Just read an interesting article over at Yahoo Finance talking about the best and worst jobs to go into debt for. None of which I even thought or cared about back in the day (I just wanted one I thought was fun and could get a reasonable degree in, haha…), but I’m sure there are smarter kids out there right now reading and contemplating this as I type :)
This post is for you guys.
Here were the *BEST* careers according to Y. Finance:
- Advertising — “With a median salary of $107,950, college grads going into advertising and marketing can pay off their loans in about six years.” Randomly enough I minored in Adverting myself. And my final presentation before graduating? Coming up with a way to sell more grapefruit. Haha… Know what my answer was? Make it sexier :) No joke – I researched all the benefits on grapefruit juice and apparently found something that can sex up your life more. No idea what it was, but I did get an A at the end.
- Economist — “…with a median pay of $91,860, economists also tend to fare well financially themselves, paying off their loans in about seven years…” A career about money helps you keep more of it? Who knew! ;)
- Civil Engineer — “With a median salary of $79,340, civil engineers can pay off their loans in roughly eight and a half years.” If you had to look this one up, I’m right there with you :) Can never remember what civil engineering is…
And here were the *WORST* (at least in paying back the loans):
- Veterinarian — ” The median salary for the position is $84,460, but because of those higher college costs (vets need 8 years of training like doctors), some veterinarians could be paying loans for 28 years before they’re debt free.” For a brief moment of time I thought I’d make for a great vet. Turns out I only like playing with animals though :)
- Reporter — “A median salary of $37,090, or a third of the average pay enjoyed by their counterparts in marketing, reporters could be paying student loans for 32 years before they’re done..” I admire the crap out of journalists – they have sooo much patience in researching and putting together quality articles! I could never be one. I’m too impatient :) And also stuff bores me too much. I’d rather just give my opinion on things like I do on this non-journalistic site, haha…
- Marriage and family therapist — “With the median salary at $46,670 and a minimum six years of school required before aspiring counselors can start working, some therapists could be in for 35 years of student loan payments.” Ouch. It’s a good thing they feel rewarded in other areas with this job than in money. Another profession I give big credit too – it can be life changing!
By the way all these estimates of loan payments back are according to Bankrate.com. A company I once owned stock in when trying to pick only those I loved! Haha… Notice how I said “once owned” too ;) That strategy doesn’t always pan out all the time, though I am way up with my other selections (TJ Maxx, Amazon, and Starbucks being some others).
The more *Crazier* careers out there:
Seeing this article also reminded me of two books I put aside while packing for our move. The first one was “50 Jobs Worse Than Yours” and the other, “Odd Jobs.” It had been a good 7 or so years since I last picked them up, but re-reading them for a hot minute reminded me why I enjoyed them :)
Here were some good ones from 50 Jobs Worse Than Yours:
- “It’s a Small World” Ride Operator — The chorus gets repeated 300 times a day, haha…
- Saddam Hussein Double — Now unemployed, they used to get paid $200/day ;)
- Rat Catcher in Bombay — “For the princely sum of fifty-five rupees, or one British pound, all one has to do is catch twenty-five oversized bandicoot rats a night” BLEH!
- Maggot Wrangler — What’s a maggot wrangler? someone who handles larvae and puts them on corpses in movies. *Vomit* On the plus side, they make $37-$40 an hour :)
- RateMyVomit.com Photo Editor — Remember when all those “rate my”s were uber popular? My favorite in college was RateMyFace.com. Which is apparently still around – I just checked.
- The “Before” Guy — Haha… “Stand in front of a camera for an FDA-unapproved-fast-weight-loss and muscle-gain product; vaguely resemble the “After” guy; Have a Buddha belly.”
Other jobs on the list I disagree with: Pizza delivery men/women, substitute teachers (hey now – they make excellent side hustles!), butt touch up artists (as long as they’re hot!) and Civil War Reenactors :) Though those guys are pretty hardcore. You know how hot it gets wearing all that wool in the midst of Summer? Ugh… Not that I’d know…
And here are some pretty odd jobs from the aptly named, Odd Jobs book:
- Condom Tester! — Though you don’t get to test them out in the way you’d *like* to, haha…
- Artificial Inseminator — In the world of farms, injecting hundreds of heifers a day.
