Best finance careers for lifestyle
In your guys’ opinion, what careers in finance are the least stressful and have a good work life balance, but still lucrative?
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I'll edit my comment since I feel bad. As for your previous question, go to Rutgers. As for this question, there are none. The best paying jobs require the most work.
I've been seeing that thread everywhere bro
.
Can you elaborate on your thought process?
Yeah I mean based on my experiences, those around me making the most tend to work the most. You could go into something like consulting and have a better work-life balance, but your comp will tend to be less than IB. For some, that's a steal, for others, they would prefer the money. It's all up to your preference. What do you prioritize/value more?
As for Rutgers vs Stern, Stern is significantly more expensive for you. Rutgers will get you to the same position, as long as you're willing to work hard. And if you're on this site in high school, I think you'll be more than fine at Rutgers when it comes to IB recruiting.
Someone's getting a bit salty lol. People usually use threads for advice right? Don't say anything if you're just going to offer nothing of value.
Let me get this straight. I posted a comment. You read it and said nothing. I edited it because I felt bad, and now you’re responding to my previous comment. Okay nice, you’re really offering something of value.
Depends on what you mean by lifestile. Do you want to maximize your comfort year-round? Or do you want to maximize the comfort during those 2 weeks a year in Thailand?
Advise from someone who has been working in the finance industry for about a decade:
Choose your job on what you enjoy doing. This is the ultimate way to prevail and eventually get to hit that 7+ figures with some luck sprinkled. Filter down what your strength and weaknesses are and acknowledge that. Be honest with yourself. No matter which path you choose, inevitably you are going to get stressed and almost always things don’t go according to plan. You will have setbacks. You might have nasty bosses and coworkers that’s backstabbing you or each other. You have sleepless nights. You might have a period where you start wondering if you chose the right career path. To navigate through all of these and if you don’t deep down love what you are doing you are going to get extremely lost as you start earning a bit more money along the way and lose this initial hunger and drive. This is how a lot of people give up along the way.
Many would say S&T has a better working hours than IBD and people get paid x big bonuses. You are unaware of the endless stress of worrying about what might happen to risk/ positions over night. You wake up 4am to see where China has fixed usdcny and implying what their intentions are for the trade war (just as an example). No one tells you the depth of hell you go through mentally to see a giant red number next to your name and you feel like the biggest failure in your life. Sales people stress about losing one of their biggest clients for the year and not making their budget. Spending endless evenings having drinks/dinner entertainment with big ego pricks they don’t enjoy spending time with but they do it because they need their business. What get you through all these sh*t is ultimately there is some love for this game, there is a passion for the market or whatever else you love about this job apart from that big pay cheque. Because for many, that big pay cheque might never get to you before you give in, before you burn out, and sadly for some even with the passion and love they never make that 7 figure plus mark but hell did they enjoy their job along the way.
wow that is poetic
Curious about your career path? Why did you choose HF?
People tend to say that HF is probably the best of the main buyside paths (PE/Growth, HF, VC ) purely from a work hours standpoint. Granted, I'd argue it is probably one of the most stressful too given from what I understand there is often a more pure meritocratic culture and, depending on the strategy, your positions are being marked to market each day.
Would you agree with the work hours argument? Curious how you thought about things when making the move to the industry and how that might have changed (if at all) after having worked at a HF.
Four months ago I would've said O&G, though this whole industry is in a bit of a whirlwind right now.
Regardless, can make >$120k three years in working
So this may not be what you are looking for....but
the best way (or at least one way, its not exclusive to be sure) to get high earnings with good lifestyle is to be super skilled in a high value niche. This let's you effectively get the highest hourly rate for your effort (not to imply billing or being paid by the hour, but the concept). Lawyers, doctors, and many professionals figure this out.
Of course, getting to that level... well that takes tons of study, practice, and time. But it has a payoff, you work extra hard to specialize (and probably trade lower earnings as result in your early career), then can trade for massive advantage in later years.
If your value comes from 'selling' or is just more 'luck' driven in the deal world, you will always be tied to deal world. Problem with that is you can't really predict which deals or pursuits will payoff, so you have to go 100% at all of them. I.e. the harder/longer you work the 'luckier' you get.
You could eventually get a 'book of business' and relationships that let you trade off access to for lifestyle, but that is more difficult than it looks. If you aren't making the deals, the deals won't get made.
I'll use an example from the CRE world, real estate brokers vs. real estate appraisers. Most will look at appraisal and think its boring and relatively low paid. This is true when comparing the first 5 or even 10 years of these career paths. After that, appraisers can get huge leverage on their time with associates and charge a lot more for specialized work (like expert witness assignments). Some of the richest and (seemingly) happy people in CRE/finance world I've seen are seasoned appraisers who specialize. They also win in downturns where things actually need to be revalued more frequently. Junior appraisers may be the most miserable, but big payoffs for those who stick it out.
There are examples of specialist tracks all over finance. They are probably not talked about on WSO a lot, as they will be deemed 'too boring' or 'low paid' for earnings right out of school.
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