<p>Scared me for a minute, arabrab. 23. Yikes!!!</p>
<p>Yea, weāre encouraging our S to max out his IRA and ROTH and 401K account, even if it is from contributions from us. We want him to have as much as possible stashed away. Their generation will DEFINITELY need to have good savings for their retirements. As soon as D gets a paying job, I can help her by contributing to HER ROTH IRA as well.</p>
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Some people put their kidsā age after the D or S, Iāve seen people put the year of graduation, both high school and college.</p>
<p>DSās company does a 150% match up to a certain amount, he is putting in at least enough to get of all the match.</p>
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<p>Apparently itās happened before, but would mean youād be on this Wikipedia page: <a href=āList of people with the most children - Wikipediaā>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_with_the_most_children</a></p>
<p>Thatās incredible, Vladenschlutte. Horrifying, actually. 23 would be a tiny number in comparison.</p>
<p>I think that when I mention my S2, Iām going to rename him, based upon remaining monthly tuition payments. For example, right now he would be S17. Not that Iām counting or anything, butā¦I canāt wait to stop paying tuition. I think weāll have a party.</p>
<p>Busdriver11, I was talking to a father of a son who wants to be a pilot. The father told me Southwest pays its new pilots $30,000 a year. True?</p>
<p>I donāt think so, dstark, that seems low. It is typical at airlines, that the first year the pilot is on probation, and is paid at a far lower rate than at year two. I just checked the online profile, and it says that at Southwest, first year pay is $57/hr. Multiply that by a typical 75 hours/month, and itās about 50K per year. But Southwest has a weird pay formula that I donāt really understand. Plus there are many ways to increase your salary via working more, and Southwest guys work a lot.</p>
<p>Either way, when flying for the majors, the last thing that people look at is what their first year pay is, itās not relevant. More important is what the pay, benefits and stability will be for the next 30 years. Southwest seems rather hot right now as far as they were hiring, and the pay is pretty decent. They fly way too many legs, though.</p>
<p>But for your friends son, the reality is, there are (and will be) so few good airline jobs out there, that he will take the first job heās offered. And likely he will stay there until he is furloughed, or the company goes bankrupt and slashes their salaries.</p>
<p>The son wants to eventually work in the corporate world. I am sure it is very competitive to get a job in that world. </p>
<p>What was the pay like 20 years ago?</p>
<p>It is competitive to get a job flying corporate, but much more difficult to get a job in the majors. It is very unlikely that someone would move from a major to corporate, it always goes the other way.</p>
<p>20 years ago, the pay (accounting for inflation), was generally much better, as far as the majors went. Before all the bankruptcies and reorganizations, the ditching of pensions and contracts, it was far more lucrative. It peaked, then crashed, and is gradually going back up again. Some carriers pay quite well now, others lag far behind, though none are as good as they were 20 years ago. As far as freight, most of those carriers went out of business. But of the ones who were left, 20 years ago the pay wasnāt that great, but they never peaked and crashed, the pay just steadily went upwards. </p>
<p>The pilot shortage they keep talking about is not for the majors or cargo. Itās for the commuter airlines, where people donāt want to get paid 20K/yr for doing a very challenging job and working their butt off, year after year, for low pay.</p>
<p>Commuter airlines are paying pilots $20,000 a year? </p>
<p>Yes, first year pay can be 20K. To fly challenging schedules, with fewer days off. And to make things worse, while the pay goes up, it doesnāt go up significantly. An example, an airline I fly on a lot is Compass, they are a Delta connection. First year co-pilots make about 22K. They top out around 40K, even after 18 years (which is what their pay scale goes up to). Certainly, people try to upgrade to captain as soon as possible. But even a captain, at 5 years (if they can make it), makes 65K. Some people are stuck in co-pilot jobs for a long time, depends upon movement above them.</p>
<p>Wow! The pay is pretty bad!!</p>
<p>Yes, it can be terrible. The gap between the bottom and the top is huge. There are people making less than 20K at some places, and at my company there are many who make over 400K. But the reason people put up with it, is because you take the crummy jobs to get the qualifications and opportunity to get the good ones. And then, for many, they get the good job finally, and get laid off or their company gets bought out by another and it gets ugly. Some people have been furloughed 4-5+ times. Thatās why I only recommend people get into flying if they absolutely love it. My kids are disinterested, though my youngest said he might consider it, but he realizes how long it took us to get our jobs, and doesnāt want to go through all that.</p>
<p>Looks like a very tough fieldā¦</p>
<p>Itās very hit or miss. You might hit the lottery, or you might just be unemployed, going from one low paid job to another, or having to work in a completely different field. Or you could hit the lottery and lose it all. Nowadays, I think it is only for those who truly love to fly.
Good luck to your friendās son.</p>
<p>I know two young men who majored in aeronautical engineering and hoped to be pilots. One went to law school when he couldnāt get a good job. The other went back and spent 3 years getting a 2nd BS in engineering and now works at Boeing. Neither could make a career with their love of flying. </p>
<p>Busdriver11, thanks.</p>
<p>There was this pilot who used to work with me, he was pretty sharp, but after hitting format C on several computers, back in the days when it totally whipped out the disk drive, he was fired in his early 40s.
He went back to school in Computer Science formed a company and sold to CISCO for $200 million back in the 90s. Itās a lot of money back then, itās like billions now. </p>
<p>$200 million is still a lot of money. :)</p>
<p>Well, itās merely rich and not stinking rich. :D</p>