NYC BigLaw Associates- How much after taxes? Forum

[transferguy]

Your misunderstanding. understand you are actually working only 50 weeks with your two week vacation. Understand that 10-15k gets put into retirement. Then if you grad from CLS like me, you have 210 in Loans, and you end up making like 40-50k left over if your rent is the cheapest in the city. if its not, its even less. which means u are basically living like you did as if yuo didnt even go to law school, fyi.

So would you have done things over if you could? If so, how?

[thelaststraw05]

If you guys are willing to "slum it" up a bit you could def find an above-decent 1BR place in the 1500-2000 range in upper Manhattan towards Columbia/Morningside Heights/Washington Heights. For those of you who have never seen the area it is not AT ALL extremely dangerous or sketchy like people tend to say. It absolutely blew my mind to see it after hearing all the rumors about how if you go to Columbia you will be getting robbed left and right. Living in lower Manhattan is a luxury(and a very silly one if you ask me) not a necessity.

Just an FYI, 72k post tax/loans is a lot of damn money for a single late 20something. I have no idea why the majority of TLS thinks they could just easily snag a 70k/yr salary job out of undergrad but that is not reality for the majority of us. Only engineers make that kind of money out of undergrad but then they have relatively low salary ceilings for the most part(they also run the risk of being forced out or into supervisory roles for the younger blood coming in to replace them at lower prices). I had a very solid financial analyst I job at a large corporation lined up and I was looking at 45-50k(pretax; but in the south). Also, in-house salary pay is lower(75-100k+ depending on the company/situation ive been told) but the jobs typically include very good benefits packages and other perks.

Your misunderstanding. understand you are actually working only 50 weeks with your two week vacation. Understand that 10-15k gets put into retirement. Then if you grad from CLS like me, you have 210 in Loans, and you end up making like 40-50k left over if your rent is the cheapest in the city. if its not, its even less. which means u are basically living like you did as if yuo didnt even go to law school, fyi.

I'm sorry, I actually don't understand. You are comparing 40-50k after you have paid for all of your major expenses (like housing and healthcare) to 40-50k pre-tax and saying you should stick with 40-50k pre-tax?

This idea that people in big-law are having a hard time when their discretionary income after taking into account debt and housing is higher than the pre-tax income of the average american FAMILY is a bit absurd.

[romothesavior]

You're missing the point. It's not that there's anything wrong with making 45K a year. The issue is that you have the option of living in another large city, making significantly more, and working significantly less. Why would you choose to work 60+ hours a week to make 45K a year in the most expensive location in the country if you didn't have to--particularly after you've worked intensely for a graduate degree for 3 years? NYC is so prohibitively expensive that lack of money could actually be a drawback for someone working in a large law firm--that really lets you know how insanely high NYC's COL is.

Okay, well this I can agree with then. I have zero, zilch, nada interest in NYC for exactly this reason.