Adult disappointment regarding wealth

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I wish I'd married a lawyer.

You need to read some of the biglaw threads. Being married to a lawyer has significant downsides.

Source: am a lawyer

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If you're serious about making a change and have aptitude and interest in logic and analytical thinking, consider computer science / data science. Have many smart friends who successfully switched into this after years of low paying passion jobs. One of my friends is in her mid-30s, works as an office manager as a tech company, and getting her company to sponsor the transition to a junior SWE role -- seems like it's going well.

And having done both, CS has lots of overlapping logic skills and parallels to legal transactional work without the 3 years of law school + biglaw (and dealing with difficult counterparties...)

I don’t know… I wouldn’t want to try to compete with the younger set in this field. My 20yr old is a CS major and had a very highly paid CS internship (trying to crack SW coed and fine vulnerabilities in various SW products) and has an offer on the table. He’s only just started his junior year. The young brain just absorbs more , can hold more, and they’ve been at it for much longer. He was writing code before he had armpit hair.

Threes just something about youth that inescapable in the tech field.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I wish I had made different career and educational choices so that I may have had more money in my thirties. When I see peers have high net worths I am green with envy.

How do you deal?

It’s very frustrating, OP!

DH and I only have a HHI of $850K and NW of $15.3M and we’re already in our mid 40s. We’re both in tech. All of our friends are probably making way more than us. We’re barely making ends meet with weekly grocery bills now pushing $400. We’ve had to cut back to only nine vacations and six Michelin 3-star restaurants per year instead of the usual twelve and twelve. DH can’t even afford to buy a new car this year, as the MSRP is now more than $200K (last year was $170K)! Sometimes I wish I had married a lawyer instead of an exec at a high tech company. I don’t think we’ll ever know the comforts of Big Law….

I feel the same. It’s so frustrating. I went to college at Harvard with Mark Zuckerberg. I was in law school. Look at where he is now. He is a billionaire. I’m a lawyer making only $1m. I’m so jealous. I made the wrong career choice.

Yea, but he’s remarkable. You really can’t reach his status without being remarkable. You are probably just a hard worker. Not at all the same thing.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:If you're not approaching retirement you have the time to make changes. You could look for more demanding and better-paying work. If you're not presently qualified for roles like that, you may be able to become qualified through additional education or by seeking out specific types of work experiences. You may have to change employers, you may have to relocate, you may need to go back to school.

If you take no action, nothing will change and you'll be moaning about your lack of professional accomplishment and your failure to become wealthy (whatever that means to you) in your 40s, 50s, and beyond. Change takes effort and discipline, and in this case you also need a vision for the future you want which includes an actionable and practical way to get to where you want to be. Just doing what seems easiest or most attractive at the moment is insufficiently strategic - you'll need to map out steps which are reasonably calculated to allow you to reach your goal.

Let’s be real. A lot of doors close when you’re in late 30s…law school to big law, going back for premed / med school, etc.

This is the brutal truth no one wants to talk about.

i roll my eyes when people say it’s never too late. nope, for most people it is too late to change their life.

Yup. My husband's like "if you really wanted to go to med school I support you!" But I'm like "no, I'd need to pay tuition for postbac requirements and med school itself, I'd be out of the full time workforce for years, and you make 60k. Those numbers don't work." Law school at least doesn't have prereqs but the debt is high and I'm not sure I'd make it up in salary at my age. It's not realistic. You can make changes but they're skips, not leaps.

Are the only high paying careers are medicine and law?

Most people don't want to admit it, but construction pays considerably well, most people don't want to risk it though.

You can take courses at a community College or through Google and pick up programming skills that pay very well. Learn an academic area or skill well and teach a course, it will earn you $5-8k every 3 months. No, I'm not talking about earning a Ph.D. and the teaching at a university. Many private organizations need trainers for specific workshops or skills, part-time graduate programs constantly use practitioners to teach a course that on a subject that person knows well. Community colleges don't have the pick of the litter so you may qualify. Ultimately the key will be to learn, develop, gain valuable skills, then you sell your services or you sell the knowledge you've gained.

