"But muh trade jubs"

why not be both?

Tradesman by day, Trader by night

enjoy your unpaid internship, not saying people cant make millions but its only 1% of the graduates.

Times changed faggot.

College degrees aren't the easy route they used to be.

Soulja went fucking crazy with the tattoos.

Why do so many rappers do this?

I don't need to make millions, I just want to have a job where I'm learning about information systems, economics and strategy. I can't do that if I just drop out to become a butcher or an electrician. Not everyone has to be fucking tradesmen.

But i'm pretty happy as an electrician. It's interesting and there's always something new. 45k EUR/year after taxes is pretty decent as well. Plus i'd fall asleep if i'd have to stare at numbers and write emails every day.

Tell that the guy who built your house or fixed your car. Why couldn't you do it on your own, user?

Contracting is very lucrative. And then you can get into developing your own properties. You're high, OP.

Street rep

You have to be young. Only young people believe everyone can do everything.

Unless you seize the means of production.

I wouldn't give an engineering job to most of today's american millenials.

I'd rather hire an H1B who's actually qualified & not a shitty, self entitled worker.

My comment wasn't directed at you, it was directed at OP who thinks money is everything

I dont hate being an electrician, but sometimes I feel I wasted my potential. I am pretty intelligent but I never had the drive or ambition to go after a STEM degree. Its such a waste because my parents completely paid for my schooling.

Depends what kind of electrician work you do. If you're an industrial electrician with instrumentation background, you're going to be very sought after compared to some pleb who only wires new residential houses.

Build That Wall!

The same reason I have someone haul away my garbage even though I'm perfectly capable of driving to the landfill myself. Because I value my time enough to not spend it doing menial labor.

i did an engineering bachelors and so far 3 years of a phd. you didn't miss out on anything.

What do you mean by STEM? Technology/Engineering is not any higher tier job compared to blue collar workers.

JUST PUTTING THIS OUT THERE FOR YOUNG BUCKS THAT MAY BE LURKING

Nothing wrong with trade jobs. What some guys on this board fail to realize is that most people are Average. Your chance of become a lead engineer or directer at a company like Boeing is extremely slim. Unless your a straight A student whose going to a prestigious university, you should expect that you're going to end up with a pretty average job. I know tradesmen who are millionaires, (a million isn't much in 2016), but they got there by making good investments, managing their finances correctly and after getting some experience, starting their own business.
>you can never truly become wealthy
That's plain wrong. I know 'wealth' is a relative term, but you can be quite financially comfortable, take cool trips, invest in a hobby, own your own house and pay it off, etc with a decent trade job especially if you eventually start your own business.

You can just as easily fall into mediocrity working a white collar office job. My "stem" degree was in biology and it wasnt until after I graduated that I realized most the jobs in my field max salary is ~$60k, I would need to go to graduate school if I wanted a shot at $80K and 6 figures was very fucking rare for people in my field who weren't in medical or biochem (which wasnt my area of study). My boss hardscaping makes 6 figures a year laying patio. Do I really want to invest more student loan and debt to get more years of school (during which time I'm not making money) for a shot at a lab rat position that might pay a little better? Or just start working the job I enjoy and am already good at and plan on starting my own company some day?

Just food for thought but OP's advice is pretty shitty. Most people are average. You are probably average, OP is probably average. , I'm pretty average.

It's a basic ROI analysis. White collar education has prohibitive opportunity cost and return is diminishing due to saturation. That's okay though, I can charge $100/hr doing "menial" work with minimal opportunity cost.

Then what's wrong with a guy that just wants a job cutting wood, metal or plumbing?

University propaganda is so pushed that they try to make tradesmen ashamed of picking a job as a tradesmen. It's just different career paths in life, so little people are going to be rich anyways.

>a million isn't much in 2016
retard detected

you serious man? I know an electrician who is a millionaire, and owns 4 properties. I know a guy with a hardscaping business who's a millionaire, my dad is head of IT for a decent sized business and hes got a million

If youre making 50K a year (which is do-able for a skilled trade) and you manage to save 20%, and invest in an EFT or index fund you can be a millionair by the time youre 40 or 50.

Why would anyone take a NEETs advice?

having a million dollars doesnt get you out of 'middle class' by a long shot. The richest girl I dated, her dad was making a million a year at his job and it showed. he was bleeding money. But he was still just upper middle class albeit living in Massachusetts near boston where cost of living for middle class is much higher

>muh milennials
>muh entitled

Fuck off boomer faggot. When the revolution comes I'm shoving my dick in your beer bellied corpse. Also your middle aged housewife gets cucked by blacks.

Pic related...

