How much do you earn?

[Andail]

A rather straight-forward thread. I'm just curious as of how much money you make, what you do, how much you work and what kind of area you live in.

I'm a teacher myself, which is pretty much the worst paid job in Sweden if you look at years of education. I've done 4.5 years in university and my (and most other new teacher's) entrance salary weighed in at 20.000 SEK per month, roughly 2000 euros or 3000 dollars. I pay about 30% in taxes. My current rent is about 3000/300/450.

I think that's quite horrible myself, considering that people around me who've studied economics or engineering are paid at least 50% more in average.
(The good thing is that teachers typically don't teach all their hours, but can take some time off for preparations and correcting tests and whatnot (the bad thing is that all the extra-work exceeds that time in the beginning, when you haven't got the experience and routine)).

[Tuomas]

A standard salary for a specified teacher in upper secondary schools is at around 3000 euros per month, so I see your point. However a class teacher on ground school gets at around 2100 entrance salary. I don't know about uni teachers though, I haven't done that yet. I get random substitute jobs at local schools though.

what I kind of study for is IT in the tech uni. Basically at average 98% of the people from here when they finish uni have a job and get appr. 3100 a month, which is actually very good. However I'm about to change to something that doesn't give me a job and makes my life harder; international politics and german filology. A student here gets student money, which is nowadays dependant on the studies they do so basically enough points/month, and you're allowed some support, that basically includes 80% of normal rent and a bit less than 300 euros a month for living. Along that, you are allowed to make up to 550e/month for 12 months before they stop paying the student money. I myself used to get that and student loan, but nowadays the army pretty much screwed up all my plans that I had made for the next 3 years, so basically I'm just surviving, hopefully soon on life support until February when I start civil service.

I don't think you can call it earning money, but nevertheless. If I should work, I'd pretty much have to stop studying and leave the service, whch is impossible, so now I do random jobs at 8e/hour, which is as good as nothing.

[zabnat]

what I kind of study for is IT in the tech uni. Basically at average 98% of the people from here when they finish uni have a job and get appr. 3100 a month, which is actually very good.

I don't know what kind of university degree you are talking about, but I must be in wrong kind of university then
I'm doing bachelor of engineering degree (media engineering, in EVTEK - university of applied sciences) and what our union tells is that average of 3100e/month is after 5 years of experience. (source: Salary study made by the union of professional engineers in finland)
What we should (or could) be getting when graduated is as below.

Now I get 1875 euros/month (that's 12,5e/h) and I graduate in this month. After graduation I could be looking at something like 2300-2500e/month as that's the recommendation of the union. And that's only if I get a new job.

Of course there are there issues involved that I'm stupid for staying in such a low salary job and some people could have the 5 years of experience when they graduate. But that just struck me as quite high salary for freshly graduated

edit:
I forgot to answer the question in the opening post
I make web pages, proprietary software, graphic design, product brochures and catalogs.
I work 37,5 hours/week and live in southern Finland.
I also forgot to mention that the salary I stated above is the income I get from the day job. I also have my own small business making web pages and stuff and that yields couple of thousand per year (depending on the year and my lazy ass. Last year was about 4000).
If I'm not mistaken I pay something over 20% in taxes.

[Tuomas]

Yes, sorry. That would be a diploma engineer in IT, though agreed, in most cases the graduates have been working for at least a year, since it was said that the clever thing to do is to get the diploma from the place you want to work in in the future.

[Pumaman]

Public sector roles like teachers and nurses have always traditionally been paid less than private sector jobs, because governments are always trying to keep spending down whereas companies can tend to spend more to recruit the best staff.

In a profession like teaching salaries can get away with being relatively low because you can't easily just quit and get a job at another company, since more-or-less the whole industry is state-run. But I guess you could always find work at a private school if you wanted to up your income.

I think the average graduate starting salary in the UK is about £21k/year which is about 2500 euros per month. But of course how much money you need depends a lot on where you live, how much your rent is and what your living costs are.

And at the end of the day, no matter how much you earn there are always some people earning less and some people earning more than you. And thus the inexorable cycle of life spins on.

[Tuomas]

Yeah, and we need to remember, that the average salary doesn't really tell you anything, since those who happen to be lucky enough to get say, 71k per year bring the average way up. I usually ignore the average which is Finland is said to be 2500e/month, and consider the relative salary, which basically shows the truth, and yes, it does differ quite a lot depending on the position or the place your working at. The truth is, no-one gets 2500, people get over or under.

