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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Is the divide because your friends shoot up last 250k in income or prudent investing? 31 year old who just transitioned to health tech from consulting, bringing my salary from 110 to 150k. Hoping to keep growing or transition to big pharma because I don't want to be priced out. First gen college grad here that's just trying to understand the world.

Seems like it is really hard to plan to make more than that unless you're a law /business partner or owner or a senior tech lead or physician. Getting to 200 otherwise isn't impossible if you're motivated.

Basically what is the income that you see the divergence?[/quote]

Another first gen here and I think investing certainly has something to do with it. I'm a bit surprised at all the people saying stuff like "it never occurred to me that I'd have to save for retirement." It makes me think that they took for granted that the money would be there, which was certainly not the case in my family. If you wanted something, it was entirely on you to earn it and retirement was meticulously planned. I make a good but not massive salary, but I have more money in the bank and more overall wealth than many people who out-earn me because I still have the frugal streak from my parents and I've spent very little on stuff to make myself look rich. The divergence is way more complex than who has the biggest salary. [/quote]

Much of the divergence stems from getting onto the right track as early as possible. The sooner you're in the right place, the more that accrues to you down the road. Why so many well off people can look like they've always done the right thing is because their families provide the institutional knowledge of how to get onto the right track, including even connections. So many of the kids who went into finance right after college and who studied "business" in college came from families where the fathers worked in finance. I knew numerous kids with parents in finance, so the kid went to a decent college, and in the summers the fathers got them internships at some local finance firm, setting the stage for getting recruited to work on Wall Street after college, or if they weren't Wall Street quality, still get an analyst job at a regional city financial institution, setting up the trajectory for their 20s to end up in a generic but well paid financial consulting or oversight gig by their 30s.

Then you have families (common among Asian American families) who clearly direct their children into professional tracks early on so the kids are coming out of med school or other programs by age 25/26/27, which means by 30 they've finished residency and are now drawing large six figure incomes.

It's the people who took their 20s to figure out "what to do" or to explore different careers that have a much longer time getting established. This is how you find very intelligent people ending up in lowly paid minor roles while the dullards from HS seem to cruise through life in cushy financial or corporate roles.  [/quote]

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