- Dinosaur Duster — YES!!! AWESOME!!
- Golf Ball Diver — DOUBLE YES! Haha… “Clad in three layers of wetsuits and towing forty-five pounds of scuba gear, eighteen pounds of weights at his waist, and sixty pounds of golf balls in a net hanging from his neck, he [Jeffrey Bleim] glides through the waters of Orlando-area golf courses picking up after the mistakes of others.” This guy finds over 25,000 balls a WEEK and then ships them off to a refinishing company who then re-sells them. Now *that* is an odd job.
- Coin Polisher — I’d totally do that ;)
- Knife Thrower’s Assistant — But never that! Haha…
- Odor Judge — “At fifty-year-old Hilltop Labs in Cincinnati, odor tests are conducted daily on axillae (better known as armpits), breath, feet, cat litter, and diapers.” This belongs on the “worst jobs than yours” list!
- Barbie’s Dress Designer — At the time of this printing (2002), there were 40+ people assigned to this task. Crazy!
- Earthworm Farmer — Yes! Just like our very own worm counter we featured back in the day!
- Riddler — Not like a rhymer, but someone who rotates wine bottles back and forth over 30 times a day to remove any sediment remaining during wine making.
- Stanley Cup Keeper — “Weighing 34 1/2 pounds, at 35 1/4 inches tall and 17 1/4 inches across… it sometimes gets a seat of its own on the airplane.” Haha… neat.
So if you’re considering a new job change, hopefully this helps ;) And if you haven’t already, make sure you enter our $750 Side Hustle giveaway!! One of you lucky bastards will get a jump start on creating/improving that dream side biz of yours.
What are some interesting jobs you’re currently doing? Or have heard of before?
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Photo by Capt’ Gorgeous
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Some of these worst jobs and odd jobs are really odd– but I guess if you need to balance out your portfolio, you find what you can find. At least you’d have some good stories to tell..
Like homer once had the privilege of doing one episode a while back, fortune cookie writer. ;-)
Gotta love The Simpsons!!
Here’s a good saying for a fortune… “You will fall into a deep food coma”
Nice! Did you ever do that one or have just heard of?? Super cool :)
I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for the elephant masturbator. That would be a side hustle I definitely wouldn’t want.
was it really a “soft” spot or a “hard” one? (bah-dum-ching!)
Veterinarian: A friend of mine is a Veterinarian. He has his own clinic. He’s making millions. But of course, right out of college he worked hard for $12 an hour.
Millions?? I haven’t heard of them making that much before… is his shop located in Beverly Hills? :)
To me and a lot of others, making millions is a figurative speech. What I meant was, presently, he is sitting on a gold mine. That doesn’t mean he is literally sitting on a gold mine somewhere in South Africa.
Just wanted to back Shafi up by saying that there are vets in the millionaire class. Yes, some of them married into money, but they also bring home a hefty sum themselves. Most of the well to do vets own their own practice, many work with large animals or exotics, and they also own other businesses that supplement their income. I have met them and worked with and for them.
Hahahaa….
You start out in some jobs at the bottom of the financial ladder but pretty soon you would be making money at more than the middle of the ladder.
My job is boring. My previous jobs were boring. I know a woman who lived in western Canada who collected urine from pregnant mares to make hormone medications for menopausal women. It is unusual and terribly cruel and when I get to that stage of life I will only use synthetic hormones.
They can only collect urine from pregnant mares and they kill the foals so the mares will go back in to heat quickly.
Ewwwwwwwwwwwww
Oh man…. I loved the “Rate My” sites. Here’s a gross one for you… RateMyPoo.com. Hahaha
No way I’m clicking on that one!!
Haha those odd jobs definitely are odd.
My job isn’t in the best or worst categories, so I guess I’ll take it. A few of those odd jobs would be fun, but I don’t think I’d like to do any of them full-time. I always wonder how some people get into jobs like that. It’s not like there is a degree for any of them.
