I believe Tony Soprano did quite well in the waste management business.
Rig hands make $60K plus (strarting), and oilfield truck drivers, Laydown machine operators and casing crews can do the same or better.
bump
I have a cousin that does HVAC and he made over $100K last year. A family friend repairs computer repair equipment. He has been making over $100K for the last 8 years. Neither went to a four year college.
Plummers who work for someone else make $35k to $55k.
If they own their own plumming business with one employee(themselves) $80-150K. They work long hours and are oncall 24hrs a day. Who do you call when the furnace doesn’t work at 2am in January ?
Start adding people that work for you, ie. 2-3 employees =
$150k to $250k +.
Electrians also do very well under the same formula as above. My electrician was an air traffic controller until Reagan fired him.
If I had a child that did not want to go to college I would have him/her be an electrician.
Depends on if you are a Joureyman or Master Plumber. Mster can have many plumbers working under his license but Journeymen can only work under a Master. That $30K figure is IMHO out of date. Plumber charge by the hour no matter if it takes 15 minutes. The journeymen plumber I know are in the over $50K and Masters depends on how many he has working for him.
http://www.bls.gov/bls/blswage.htm
Here you can find out what jobs pay in your area. Build a small company using these numbers and see how big you have to be to hit the $250,000 mark. Don’t forget you need to stash a little money away for capitol outlay and reseve replacement for equipment and such.
when i bid a job, a pipe fitter goes for about 110.00 per hour ( union rate )
Welder. Especially an ASME code certified welder. We pay our top welder $50/hr; he also supervises other welders, though. However, the guys will often work 6 or 7 days a week for 10 hours a day because there’s never a shortage of things to weld. He makes more than anybody in the business including my dad who owns the business and employs him.
There is a shortage of good (legal) welders. It’s just about the most useful fabrication/construction skill one can have, though.
Plumbers are rich. They need to share their wealth with Obamamama.
My hubby is a HVAC/R mechanic. Not a bad living, kept me home 18 years to raise my boys. Went in the military (army veteran 40% disabled) for training, been in the field over 25 years now. He works alot of hours to make a comfortable living (refrigeration is a 24/7 calling, if a walk in box or cold case goes down in a store or restuarant, you don’t want THAT food bill because you didn’t want to come out at 3 am to fix it LOL) however, he has never cracked even 80,000 per year, so I guess what I am saying is- if your priorities are straight, and you don’t live to keep up with the McMansion set, if you don’t buy your kids everything they ever wanted but provide for them everything they need, most folks would do ok. I am of the mindset that the reason it costs so damn much to live now as opposed to the 50’s and 60’s is that the feminazis wrongly convinced women they should go out and work. Women competing against men for limited jobs at that time. 2 income households became more the norm, so cost of living increased accordingly. Alot of women now want to stay home, care for ailing parents and kiddies but cant afford to, but their houses and cars sure are nice. I still stay home for the most part, work a little part time with a friend of mine, volunteer in several areas, and get to see my kids every day. Yeah its still tough, and I worry a bit about retirement, but, up until this generation of baby boomers, you pretty much worked til you died, and if that is our fate, I will do so proudly as long as I can, cause the sacrifice was worth it, I raised my kids, not some daycare center, and they are all doing great! Conservative,pro life, devout Catholics (one becoming a priest) and I can say I did my best with those you entrusted to me on Judgement day, even though they went to public schools most of the time. I did homeschool for a bit, but realized that it was better to teach my kids the truth and then send them out to spread it. ( you would not believe some of the stories LOL)
My hubby is a HVAC/R mechanic. Not a bad living, kept me home 18 years to raise my boys. Went in the military (army veteran 40% disabled) for training, been in the field over 25 years now. He works alot of hours to make a comfortable living (refrigeration is a 24/7 calling, if a walk in box or cold case goes down in a store or restuarant, you don’t want THAT food bill because you didn’t want to come out at 3 am to fix it LOL) however, he has never cracked even 80,000 per year, so I guess what I am saying is- if your priorities are straight, and you don’t live to keep up with the McMansion set, if you don’t buy your kids everything they ever wanted but provide for them everything they need, most folks would do ok. I am of the mindset that the reason it costs so damn much to live now as opposed to the 50’s and 60’s is that the feminazis wrongly convinced women they should go out and work. Women competing against men for limited jobs at that time. 2 income households became more the norm, so cost of living increased accordingly. Alot of women now want to stay home, care for ailing parents and kiddies but cant afford to, but their houses and cars sure are nice. I still stay home for the most part, work a little part time with a friend of mine, volunteer in several areas, and get to see my kids every day. Yeah its still tough, and I worry a bit about retirement, but, up until this generation of baby boomers, you pretty much worked til you died, and if that is our fate, I will do so proudly as long as I can, cause the sacrifice was worth it, I raised my kids, not some daycare center, and they are all doing great! Conservative,pro life, devout Catholics (one becoming a priest) and I can say I did my best with those you entrusted to me on Judgement day, even though they went to public schools most of the time. I did homeschool for a bit, but realized that it was better to teach my kids the truth and then send them out to spread it. ( you would not believe some of the stories LOL)
Heating and Air retailor and installers. I got a friend and he live HIGH on the hog. I’m a physician and he is the one living in a Mansion with lot of land. I know he put in my heating and cooling system and it cost 3.5 months of my take home pay.