The key will be to avoid debt so you can invest, net worth is built from investments that produce gains or income, hardly from income your "job" gives you(there are exceptions).

I'm a civil engineer who took plenty of programming in college and can certainly do as well as a community college grad in programming skills and software engineering, but I have applied to hundreds of programming jobs and have zero response. My current work is not programming, so even though I have the skills listed, I don't know why I don't make the cut. I'm older, 45 and my current work doesnt include programming, but if they are hiring community college fresh out grads, why not someone like me?

Because that’s a fantasy. Nobody is hiring community college grads who took a workshop in Python.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you're not approaching retirement you have the time to make changes. You could look for more demanding and better-paying work. If you're not presently qualified for roles like that, you may be able to become qualified through additional education or by seeking out specific types of work experiences. You may have to change employers, you may have to relocate, you may need to go back to school.

If you take no action, nothing will change and you'll be moaning about your lack of professional accomplishment and your failure to become wealthy (whatever that means to you) in your 40s, 50s, and beyond. Change takes effort and discipline, and in this case you also need a vision for the future you want which includes an actionable and practical way to get to where you want to be. Just doing what seems easiest or most attractive at the moment is insufficiently strategic - you'll need to map out steps which are reasonably calculated to allow you to reach your goal.

Let’s be real. A lot of doors close when you’re in late 30s…law school to big law, going back for premed / med school, etc.

This is the brutal truth no one wants to talk about.

i roll my eyes when people say it’s never too late. nope, for most people it is too late to change their life.

Yup. My husband's like "if you really wanted to go to med school I support you!" But I'm like "no, I'd need to pay tuition for postbac requirements and med school itself, I'd be out of the full time workforce for years, and you make 60k. Those numbers don't work." Law school at least doesn't have prereqs but the debt is high and I'm not sure I'd make it up in salary at my age. It's not realistic. You can make changes but they're skips, not leaps.

Are the only high paying careers are medicine and law?

Most people don't want to admit it, but construction pays considerably well, most people don't want to risk it though.

You can take courses at a community College or through Google and pick up programming skills that pay very well. Learn an academic area or skill well and teach a course, it will earn you $5-8k every 3 months. No, I'm not talking about earning a Ph.D. and the teaching at a university. Many private organizations need trainers for specific workshops or skills, part-time graduate programs constantly use practitioners to teach a course that on a subject that person knows well. Community colleges don't have the pick of the litter so you may qualify. Ultimately the key will be to learn, develop, gain valuable skills, then you sell your services or you sell the knowledge you've gained.

The key will be to avoid debt so you can invest, net worth is built from investments that produce gains or income, hardly from income your "job" gives you(there are exceptions).

I'm a civil engineer who took plenty of programming in college and can certainly do as well as a community college grad in programming skills and software engineering, but I have applied to hundreds of programming jobs and have zero response. My current work is not programming, so even though I have the skills listed, I don't know why I don't make the cut. I'm older, 45 and my current work doesnt include programming, but if they are hiring community college fresh out grads, why not someone like me?

um.. ageism.

-- 52 yr old used to be in tech. I now work on the periphery of tech. The tech skills come in handy, but I don't do any type of development work, at all, anymore. That's fine, though, because I can't wait to retire early.

But I see all these posts desperate for developers, yet they prefer community college over experience engineers? And I’ll happily accept most tech entry salaries as they exceed what I make now!!

If you have kept up with your tech skills, and I don't mean just take a certification course, but did some actual coding, you wouldn't be competing with cc graduates.

I have kept up my skills, but mostly just self taught in AWS, Docker, Python and JavaScript. But don’t use it in every day job because it’s not a programming job — I list on resume but what else do I need to highlight it?

NP here. I'm almost your age and recently retired from a career in IT. It could be ageism combined with not being sure what role would be appropriate for a very experienced person from a different field. I'm sorry, ageism is real. Discrimination against women, especially older women, is very real too.