[Nikolas]

I get a highly friednly fee of £20 per hour from a piano student I have.

but with 3 years inside a PhD in composition, I could very well charge £30 or more...

Other than that freelancing is not paying much atm. And I am still technically a student (NO LOANS YAY!) so I have an extra year and then it's full-time job for me too And actually I am SO busy with my PhD, so I would never even dream of getting a full time job.

[shbaz]

I'm a student working in pre-fabricated lumber construction.  We build roof trusses.  I make 5.3 Euros an hour, or 7.5 USD.  When I worked full time I brought less than $1000 USD a month, now that I'm part time it's more like $650.  Barely scraping by, more or less.

For a manual labor job it has really bad pay, should be getting about 30-50% more in my part of the US, but I don't know of anyone else around that will work around school scheduling and I don't want to work in fast food for the same money.

Our teachers make only about twice as much as me btw, but this varies by state and my state is one of the worst offenders.  Most of the people I know who are becoming teachers are leaving this state for others simply because of pay.  The claim is that our teachers are the most dedicated because they're willing to suffer this bad pay for their passion of teaching, but my high school education begs to differ.

[InCreator]

I earn about $590/419 euros a month... my work is about killing time with WinKawaks emulator and entering data/printing bills whenever order has been filled. Basically, waiting for bunch of people to finish their job and then enter their results.

But since it's part-time (about 15 hours of work in a week, of which also most time goes to playing Samurai Showdown IV and Spider Solitaire  ), I think I'm supposed to be quite happy with this. At hardcore fruit selling seasons, like Christmas, this 15 hours becomes something like 60 hours a week anyway.

In Estonia, many people earn this much or less for a full month of 40hrs weeks. Including most of my teachers at school, unless they work in two places at same time. Which many of them do.

Here, lowest part of the "food chain" are teachers, doctors, policemen and firemen. For example, garbage truck or bus drivers earn double that they do. Weird.

[RickJ]

Andail, your starting salary sounds to me pretty much what teachers' staring salaries have always been.  I have heard the same lament from other teachers over the years.  When I worked at GE my boss's wife was a teacher.  I was invited to their house for dinner one evening and during the conversation this topic came up.  My boss's wife complained about teachers' salaries being low.  My boss replied to here that they have always been so but that there are still just as many people who want to get into it.   

I really don't want to give you a hard time or make you feel worse than you already are but I am sincerely curious and would like to ask an honest question.  When you first started studying to become a teacher did you not know how much salary a teacher typically earns or did you know and think it would be enough to support your desired lifestyle?     

[Nine Toes]

Here, lowest part of the "food chain" are teachers, doctors, policemen and firemen. For example, garbage truck or bus drivers earn double that they do. Weird.

I'd say the same thing about here.  ...Except for doctors; doctors here, in my opinion, are overpaid and underworked.

As for me, I work as a laborer in a hardwood flooring factory, I bring home $1300 a month.  My job is to run wood through a frame saw all day to make veneer.

[radiowaves]

Salary itself does not have any significant value when compared between different countries. Life standards are different in each country, you know, so are the average prices. 2000 EURs would be very enough in my country, especially for a teacher
and straight into topic, I don't have any salary, I don't have enough time to work, so I just live off on my parents and on government funds.

[Andail]

I really don't want to give you a hard time or make you feel worse than you already are but I am sincerely curious and would like to ask an honest question.  When you first started studying to become a teacher did you not know how much salary a teacher typically earns or did you know and think it would be enough to support your desired lifestyle?   

I'm not dumb, I knew exactly what I was getting myself into, and could have chosen a much different route if I wanted to simply become loaded. I had the grades to enter lawschool or become a dentist, and I believe I have the brains necessary for economics.
Trust me, I'm not that kind of person who whines about his poor lot and yearns for riches. With this thread I just wanted to address an issue; why a certain profession (highly academic and with a key function in society) is considered so little worth. I don't know what good the argument "it has always been like this" does, or what your boss's comment was meant to achieve.
People would still be doctors even if they're wages were cut in half. People would still practice law and economy even if lawyers and economists were paid the same as teachers.

[Pumaman]

In the end it just comes down to a simple case of supply and demand. An employer will always try to pay the minimum amount that they can for your services. If there are more people that want jobs in a sector than there are jobs available, then employers tend to control the market; if there are more job vacancies than people qualified to do them, then people can demand higher wages.