>A trade job is safe where its low debt and decent employment, but you can never truly become wealthy.

plenty of wealthy small business owners out there running trade related businesses...

this guy for example:

pimlicoplumbers.com/

seeks attention in the media - pays his plumbers £100k+... drainsmen more like £120-150k... and takes home seven figures himself. His head of PR is on 60k

What is by definition considered middle class because the avg median family income is only 52k or something

Depends where you live because if you tried to charge that kind of money you'd never get any business. This is especially true for electrical work. You'd be surprised how many home owners find a guy to do their home electrical for 30 bucks an hour cash under the table, Most companies in my area charge 65 bucks an hour for that work and are paying their workers 25/hour

Lol he thinks he can build a house without any prior knowledge of house building

>thered a reason most apprenticeships are 4 years long

>he was still just upper middle class

But upper middle class is as high as you can go in the US.

There is no upper class in the US.

You only get to be upper class if you join the establishment in the United Kingdom and become a Judge, Lord or other Peer.

I went to a northern red brick university... served in the reserves/TA while there. One guy I knew through the reserves was a builder - very switched on guy, great infantry soldier - he handed his kit in because he was starting his own business and it was taking up a lot of his spare time. He now employs a whole load of subcontractors on various building projects, has an office with full time admin staff manning phones, doing his accounts... no idea what he's earning but he can afford to employ a bunch of people and I'd wager he's doing better than 99% of the people I went to university with

OP is coping with his college degree shit knowing he will never be a millionarie

meanwhile young niggas going rich.

I'd open my own business too but I cant since I'm an apprentice and I need to get licensed and then be licensed for 3 years before I can get my masters and THEN i can finally open my own empire. It literally takes 8 years before you can finally go on your own. It's fucking dumb

Actually, you can become wealthy. You just have to make the right moves and invest in the right things. It's a ladder. CLIMB.

well what the fuck do you expect lol. You cant just start your own business from nothing. You hafta work for someone for awhile and establish a reputation locally. Next thing you know when you startup people will come to you asking for you to do work. If you start up with no reputation and history in the community you are going to have a hell of a time finding clients. Its about networking and having a history in the area

All you need is a website and advertisements and the clients will start calling as long as you look legit and have your contractor license number. You shouldnt need to wait 8 years. Any other business a kid can free lance straight out of highschool if he has the skills. Why should I have to wait 8 years when I can learn most residential pleb work in 1 year?

You serious dude? Are we still talking skilled trade?? Are you still in highschool? I'm not trying to be offensive but NOBODY in my town, maybe 2% of people use google to find a contractor. Everyone gets a recommendation from a friend or coworker or something. I've done a lot of house remodeling and hardscaping work and almost all the contractors on the job get hired through word of mouth I literally cant think of any job where I worked with a contractor who was found online or any BS like that unless you live in a big city. That's just not how it works at all. And if you start up without having worked locally in the industry all the other guys in the field will be judging hardcore "who the fuck is this guy" "where is he from" etc etc. If it turns out your some dude graduated highschool, studied the shit out of the field and decided to start your own company doing a skilled trade without any entry level experience you will instantly get a bad reputation. at least in my town if someone did that people would be laughing behind their back at how retarded they are

>Don't you realize that trade jobs is a pathway to being mediocre?
Mediocrity in, mediocrity out. With trade skills, your wealth development is limited only by how hard you want to work for it.

>Most people who have a net worth of 15+ million, went to university.

Tell that to Richard Branson.

plus its literally peasant work

Carpentry, machining, electrical, etc. are applied engineering and require no small amount of mathematical ability and technical programming skills in the case of computer assisted machining. Saying that these thing are peasant work is merely admitting that you're to mentally deficient to perform practical applications within the STEM fields.

Or to put it in words that you will understand with all that blue blood inbreeding of yours: you're retarded.

why don't black people use white ink? I think it would look cool.

my area is so cut throat there are literally over 100 single man operation contractors. Im just sick of working for my shitty boss who doesnt pay me jack shit. It wouldnt matter if you were a 1st year apprentice and somehow was able to run a big job. He'd still only pay you 1st year wage because that's all he'd have to pay you. Maybe working for someone else will make my experience more enjoyable.

I hear that, but tattooing the face?

Jesus guys.

Besides. "Street rep" means fuck all when you have over $50 million.

yeah sounds like you just have a shitty boss dude, doesnt mean the systems fucked

Tons of people find contractors online. It's quickly becoming the new way of doing business even in construction. Enjoy being left in the dust since clients are requesting subs they found onlinr where you have no presence

Oh, but for the rest of that other idiot's () post: no you do not magically know how to do a trade without ever doing the trade. You fucking idiot

>never truly become wealthy
My friend works in brass restoration, with his father.
His father owns the company, and they're about to get an exclusive contract to service a major bank's headquarters while still being able to work on all the others. Mostly through their own hard work and networking.
And because it's a 'family business', the only employee can be paid basically peanuts on top of basic living expenses.