Try some of these ideas and see if anything pans out:
- Make sure your look is up to date. Try to dress like someone who is still with it. Not trendy, but current. I'm almost your age and it's easy for people our age to just give up and look 20 years out of style. Women our age dress well just to be included in society. It's not fair but it's true.
- Ask a close friend to tell you honestly if you have any social skills issues that may be preventing you from moving forward.
- Request an informational interview with a smaller company. Ask them what you could do to break into the industry. It's hard for us to tell what the problem is but they may be able to tell you what steps to take.
- Apply to smaller companies. Not as prestigious as the big ones and you may have more luck.
- Find a recruiter. Be open to taking a travel position if you can. These are harder to fill.

Good luck!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you're not approaching retirement you have the time to make changes. You could look for more demanding and better-paying work. If you're not presently qualified for roles like that, you may be able to become qualified through additional education or by seeking out specific types of work experiences. You may have to change employers, you may have to relocate, you may need to go back to school.

If you take no action, nothing will change and you'll be moaning about your lack of professional accomplishment and your failure to become wealthy (whatever that means to you) in your 40s, 50s, and beyond. Change takes effort and discipline, and in this case you also need a vision for the future you want which includes an actionable and practical way to get to where you want to be. Just doing what seems easiest or most attractive at the moment is insufficiently strategic - you'll need to map out steps which are reasonably calculated to allow you to reach your goal.

Let’s be real. A lot of doors close when you’re in late 30s…law school to big law, going back for premed / med school, etc.

This is the brutal truth no one wants to talk about.

i roll my eyes when people say it’s never too late. nope, for most people it is too late to change their life.

Stop making excuses. It's never too late in your 30s or 40s. It's not easy for sure but life isn't easy either.
There are many examples of people that have switched careers in their 30s and 40s. It takes courage and determination.

What is your recommendation for a 40 year old project manager to boost salary to $400k by 45: go.

Hussle, work for Accenture and the like, bring in clients.

Or get a CS degree and an MBA.


-DP

Starting as a consultant at Accenture is like $117k annual salary; how likely is it a 40 year can build a client list before being cut? or do you think an older employer should be able to bring clients from prior field? That path seems very confusing to me, since most consultants don't even make it before being pushed out, yet you think an older employee can thrive and survive "up or out" and build clients even faster?

I work at Accenture. Lots of money to be made even if you exit. Most people exit to other companies and make about $200kish. If you stay you can make far more than that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I wish I had made different career and educational choices so that I may have had more money in my thirties. When I see peers have high net worths I am green with envy.

How do you deal?

Maybe vote republican next time? Seriously, we’re all 20% poorer under Biden.

+1

Let's hope it stays at 20%.

How are adults this stupid able to function day to day? Trump bought short term prosperity by implementing tax cuts for the wealth that will be disastrous for the country in the long term. His mismanaged the pandemic so badly that our country was utterly unprepared for it.

Biden doesn’t directly control stock or gas prices. Those are driven by pandemic supply chain disruptions and the ongoing offensive war waged by the criminal oligarchy run by Colonel Putin, and many initial effects of climate change (another Republican caused disaster).

You should STFU.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I wish I had made different career and educational choices so that I may have had more money in my thirties. When I see peers have high net worths I am green with envy.

How do you deal?

Maybe vote republican next time? Seriously, we’re all 20% poorer under Biden.

+1

Let's hope it stays at 20%.

How are adults this stupid able to function day to day? Trump bought short term prosperity by implementing tax cuts for the wealth that will be disastrous for the country in the long term. His mismanaged the pandemic so badly that our country was utterly unprepared for it.

Biden doesn’t directly control stock or gas prices. Those are driven by pandemic supply chain disruptions and the ongoing offensive war waged by the criminal oligarchy run by Colonel Putin, and many initial effects of climate change (another Republican caused disaster).

You should STFU.

I agree. Anyone who thinks that repubs at this point have any solutions for literally anything probably have some form of a brain damage.