For example, about 10 years ago in the UK we were having a big problem with teachers quitting the profession and going into other types of work because they were fed up with their pay being low ... as a result, the problem got to a point where the government had to increase the starting salary from £15k/year to £20k/year to attract people back to teaching.

"Unskilled" jobs that in theory anybody could do will tend to be paid minimum wage, and jobs that require specific skills/experience will have to pay more money in order to attract the people have those skills.

All comes down to basic capitalism, I guess you could say.

[Darth Mandarb]

I've always really admired teachers.

When I was a kid it was 'cause my mother was (still is) a teacher.  When I was old enough to realize how (rediculously) little they get paid for their job my admiration increased even more.

Teachers fight such an up-hill battle everday and it seems it's just getting worse!  I, personally, think it's unacceptable how little they are paid.  And yet ... they still do it.  Trying to make an impact on young minds ... it's really admirable.

In the field I work in salaries are really variable.  I make a lot more living in South Florida working in my field than I ever would have had I stayed in Michigan.  The trade-off is that the cost of living down here is much higher.  I still earn enough to live very comfortably and manage to keep my savings account growing every month (while simulatneously paying into a 401k).

I also have a lot of supplemental income which I do through my own company (outside of my "day job").  I've never put it all together and figured out what my annual take is ... I could guess, but for some reaon I feel uncomfortable putting a number down...

Most people don't believe me when I say this but ... I'd rather love my job and be forced to live in a card-board box (because the job's pay sucked) than make a lot of money doing something I hated.  I just happen to be very fortunate that the work I love doing pays so well.  At the risk of sounding pompous ... I feel very blessed to have achieved what I have.  Granted, I worked my ass off to get here.

[Sylvr]

Ooh this almost makes me want to rethink my future career choice...

[ManicMatt]

Really? If I could have my true dream job, but the pay was slightly lower than I am on now, in my realistically attainable ideal job, I'd go for it.

[Sylvr]

Well I was only half joking, but people are making the life of a teacher sound so miserable and unfufilling (which I know isn't true). I also have to keep in mind that it might be a little different here in Canada, pay and appreciation-wise... I keep having to remind myself that the subjects I'm going to learn how to teach are/will be in high demand. 

[ildu]

Most people don't believe me when I say this but ... I'd rather love my job and be forced to live in a card-board box (because the job's pay sucked) than make a lot of money doing something I hated.  I just happen to be very fortunate that the work I love doing pays so well.  At the risk of sounding pompous ... I feel very blessed to have achieved what I have.  Granted, I worked my ass off to get here.

Exactly the same for me. Almost all of the things I do for money right now I wouldn't mind doing for free. Money in general has meant very little to me throughout my life, and I'm fortunate to live in a country and surrounding where everything has come pretty easy to me (not through connections, but rather through a mix of a great societal system and pure luck). And like Darth said, that doesn't mean I haven't worked my ass off to get what I wanted, I've just encountered very few (zero?) setbacks.

I'm still a student (getting my BEng this year) and I use very little money in all, so I'll always be okay even if I would have to rely solely on my student money. Crystal, bling and fancy cars, jewellery and mars bars mean very little to me. Why the hell would I want a Porsche when I have a pencil and a brush? Alas, my future goals lie more in the domain of art, family and being a surfer/snowboarder bum, than anything material. In every instance, buffing up my portfolio means more to me than making money. And that's not to say I'm not making good money doing what I'm doing .

I hope that didn't sound too pompous either :|.

[Vince Twelve]

I'm also a teacher, and love it.  If and when I move back to the US, I will likely continue teaching.  Being an employee of the Japanese government, my salary is a matter of public record, so I don't mind discussing it.  My contract stipulates 300,000 yen per month AFTER taxes.  So, no matter how much Japanese tax I have to pay, I always get 300,000 yen per month. (which thanks to the horrendously weak yen, is only about $2,600 USD, it was a lot more three years ago when I was not married and regularly sending money home.)  Since tax doesn't come out of my salary, I'm not sure exactly how much I'd be getting if taxes were included.

It's not a lot, but it's been enough to carve out a very satisfying living for my family and I and we even save about 1/3 of it each month that we put in a savings account to use for going on vacations, or buying some extra things that we need or want.

I agree that teachers are not paid enough for how important they are to society or how hard they work.