When my friend's father retires, I'm probably going to end up joining him in the business because he can't drive.

upper class in US = upper middle class AND no need for working income, lives off cap gains

Who is this killer driller?

Most people who work in trades start off lower-class or middle-class. You can't just instantly jump straight to the upper-class OP, it usually takes generations unless you are born a genius or lucky.

Trud, obviously

You can create wealth through saving

Know some rough necks that actually have a nice savings and most of their investments are tech heavy or index funds, hell some even have picked up bitcoin

Gotta start somewhere

Are you speculating or speaking from experience? I am a contractor and all the jobs I've ever had were word of mouth. I have a nice website/facebook page but nobody uses that and I have more business than I can keep up with. I don't know anyone in my area that uses online to find work with builders/homeowners. Everyone in the business knows everyone around here basically. Do you live in a city?

I live around Silicom Valley. I know lots of contractors that do most of their work through generals, but most have a websites and pay someone to get them on the google search front page to get work directly to the client. Nobody is probably finding you through your website because you arent showing up in google searches

key is dont get caught. most electrical work requires a permit. If you are caught doing electrical work without a permit you can get fined heavily by the state. usually you can get away with it though.

Nothing wrong with trade jobs, but you will probably never be wealthy/powerful doing it.

>having one stream of income

level up son

I never said I magically knew the trade without ever doing it you dipshit, I stated that you shouldnt need 8 years of experience to do residential

Well theres no paper trail so you can just deny that you were ever there if they try to blame a house fire on your installation or something.
>not implying my installs would be the reason a house burns down
but you never know what homeowners will blab about.

I'll agree with you there. I'm working toward it, too. The way you said it seemed you thought guys should be able to license straight out of high school. But yeah, in CA it's out of control. Either the work requirements need to come down or, more reasonably, the contract amouny cut-off should go up. In a lot of states, anything above $10,000 needs a license. The $500 cut-off in CA (I'm assuming that's where you are) sucks balls

And you cant learn any trade in 1 year. If you think you can, you're likely one of those guys who thinks they know everything but sucks balls and makes obvious mistakes from lack of experience instead of just asking for help

>The lower class is the bottom 25%
>The middle class is the middle 50%
>The upper class is the top 25%
Why is the so hard to understand?
Don't fall for the memes of the news.
There is no such thing as a shrinking middle class.
There is only the economic wealth of a country,
which puts the average of the middle class above or below
other countries. This isn't that complicated.

Obviously its going right over your head. I said you don't need 8 years to wire residential housing, That's not the trade in its entirety but only a small portion. Commerical/industrial and control is where it gets more complicated.

I made a graph for you to show that how wealth is distributed.

...

That doesnt show the percent of the population below or above the median and avg incomes though. I guess that's what I was trying to ask in my first post

The graph you want is a meaningless meme.
You are making the assumption that the US has a poor wealth mobility.
That's not true. The US has a poor educational standard.
You want to take into account people who do not want a consistent positive net increase in wealth:
>Darker Complexion Minorities
>Women
>Young Adults
>First and Second Generation Immigrants

If you take the working population at a whole,
and eliminate outliers,
>people who are extremely successful or unsuccessful
the median income is around 50-60k.

I find that your pessimistic view of economics is wrong.

Better on white folks, methinks

These graphs are still only blips of Data. To get a decent picture of the world you'd need to do multifactorial statistics. Because in the Real world everything is fuzzy and interrelated.

The basic example is plants with water, fertilizer, and sunshine.
All together they make a fantastic plant, but subract any one any you have a mediocre plant.

Well, any Job for lyfe is probably the pathway to mediocrity. Small business is really the gateway out for most people. But not just small business you have to be continuously improving and compounding your improvement at your business, because the world moves faster than everyone thinks over the years.

When you do the math x(earning rate)^y(time) in college you're trading a few years and maybe a few points on the earnings rate for a significantly higher rate later on.

The goal is to save 130k, so you can buy a $1M business with the SBA.
say lifestyle is 12k or 16k
trade job you'll go from 20k-to30k to 40k over the first 3 years.
vs college (10k) per semester plus interest so say - 60k in the hole after all the interest, at the usual 5 year repayment rate. Starting salary is 40k and you get bumped to 60k after 2 years.

Say you're forced to make a 100k investment everytime you have it.
By the time You're 30 they break even, and the additional earning power of the college student makes the stretch between investments much shorter, once the loans get paid off.

There are pros and cons to both, I've know more millionaires who didn't get a college education than did. but I don't have the data to control for population. Its more likely that business ownership has nothing to do with college or trades. You may just have to commit to doing it.

I know a lot of idiots who still have sole proprietorships but make decent cash.