The condom tester would be super popular if people were to be able to test them the way they want.
Ha, I’m a civil engineer! I’m not sure I would describe it as a Top 3 job, but it’s been good to me the past 7+ years. I luckily didn’t have any debt when I joined the workforce thanks to the Bank of Mom and Dad (undergrad) and scholarships (grad school) and thankfully have worked in two different specialties w/in civil engineering (highways and railroads) that have held my interest and been challenging. I’ve lucked out by always being employed (*knocks on wood*), but I do have old college classmates who have been as fortunate. And to think I really really wanted to be a veterinarian when I was growing up (but c’mon, what little girl didn’t want to grow up tending to little puppies?).
Haha I know, right? Until you tell those little girls all the little puppies die there too :(
Congrats on all the civil engineering success so far! Hope you continue staying interested!
The condom tester is funny! 200$ a day to be a double for someone people want to kill not worth it. I would just put sales in general on the list.
Median salary for advertising & marketing, $108,000? Ummm…
I worked at an amusement park while in high school, and I know first-hand the horror those repetitive songs can wreak on a person…haha!
Sounds fun as hell though! Especially when all your friends are going and you can see them all, yeah? (though I guess not as exciting since you can’t join them on the rides :()
That Civil Engineering number is ludicrous! Maybe in higher income areas like New York or California, but anywhere else, there is no way the starting salary out of college is that high. Especially in this market where nothing is getting built and there is less of a demand for engineers.
That’s the median salary. As a civil engineer I am actually surprised the median salary is that low. But then again, I work in a big city in California so my numbers may be skewed towards the higher end. I think it really depends on what discipline of civil engineering you work in and whether you work for the government or a private consulting firm. Also, if you progress into the project management roles, then you can definitely get paid a healthy 6 figures.
I think CE’s who work in the oil industry drive that number up. There’s a huge difference between water resources/transportation engineers and structural engineers.
All the same degree.
That’s pretty interesting actually. I guess like other professions too like being an executive assistant to a mom and pop business vs mogul or something.
LOLL @ “the BEFORE guy”. Didn’t know that was a job, but that would be awesome. I mean, I’d probably be the “After” guy, but you know, not everyone can be devilishly handsome ;)
of course ;)
I don’t think I’ve had any job that qualifies as crazy! I didn’t even know some of those existed. The bad smell job sounds horrible. I hope they get paid a lot!
Reporters often lead frenetic lives, but some enjoy the beneficial impact this has on society.
I spent nearly three years working at a horse farm, breeding and raising race horses. There was a lot of artificial inseminating going on so I guess I have worked in the Odd Jobs category.
I wonder how loosely they’re defining “economist” there. From my interaction with them, many of the people who carry that title have PhD’s. Not that there is anything wrong with getting a PhD, but you better want more than to pay off loans quickly if you’re going to put that much effort into it.
Woooooffff (pun intended) 28 yrs to pay off Vet school, holy cow would have never thought it would be that bad. Where did you get that advertising figure btw? I graduated with an advertising degree, and that certainly seems way higher then the figures we were quoted. (note I didn’t follow my dreams and ended up working for the man at a cubicled government job)
The numbers came from an article on Yahoo Finance:
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/best-worst-careers-debt-172829721.html
I, too, stopped following my dream of going into advertising shortly after college ;) Granted it was only a half-baked dream of mine (I thought I’d roll up into NYC and snag a (paying) job 1-2-3. Hah!), but it was a fun one while it lasted. Ended up working for the airlines and traveling the world instead for a year or so.
I knew it, I should have took economics. Oh well, I’ll just have to settle on being an engineer.
$200 a day for being a Saddam Hussein look-alike? Yep, that’s officially the craziest job that I’ve ever read about. …. I’m surprised that veteranians have such a tough time paying back student loans. Because they have doctor-level training, I imagined that they’d enjoy higher pay. Like you, I once used to think that I wanted to be a vet … but it turns out that I just enjoy playing with dogs and cats, not operating on them. :-)