As a retired plumber, I can say we make a very comfortable living - if the work is available. When construction slows, so does the income.
My experience in the plumbing and pipefitting industry covered multiple jobs from simple faucet repairs to nuclear power plant construction and everything in-between.
A motto I learned during my apprenticeship...
“Your Crap Is Our Bread and Butter”
I posted elsewhere an old joke: You only need to know three things to be a plumber:
1. Sh#t won’t run uphill.
2. Don’t bite your fingernails.
3. Payday is Friday........
This from a retired plumber.....a retired GOVERNMENT plumber.
Software engineers typically go through an interview process and get hired on the merit of their programming and computer science knowledge, not degree. I know programmers that work for Google on high school degrees.
OTOH, I don’t think I have ever accepted a PhD in computer science; they always flunk the questions for some reason.
Degrees do make it easier to get the initial phone contact, though.
Cleaning pays well. I know ladies that make more than $100 a day to clean houses, and the real ambitious ones make more. I knew one that made enough as a single parent to send her two sons to private schools and then to college. You can also start a janitorial business to clean houses after construction or to clean commercial buildings. Industrial cleaning or janitorial pays well too- if done as a business, self employed contract work. Cleaning jobs as hourly or salary work doesn’t pay much but as a business it can do well.
Self-employed appliance repair people do well, I’ve known a couple- the guy/gal that can come fix your disposal, dishwasher, fridge, washer, dryer- etc. Also electricians make good money and can expand into their own business.
Some of these trade jobs and others like laying tile, painting, landscape pay as much or more than career jobs that require college. If they manage to turn it into a real business they can do very well. It’s funny many look down on people in these type of jobs and yet they may very well be making as much or more than the person looking down their nose.
There are actually many jobs out there that can pay decent and turn into a business that don’t require college- the person has to be ambitious and many of these jobs you have to find someone willing to train you or go to trade school. OJT is usually actually better unless you are talking electrical because of the contacts you can make working with someone in the field.
One of the reasons I am so against the illegals being here is because when I worked in construction 25 years ago I watched many start out as low paid laborers on a job and a few years later they would have their own business and be doing well. Illegals are taking those entry level jobs that it takes to get in the door of the construction trades. Construction quality in this country is suffering because it is less common for the old craftsman to train the young person the skills. I see new houses built by unskilled labor and they are shoddy.
My cousin-in-law’s plumbing business makes about $250,000 a year. He keeps about half of that.
A welder friend makes about $125-150,000 a year - after taxes and expenses. (He works with the oil industry as a contractor.)
My mom’s boyfriend makes $85,000 a year as a diesel mechanic working with oil.
All of these men have more than 20 years experience, but did alright starting out. One has a gov’t contract and the other two work in oil.
I had a friend who’s entire family works at a poultry slaughterhouse. They all started at $18 an hour and some of them have worked up to $30 an hour with retirement, medical and other benefits. He was a soldier who got out at the end of his enlistment to make more money processing chickens.