>captain obvious is here to save the day
Why was I included in your reddit-style explanation?
>my example is a fucking plant
woooowww

What are you even trying to contribute to the conversation?

1) I would never willingly use reddit. It is a hive for unfunny meme misuse and stupidity.

2) I'm generally in agreement with you about education being shit. Just pointing out that single variable statistics are more often than not fucking useless, especially when there are absolutes in the mix.

1+2) Its sad that the median is only 60k If Society came even half way to efficient use of time and resources we'd be at about 120k median IME. It saddens me how stupid the masses are. I take some solace in the fact that reddit exists as containment for the masses, and pic related has been kept at a manageable rate.

The point if there is one is to run your own numbers for yourself and your own life if you want to crush it.

>Don't you realize that trade jobs is a pathway to being mediocre?
Have you ever heard of the Bell Curve? Judging by this thread, the answer would be a resounding "no".

50% of the population is spread out around the 90-110 IQ mark. Keep in mind that further increases or decreases in IQ aren't linear, i.e. 90->95 isn't as big a leap as 115->120.

The masses are mediocre. You are, most likely, mediocre. Mediocre folk do mediocre work. It's really not all that complicated if you think about it for a while.

>60k is sad
I disagree
>reddit exist as containment for stupid masses
they come here and muddy the waters with bullshit all the time.

We would be a better society if we valued education more, true.
But 60k isn't a bad. You can raise a family on 60k. The trouble is people don't know how.

Not everyone deserves 100k+
Not everyone deserves 80k+
life isn't even about what you deserve
it's what you are willing to earn.
No other excuses are necessary.

You really want to bring the value of the country up,
export everyone under 100 IQ and make schooling merit based instead of age.
Educational mobility would boost the shit out of this country.

>buying a business for 1M

I have a business that earns 160-250K+ a year for the past year and would be willing to sell it to any idiot for 1M.

The truth is, whoever would buy it wouldn't have the experience to make it work and would likely make less than 100K a year for the first 5 years or so.

You're better off building up the business yourself so you can learn the ins and outs before starting 1M in the hole. Work in high end custom cabinetry btw.

for the past few years**

The odds of my going to college and ending up with crushing debt and no career to show for it are far higher than the odds of making $15,000,000.

Face it, only the most intelligent and capable should bother with college. Not any random. motherfucker.

The trades are still good money, and practical repair and maintenance skills will always be needed.

Considering the market will crash eventually, worse than 08 was and technically still the same crash anyway, trades and repair will remain more stable than white collar shit.

>Trader by night

Night trading when the market is closed. Kekek

You obviously weren't working trades in 2008. I was. It was brutal. The comoany I was with went from 250 guys to 8 guys in the field.

Yeah, your company was the only one in the field. OOOKAY yeah only 8 guys left in the field you dominated.

Fuckin moron.

not when you do it online like Veeky Forums

>Most people who have a net worth of 15+ million, went to university.

They also went to university when it was worth going to. There is no comparison between university today and even 10 years ago. The price has skyrocketed and the value has dropped like a stone.

>most millionaires are college graduatores
>therefore if I graduate college I will become a millionaire

You see the flaw here ?

Instead of going for a long shot of becoming rich, maybe people should opt for something closer to a sure thing at living a comfortable life instead ?

I think all people should be more respectful of trade jobs, but the point is still that building a house is as the other user put it "peasant" work.

Sure it takes time to acquire the knowledge to do so competently, but so does walking. Walking is still baby-town frolics, even though the vast majority of people can do it.

This is a stupid example but, if you took someone with no prior knowledge on the subjects to build a house, or perform open-heart surgery... I'd have him build a house.

the 100k down for 1M is a turnkey business. Yours is a specialty business and they sell at much lower multiples b/c of risk and time.

Service Economy gets hurt the absolute worst in recessions. As they are 3rd degree or worse from the money.

>tfw society collapses
>tfw only me knows how to build shit

Feels good

Here's where you're wrong...

There are no average heart surgeons; you only get to perform surgery once you have mastered the skill. But there are a lot of average tradesmen.

Yes, anyone could learn a trade in a few years and get by producing adequate work. But most people have never seen a master of his trade at work. Most people have never even seen the end result, because they don't often visit $10 million home. As with most things, the difference between "good" and "great" is miles longer than the difference between "bad" and "good."

As someone who works on the highest end homes in the country, I can say that a master of his trade is just as impressive as a heart surgeon. It took him every bit as long to master his trade as the surgeon took to master heart surgery.

That's not what "in the field" means. Are you 12 years old? It means technicians (the guys who work "in the field")

I'm in manufacturing. It's ugly. I openly tell me kids to find a career elsewhere.

Recent WSJ article stated over 1/3 of US mfg jobs vaporized between 2000 and 2010.

I'd walk away from my company if i could.

>society continues
>no one knows how to build shit