOST IMPORTANT YEARS of your total earning cycle (i.e., the early years).

Understand the time value of money, and you can end up like me. Decent engineering job, 40 years old. 40 hours a week, every Friday off, $150k, not in a particularly high COL area, house paid off, net worth of $2.5M.

So with $2M invested, figure you can count on 7% a year on average, that's $140k for doing nothing, and that's mostly tax-free, and that goes up every year.

My wife makes about $80k working part time.

Combine everything, and we're looking at over $250k per year, and we have no bills.

Meanwhile, my internist whom I play squash with is still paying off his med school loans, is nowhere near paying off the mortgage, and hasn't had a chance to accumulate much in the way of investments. He'll never be able to catch up. (And NPs and PAs are infringing on his, and all doctors' incomes, a little bit more every day.)

PP, law partner here. I really can’t disagree with anything you wrote. Quite honestly, I wasn’t smart or driven enough to go into engineering. I like what I do and I was fortunate to get thru law school and college with almost no debt. But that was a long time ago.
You have to do what you enjoy doing and not do something just for the money.
Your post makes a great deal of sense to me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Engineer here. Lots of good discussion, and the point I always make is that you have to consider the time/year variable when comparing salaries. You can't just look at what someone may earn at 45. If an engineer is making $60k at 22 and $85k at 25, when the future MD and JD are still in school borrowing $60k a year, that's a roughly $140k per year delta DURING THE MOST IMPORTANT YEARS of your total earning cycle (i.e., the early years).

Understand the time value of money, and you can end up like me. Decent engineering job, 40 years old. 40 hours a week, every Friday off, $150k, not in a particularly high COL area, house paid off, net worth of $2.5M.

So with $2M invested, figure you can count on 7% a year on average, that's $140k for doing nothing, and that's mostly tax-free, and that goes up every year.

My wife makes about $80k working part time.

Combine everything, and we're looking at over $250k per year, and we have no bills.

Meanwhile, my internist whom I play squash with is still paying off his med school loans, is nowhere near paying off the mortgage, and hasn't had a chance to accumulate much in the way of investments. He'll never be able to catch up. (And NPs and PAs are infringing on his, and all doctors' incomes, a little bit more every day.)

Engineers and their logic. They rock!

[Anonymous]

Coolest things in the world have come from engineering minds, things and ideas which truly changed the world. No wall street guy has made any contribution worth noting.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:150k at 27 is great, but they're likely going to be making only slightly higher 10 years later. Most of the senior-level developers I know make $175-200k.

Lawyers and doctors do a lot better later in their careers.

agreed...but an engineer only needs a 4-year degree....a big bang for the buck if you ask me...

That’s actually a BIG part of it. Lawyers and doctors go into MAJOR debt for their career; generally they come from well off families, so they know if they hit any bumps they won’t be destitute and in debt for hundreds of thousands.

Engineers tend to come from LMC backgrounds, and the thought of taking in that much debt is stupefying (the loans for MBA/Law/Med school DWARF the value and mortgage of the houses they grew up in). It’s a hellscape nightmare level of debt, and a risk they can’t stomach with no backup plan.

Cite?

This is documented in many papers.

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/07/college-major-rich-families-liberal-arts/397439/

That’s ...not what that article says. You clearly didn’t major in English!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Engineer here. Lots of good discussion, and the point I always make is that you have to consider the time/year variable when comparing salaries. You can't just look at what someone may earn at 45. If an engineer is making $60k at 22 and $85k at 25, when the future MD and JD are still in school borrowing $60k a year, that's a roughly $140k per year delta DURING THE MOST IMPORTANT YEARS of your total earning cycle (i.e., the early years).

Understand the time value of money, and you can end up like me. Decent engineering job, 40 years old. 40 hours a week, every Friday off, $150k, not in a particularly high COL area, house paid off, net worth of $2.5M.

So with $2M invested, figure you can count on 7% a year on average, that's $140k for doing nothing, and that's mostly tax-free, and that goes up every year.

My wife makes about $80k working part time.

Combine everything, and we're looking at over $250k per year, and we have no bills.

Meanwhile, my internist whom I play squash with is still paying off his med school loans, is nowhere near paying off the mortgage, and hasn't had a chance to accumulate much in the way of investments. He'll never be able to catch up. (And NPs and PAs are infringing on his, and all doctors' incomes, a little bit more every day.)

Fellow engineer here. While I applaud you of your accomplishment, I have several doubts about your proposal. You have 2.5M now and you describe that got here through "time value of money" - this suggests that you just set it and left it there, and was not actively working as a trader or investment manager. If we assume you started out with 0, and that you went through 20 years of gains, it would take an investment of 50k per year for the past 20 years at an annual compound rate of 8% returns to get to 2.5 million. Not only is 50k/year in savings difficult for your present 150k/year salary, it's was clearly impossible during the earlier years, which has the most effect on the compounding. Something doesn't add up.

You talk about the internist you play squash with, but this is an anecdote, I hope you are not trying to use your anecdote to draw the general case. If you look at the occupations of those who makeup the top 1% of income earners, there are far more physicians and dentists than there are engineers:

https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/packages/html/newsgraphics/2012/0115-one-percent-occupations/index.html?hp

As we can see from the data, while only about 1.1 to 1.9% of Engineers earn in the top 1%, a whopping 27.2% of Physicians are in the top 1%. So yes you can look at that 1.9% and say that yes technically you can indeed be rich being an engineer, but I wouldn't bet on it with those odds.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Coolest things in the world have come from engineering minds, things and ideas which truly changed the world. No wall street guy has made any contribution worth noting.

Yes, but the number of engineers who put their minds into wall street and became wall street guys is exponentially more than engineers that came up with cool things.

[Anonymous]

"it would take an investment of 50k per year"

that's not hard to do when you're married

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:150k at 27 is great, but they're likely going to be making only slightly higher 10 years later. Most of the senior-level developers I know make $175-200k.

Lawyers and doctors do a lot better later in their careers.

agreed...but an engineer only needs a 4-year degree....a big bang for the buck if you ask me...

That’s actually a BIG part of it. Lawyers and doctors go into MAJOR debt for their career; generally they come from well off families, so they know if they hit any bumps they won’t be destitute and in debt for hundreds of thousands.

Engineers tend to come from LMC backgrounds, and the thought of taking in that much debt is stupefying (the loans for MBA/Law/Med school DWARF the value and mortgage of the houses they grew up in). It’s a hellscape nightmare level of debt, and a risk they can’t stomach with no backup plan.

Cite?

This is documented in many papers.

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/07/college-major-rich-families-liberal-arts/397439/

Also typical comparing underdeveloped countries to more modern countries. People study things with concrete skills more often when coming from underdeveloped countries. the more developed countries tend to have the students studying literature or classics.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My dad is an engineer. He started and owns his own company, and he is very rich.

Your dad is actually an engineer turned businessman. The money comes from being a businessman but the prep for that success was his engineering background.

we love hiring engineers - they can learn anything. (unless they are the head in the sand type)

[Anonymous]

You need to define what you mean by rich. You can earn a comfortable life and retire early with a nice nest egg, in particular with a similarly earning spouse. You will not be flying around in private jets or earning $500-$750k+/year, unless you are an exception (go into leadership, successful start up, high tech person at FANG)