Author Topic: If you aren't rich by 45, you might as well give up  (Read 5939 times)

HeadedWest

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GuitarStv

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Re: If you aren't rich by 45, you might as well give up
« Reply #1 on: March 11, 2017, 11:07:22 AM »
There's nothing in that article that I find particularly shocking or questionable.  You get most of your raises by the time you're 40.

Just Joe

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Re: If you aren't rich by 45, you might as well give up
« Reply #2 on: March 11, 2017, 11:15:28 AM »
I wonder how that plays out for people who get a late start i.e. return to college as an older student and start a professional career at 40 yrs old.

Laura33

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Re: If you aren't rich by 45, you might as well give up
« Reply #3 on: March 11, 2017, 11:32:26 AM »
Well, I guess if you define "rich" based on "annual income" instead of "wealth," it makes total sense.  But for a traditional work/retirement plan, you wouldn't be rich/wealthy by 45 anyway, because you are counting on the following two decades of compounding to get you there. 

My favorite part of the article, though, is the adjacent link to the article on new 2017 cars, complete with pic of a pristine Bentley.  'Cause that's what it means to be rich, right?

Metric Mouse

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Re: If you aren't rich by 45, you might as well give up
« Reply #4 on: March 12, 2017, 04:47:43 AM »
I would feel pretty rich if I had a Bentley.

JLee

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Re: If you aren't rich by 45, you might as well give up
« Reply #5 on: March 12, 2017, 05:14:44 AM »

BlueHouse

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Re: If you aren't rich by 45, you might as well give up
« Reply #6 on: March 12, 2017, 06:29:26 AM »
I wonder how that plays out for people who get a late start i.e. return to college as an older student and start a professional career at 40 yrs old.
Yes, I was wondering if the effect I lines up with age, or with number of years in a career.  Starting a new career at an older age p? 

Tabaxus

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Re: If you aren't rich by 45, you might as well give up
« Reply #7 on: March 12, 2017, 08:43:43 AM »
At least in the legal world, if I stay in my current path, my income would actually hockey stick up in the 45 range (at that point, I'll have been a share partner for a few years, which is when share partner comp really tends to take off).  Of course, "share partner in a biglaw firm" is representative of approximately no other jobs, so.  And it's way more likely that I'm shown the door before making share partner and find that my income capped out years and years before I hit 45.  Heck, could be a decade earlier than that.

BlueMR2

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Re: If you aren't rich by 45, you might as well give up
« Reply #8 on: March 12, 2017, 11:16:09 AM »
And it's way more likely that I'm shown the door before making share partner and find that my income capped out years and years before I hit 45.  Heck, could be a decade earlier than that.

There's a number of those "up or out" jobs out there that skew the numbers.  Attracts lots of people to those fields because they see the big dollars at x years.  However, no one likes to talk about the fact that odds are not in your favor for still being around at that point!  There's only so many seats at the top, the math doesn't work for everyone to be whatever they want!

Tabaxus

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Re: If you aren't rich by 45, you might as well give up
« Reply #9 on: March 12, 2017, 11:27:46 AM »
And it's way more likely that I'm shown the door before making share partner and find that my income capped out years and years before I hit 45.  Heck, could be a decade earlier than that.

There's a number of those "up or out" jobs out there that skew the numbers.  Attracts lots of people to those fields because they see the big dollars at x years.  However, no one likes to talk about the fact that odds are not in your favor for still being around at that point!  There's only so many seats at the top, the math doesn't work for everyone to be whatever they want!

Though to be totally fair, if one puts their nose to the grindstone, at least in biglaw, you can get almost FI (or potentially even FI, depending on the city you're working in and how many loans you started out with) before you hit the "out."  I had been doing well about that since I graduated... let some significant housing lifestyle creep put me behind last year, though I'm still ahead of many others in my peer group.

seathink

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Re: If you aren't rich by 45, you might as well give up
« Reply #10 on: March 14, 2017, 02:21:04 PM »
I would feel pretty rich if I had a Bentley.

https://tucson.craigslist.org/cto/6035271451.html

There you go ;)

Mmmmm. And a nice cherry red!

That's almost perfect for my "made it in LA" car narrative. Get an old model and tool around Beverly Hills churning out black smoke. :)

maizefolk

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Re: If you aren't rich by 45, you might as well give up
« Reply #11 on: March 14, 2017, 02:51:41 PM »
I wonder how that plays out for people who get a late start i.e. return to college as an older student and start a professional career at 40 yrs old.

Well in the article they talk about the first ten years of work "typically between the ages of 25 and 35." So it sounds like they're actually looking at years since you start earning money, and then translating that back into average ages rather than looking at the relationship between raises and age directly.

Metric Mouse

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sirdoug007

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Re: If you aren't rich by 45, you might as well give up
« Reply #13 on: March 16, 2017, 12:02:58 PM »
Here is the full study if you love economics/statistics.

https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/staff_reports/sr710.pdf

honeybbq

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Re: If you aren't rich by 45, you might as well give up
« Reply #14 on: March 16, 2017, 01:31:11 PM »
"Administration data dating back to 1978 to analyze how men's earnings evolve over time"


Being female, looks like I dodged a bullet on that one.

clarkfan1979

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Re: If you aren't rich by 45, you might as well give up
« Reply #15 on: March 17, 2017, 02:13:44 AM »
My restaurant manager at age 37 told me that he already gave up on being rich. I was 23 at the time and just finished reading rich dad poor dad. I didn't say anything, but I was thinking to myself, you are way too young to be saying that.

eyesonthehorizon

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Re: If you aren't rich by 45, you might as well give up
« Reply #16 on: March 18, 2017, 06:32:33 PM »
"Administration data dating back to 1978 to analyze how men's earnings evolve over time"


Being female, looks like I dodged a bullet on that one.
Presumably due to the relative recency of women's admissions to a lot of professional fields which would even OFFER advancement (as opposed to most traditional work open to women, which was pretty much squashed down on entry level) and more recently the less predictable career paths of women (who basically were, in any professional gig, *expected* to depart the workforce for family responsibilities up until a few years back and who still do leave more often than men - especially in those higher-caliber jobs, being qualified to get the job often means you're associating with likewise qualified and compensated people, which makes full-time parenthood more feasible and sometimes more attractive.)

That's got a lot of ugly implications of course when some employers STILL assume of some women that they're on mommy-track and don't really need development and promotion like other candidates, but at least that's probably not what motivated them here...